interaction gone mad

interaction gone mad, originally uploaded by epredator.

Whilst staying over in london for the virtual worlds forum europe I noticed this mad sign on the mini bar in the room. I think thats using the interactive label a little too oddly for my liking.
Still..... I took a photo and now have a radisson logo on the blog so maybe its geek based marketing?

The conceptual age is here - eightbar is living proof

Up until the other week I used a term called web 2 thinking, or open source thinking to try and engender the change in attitude that we are seeing and the cultural shift in both working practices, organization and attitude.

Since hearing our very own Sandy Kearney speak at VW 07 I now have picked up on a much better word and idea. The Conceptual Age. This piece of thinking seems to fit right in with both what is happening, what I see might happen in the future and, looking back, some of the personal experiences and changes I have felt.

Personally I think I groked conceptual age withing a few seconds, as it mapped to so many things. However I will try and explain it in very quick friday terms.

We have moved from agriculture, to industrial and then to information ages. In each step it had required a change in what is considered normal, in the tools and techniques required to deal with that change. Business and social changes have been massive.

The information age is identifiable by the massive use of compute power, of logical, left brain thinking. Gather, analyze, mechanize etc. This however has not proved enough for us as humans. We have had to find and build on this to get a creative outlet, to spend time cultivating relationships and to having to come to understand good design. We have been in a transition to this conceptual age, where design and creativity matter as much as logic and information. The web started it really, combined with 'designer' products and the need for people to augment their experiences in real life with brands.

Now we are seeing this as the differentiator for business. We talk about innovation that matters, and indeed we do it. That is not about cranking out code, that is not about the digital equivalent of a factory line. That is about people, about empathy and about appealing to the higher order of things in peoples lives than just pure money.

Idealistic? yes. thats the point.

I realized a good few years ago that whilst I was a programmer my love of creating code was not the logic and order, but the creativity and gut feel that can be applied. Once I realized that i was able to let go of the pure logic, not try and be spock. I learned that sometimes I coudl be Left brain, but I tended to be right brain as well and see all sorts of other patterns.

Its these patterns, threads etc that I saw, felt, touched with the whole metaverse/secondlife/virtual worlds buzz. It was these that worked in my head. A mixture of logic AND gut feel.

All this sort of thing is described in this book, which of course I have not read all of !

So, in all this metaverse work we have been saying its about people, its about community, its not about command control structures. Its about reaching people, letting go, creativity etc. It all fits so well.

It does not mean solely right brain wacky creativity, nor solely left brain nuts and bolts. It does mean that we have to think about things in a different way, use our full human make up to get things done.

It struck me that the entire measurement culture, target based approach is still very information age. To a hard nosed pure left brain attitude that is clearly the only way forward, logic dictates if you set this target and make it then things will be great. Well..... I dont think so.

Whilst we have all been asked to think out of the box, the box has gone and moved.

I can see this concept of the conceptual age (see a nice self reference) will be winding its way into my vocabulary and presentations. I will write some more, and give more anecdotal stories, but the story of eightbar does appear to be the power of the conceptual age come to life.

Enjoy

sky typos

sky typos, originally uploaded by epredator.

Ok so I make a lot of typos, but I am not enticing you to spend lots of cash on my content.
This sky box office advert seems to have gone a bit, well, wonky.
I think its applies to one pc, thats what they are trying to put in the smallprint

halloween predlet1.0

halloween, originally uploaded by epredator.

Just to add to the madness of virtual and real life we went to fancy dress shop to equip predlet1.0 with a vampire costume.
The weird things was it was absolutely not weird.
The costume shop was full of wings, attachments, makeup, tattoos and flexi dresses.
Where on earth have I come across that before.
The only thing missing was a salsa dancing pose ball

predlet2.0 fire punch

predlet2.0 fire punch, originally uploaded by epredator.

You predlet 2.0 appears to be taking the virtual power of fighting games, dragon punches, fireballs etc and rendering them in the real life. :-)

A convincing argument on our future?

Nick Wilson twittered this recently, so I took a look. I started to expect a spoof, but it is not. I started to think yes but, in order to pick some holes. The guy has done the thing I like to do, select the extremes and see where it takes you. I found this very thought provoking, see what you think its only a few minutes

Project Gotham 4 - Tis good

I have beenn playing the gotham games since they were metropolis street racer on the dream cast. They thrive on teh fact that they are about style, aswell as speed. The Kudos system and chaining mad slides and drifts together make for a very entertaining style of driving game. Now PGR4 is here, more of the same, but better on the 360.
Now there are also bikes, and you have even more style options such as this wave tot hte crowd.

Even stationaru things look pretty good

They have also mixed in the old and the new. I got to drive this around the old Nurbergring in this old maserati in the snow. A fantastic experience for a driving game

Things like weather effects are quite important to the atmosphere, puddles of standing water feel rock solid as you hit them and get a rumble pack jolt.
The music is pretty cool too, I enjoyed razzing around in a scooby with Ruby by the Kaiser chiefs, and Our velocity by Maximo Park blasting out.
Some of the car damage is also quite subtle, look at the scratches on the side of this one

So yes Halo is good, but so is this :-) I need to play online now I have a few miles under my sparco belt, but no reason to think it will be a bad experience :-)
Subtle little extras I have seen, Geometry Wars in the garage again, a new wave based version. Also you can upload shots to share with people. If you wander around your garage the walls will get populated randomly with other peoples photos of car incidents. You can walk up to them and vote on them. Nice touch for serendity and Web 2.0 there.

Virtual Worlds 2007 conference San Jose

The virtual worlds 2007 conference in San Jose ran teh last two days, I was lucky enough to be able to attend and also to speak on a panel session.
There was so much excitement and buzz I need to sit and think what to write about, probably do that over on eightbar.
The cool thing, as per usual, was ,meeting people I already know, know of or who know of me. The metarati were in full attendance, and as the place got derezzed around us we still gathered for lose last morcels of real life interaction.
I captured a bit of ad hoc spur of the moment video and Eric Rice, being media savvy, did an impromptu piece to camera. It was a cool ending to a cool show. Next stop London for the VW europe, more of the same but on my turf this time.
So hi everyone, it was great to meet/slmeet/remeet you all, lets take this industry and make it massive.

Funny lines in not going out

The not going out show on BBC has some fanstastic lines, wit and sarcasm. It appears up front to be a bad sitcom, but it really is funny.
Lee Mack tends to get the best lines as its his show really but the other do get some nice builds.
last night's episode featured Lee who lives in a posh London flat but is from up north and sells ice creams from a van for a living saying "I can sell snow to eskimos... well ice creams to hoodies its the same thing"
The show is peppered with clever one liners, and misunderstandings. It loks liek it should not work, but it does.
Being the beeb it will be repeated lots, and the first series was funny too :-)
This is from season 1, or the 1st series as we say here in the uk

Waterfalls, Rocks, Halo3 and Roovatar

Having made a nice waterfall in Torque it was a bit mad that I ended up in Halo 3 by a waterfall of similar dimensions

Also in Halo3 is a very creative user creation scheme called Forge. You can actually edit the maps and the engine whilst a fast pace game is going on. One of the options is to let people see you, as a small bot, creating and placing things whilst the action goes on.

Just in single player this lets you get the right tools in the right place so that you can explore the replay mode and capture moments.

So forge and theater together make for a stunning set creation and playback faciltity.

The waterfall in the torque internal metaverse (which I am experiementing with) got enhanced by the addition of a cool rolling rock. This was tryging to see how far the base physics goes in Torque.

and finally there was the slightly odd look I managed to give Roo and his Roovatar when an experiment crossing him with penguin went a bit odd.
It did prove the tool chain though :-)


This video also made a cool association between Roo, Metaverse and Brian Eno and Will Wright and Spore :-) its sort of networking by proxy

Internet People - Awesome geek fest

Thanks pranab for twittering this. It is amazing how many of those references I just nodded and said oh yes to :-)

Guitar Hero on tv

This weekend guitar hero appeared in 2 of my favourite programmes on the box
The first was the excellant IT Crowd, a work of genius from Graham Linehan the creator of father Ted.



The second was a little spot on charlie brookers Screenwipe. He has been at this for a while and whilst he is not TV based he was one of the original blogger commentators back in 1999 with TVGOHome

The still shows a guitar on the sofa :-)



This episode is, like all them them very funny. There are a few parts you will have to go to youtube and find the next parts if you like his style.

rocket whoosh

rocket, originally uploaded by epredator.

I graduated in the online multiplayer Halo3 tonight and also experimented with the forge options allowing level creation, but live as part fo the game,

Living the life

We popped down to hill head on a family trip today. It may not be glamorous but this is UK charm for those of you in other parts of the world. Check out the beach huts. The view shows the isle of wight, in cae you are wondering why we are so close to land.

oops damage

oops damage, originally uploaded by epredator.

Needless to say, this n00b/me did nto survive this encouter for very long. However, if I take one of them with my I really dont care. Its a different philosphy on combat. Respawning brings that out of course.
The great thing is the realy nicve style of the replays, the trails from the sniper rifles and the cool smoke.
This is a moment in time, and one of many memorable ones.

Double Kill

angle, originally uploaded by epredator.

My first Halo 3 double kill in multiplayer. The richochet off the wall was an accident, but what attention to detail.
Bungie.net is obviously creaking a bit under the pressure as this photo took 2 dyas to go live on the site. With this much attention you do have to have respect that the sire is even up.

Halo 3 - its here and its popular

Halo 3, originally uploaded by epredator.

Halo 3 on the 360 has landed. It is really very good. Smooth, entertaining and just plain clever.
Yes the gameplay is move and shoot, but it has some stylish movie editing and photo stuff. It is also linked to a decent website and lots of extras.
I played online a little, mostly it was the single player campaign tonight. I was very happy that my very first encounter online in basic training led to a kill.Its a mini moral booster, but I soon had that beaten out of me.
I tried to be a little bit eightbar :-)





So I have to say its good to have Halo back and all next gen.
Nice one bungie.

The art of evangelism

I was just on a web ex conference listening to Guy Kawasaki talk about the art of evangelism. It was good to hear things packages up in 11 little rules.
I think these are all cornerstones of what I do :-) However its good to hear a fellow evangelist, with an awesome track record, speak and present.
1. Make meaning
2. Make a mantra (not a mission statement)
3. Roll the DICEE (An acronymy around depth and elegance and innovation)
4. Niche Thyself
5. Let a hundred flowers blossom (Dont assume non target audience is not interested)
6. Make it personal
7. Find the true influencers (seldom the big hitters at the top)
8. Enable test drives
9. look for agnostics, not atheists
10. provide a slippery slope - make it easy and obvious to get ivolved
11. Dont let the bozo's grind you down

The bozo's part is interesting as he told a story about him making the wrong assumption and thereby mot accepting an interview as CEO of yahoo at startup.

All in all the recipe sounded very familiar, and comforting. I am not sure if they make the recording public, I suspect not as they also hid us all from one another on the participant list. A bit silly in a web 2.0 world, but there you go.

Roo's watch under a microscope

Roo's watch, originally uploaded by epredator.

Also at intech Roo pointed a microscopic macro camera at his watch, this is the screen image we saw.
I also tried a video as we were able to see the hour hand move fractionally.
There were lots of other things at intech but it was a flying visit really.

epredator in predator vision

24092007541, originally uploaded by epredator.

I snapped this today on a visit to intech the local schools science park. They have lots of machines and cool toys. Thats me and the n95 on the right taking a picture of me in heat map form :-)