CNDG Blog

We are doing one more presentation at LEEF in June – this one on design for Virtual Reality.  Here is the description – and we invite everyone to stay tuned in here – simulcast VR login from SL SLURLs will be posted here soon.

Looking At My Reflection In The Hall Of Mirrors

designing and creating virtual spaces from within virtual spaces

William L. Prensky, CEO – CNDG – Gold Solution Providers in Second Life

Learning and Entertainment Evolution Forum – LEEF (www.goleef.com )

Harrisburg University, Harrisburg, PA and

with concurrent participation from Second Life

Thursday, June 16, 2011 – 1:30 – 3:00pm EDT

As an increasing number of global companies and organizations express interest in using 3D Virtual Reality as an environment in which to host meetings and create collaboration and education spaces, good design considerations for creating effective and usable environments become more crucial.  With 3D spaces still a new and novel environment for most organizations, first impressions and ease of use are crucial to adoption and success.  Designing well for a positive user experience is a key factor in encouraging utilization and ensuring a positive first experience.

Just as there are basic considerations for good design in real spaces and face-to-face events, so, too, virtual space design has its own special considerations.   Designing well for comfort, ease of use, and effective transmission of information remain paramount considerations in both venues.

What are the special requirements of virtual spaces, and how do we focus on the specific good design standards for 3D simulated environments?

Using experience gleaned from creating applied environments on the specific building platform of Second Life, SL Gold Solution Provider William Prensky, CEO of the Chant Newall Development Group, LLC (CNDG), will discuss some of the problems and solutions that govern usable spaces and usable space design in totally immersive 3D.  An exciting component of this presentation will be participation in an actual meeting taking place in merged hybrid reality – participants in this meeting will be joining both live at LEEF and simultaneously in a virtual space in Second Life.

A question and answer period in both Real and Virtual Reality will conclude this presentation.

You may all remember that I blogged earlier about the Learning and Entertainment Evolution Forum (LEEF) program at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology this June.  We at CNDG work closely with Harrisburg University’s Masters Program in Learning Technology and each year their students spend time with us at CNDG in SL getting familiar with the environment and its future potential for new learning technologies.  The HU graduates are headed for careers in education as issue and thought and practice leaders and directors in education, and it is important to see how their exposure to SL affects both their future career opportunities and choices.

Each year HU hosts LEEF in June.  LEEF is a two day educational conference attended by members of the education community and the business community interested in Serious Games and Virtual Worlds as elements of both ordinary education and corporate education.  I am a member of the Board of Advisors for LEEF and am working this year to broaden with everyone the scope and content of the conference.

This year I am also have the great pleasure of moderating a panel and will be presenting on Thursday, June 16, in Harrisburg, PA.  I thought it might be interesting to you all to have the information about the program and the panel.  So here it is – all information is on the LEEF website which is here:  – www.goleef.com –

And the panel description is here:

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Establishing an Intelligent Organizational Avatar Policy – LEEF 2011 – June 16th 2011 3:30 to 4:30pm

Moderator and Presenter – William L. Prensky – CEO – The Chant Newall Development Group, LLC – Second Life Gold Solution Providers and Applications Developers

As company and organizational use of Virtual Reality and Social Media and Online Gaming grows and gains in acceptance, serious attention is being paid to how companies, educational institutions and organizations establish a workable and intelligent policy and best practice for employee/member/student representation through an avatar account.  There are many issues to consider, including the appropriate ways in which to represent oneself and the organization supporting the activity and legal ramifications of providing official access to these environments.  We will look at some of these issues during this workshop and raise questions which are vital to the discussion about establishing an organization-wide policy.

Panelists and Discussion Topics:

1. Best Practices for a Corporate HR Policy on VR participation – Margaret Regan, CEO – The FutureWork Institute, Inc. -  VR and serious gaming are platforms and tools that incoming younger educated workers expect in the corporate environment.  How can an organization initiate a discussion of how best practices in VR will impact employees’ desire to work there, and how will internal representation of the company and external representation of the company be governed?
2. Corporate Legal Exposure in VR Applications – James J. Regan, Partner – Satterlee, Stephens, Burke and Burke, NY – Does VR application and use establish a corporate responsibility for behavior in the Virtual World?  How does an organization manage legal exposure when providing sanctioned access to VR content?
3. Students and Faculty in a VR Learning Environment – Dave Taylor, Program Lead – Virtual Worlds and Medical Media, Imperial College, London – Educational institutions and learning are migrating in increasing numbers daily into the world of VR and serious gaming applications.  How can educational institutions establish a best practice to deal with student and faculty avatar accounts and behavior?
4. Establishing a Policy for Government and Military Presence in VR – Douglas Maxwell – Science and Technology Manager – US Army Simulation and Training Technology Center – One of the largest users of the new VR and serious gaming technology in learning is the US Military.  This use raises the question of how the military can responsibly represent itself and its interests best in the world of VR training and information and establish a policy of fair and effective use in the complex world of modern security.

What we will cover:

1. Logo and organizational representation by avatar accounts – what are the responsibilities of the organization and what are the responsibilities of the employees/members to portray the organization in the appropriate light,
2. Mixed entry – organizational accounts vs. private accounts
3. Corporate image as reflected in employee/member deportment in virtual worlds
4. Contact with inappropriate content – what is the responsibility of the avatar to follow company guidelines?
5. Organizational ambassadors – how to represent your company, institution or organization in a manner in keeping with both best practices and policies
6. Legal issues – what is the actual responsibility and liability of the employer or organization in virtual worlds and social media access.

Educational goals and objectives include:

Gaining a clearer understanding of the legal and ethical obligations in VR and Social Media of both the employee/student/member and the employer/institution/organization

1. Understanding the rights of the host organization to limit access and activity for company avatars and private avatars
2. Raising questions about the emerging nature of VR worlds and their mixed content, and the ability of individuals to choose content they wish to engage,
3. The differences between companies, educational institutions, and organizations in these regards,
4. How to establish a Best Practices Group within your own organization to establish a meaningful, fair and workable policy and practice.******************************************************************************************************

I hope you find these topics interesting.  If you can and want to attend, all enrollment information for LEEF 2011 is on the LEEF website – www.goleef.com

If you can attend please come and say hello.  It would be wonderful to meet you all.

We have gotten a number of questions about the changes to the Linden Lab / Second Life business model and how that affects large organizational use of the platform and environment.  So many inquiries have come our way, in fact, that a Blog Post seems to be in order.  So here is our take on the future of SL and VR worlds.

The changes announced and those which are actually taking place, (which is not always the same thing) would not in any way negatively impact corporate and global organizational use of the SL platform for any use-case that we can imagine.  If the goal is to create a public or by invitation only area where any type of always-on or controlled access interactive experience can be visualized, we believe that the new model increases the utility and value of the SL environment.  The changes to the business model are intended primarily to improve the overall customer and user experience of SL and to add to the features available which would help to make any venture more useful and user friendly, as well as to make LL and SL more stable in the long run.

In fact, the only change to the business model which would potentially negatively impact a small number of corporate activities as far as we can see is the suspension of the private SLE server-in-a-box model.  That model would not, however, have been the most useful or appropriate one for most corporate and business groups, and was more focused on “behind the firewall” solutions for highly confidential activities.  All activity on the main grid, however, can be kept totally confidential and private using the existing security and privacy settings currently in place for private regions and estates.

The “new” SL business model focus is designed to do a number of things of great positive importance to almost any proposed business project.

• The new model focuses heavily on creating a more user-friendly interface viewer with a dual-point-of-entry model – “basic” and “advanced”.  All new users are offered the “basic” mode which allows for browsing but limited interactivity and building as a learning tool while the “advanced” setting returns the user to full functionality of all SL tools and navigation.  This new viewer is already the default SL download viewer in the 2.x series.  The new viewer is also based on a more familiar browser interface which makes it much more comfortable for the new user.
• The new model includes a host of new multi-media and interactive content tools, allowing us as builders to include highly sophisticated multimedia objects and events in the SL environment.  These include (but are not limited to)
  • Much more sophisticated multimedia streaming tools, including
    • Synchronous and asynchronous video
    • Proximity based video and slide show presentations
    • Enhanced two way web interactive and internet interactive communication
    • Web dashboards that are fully operational and interactive in SL
    • Two way communication is possible with any internet ready database
    • Customization of simulations and models using running executables on distant websites and servers is a reality
    • Two way data communication allowing SL objects to change distant real life objects and distant RL objects to change SL objects in real time is already in place
    • Viewer – Asset Server communication models which allow for better control of avatar inventory and less lag-time in rendering inventory and environment objects improve overall performance
  • More user controls over viewer communication settings allow more fine-tuning of viewer functions to network speeds and bandwidth and individual client machine capabilities
  • More viewer ability to function with reduced client graphics opens use to more basic corporate individual computers
  • The ongoing mesh project will roll out true Collada digital 3D modeling of objects in SL allowing for much more detailed and realistic building of environments with less polygon load
  • Improved server architecture and infrastructure allow for increases in the number of simultaneous logins on a given simulator with less lag and overhead
  • The open-source viewer project and the increased inter-communicability with Open SIM allows for moving of investments and builds from one platform to another and allows for warehousing of creations on separate asset servers
  • LL’s  dedication to focus on core business to ensure long-term stability of the platform and of LL and SL itself increases the comfort level of making investments in using the platform

Taken all together these changes and dedications to improvement of the user experience have led to an increased user friendliness and functionality of SL without sacrificing any of the complex richness of the environment.  They lead to an increase in the depth of immersion for individual user experience and to increased confidence in the long-term viability of LL and SL.

LL moved to implement their new model in order to focus on user experience rather than multiple siloed solution options, allowing us as applications developers to have a broader and more varied and complex canvas on which to work.  This had led to a real increase in the interests of major organization in the use of the environment, as is evidenced by our own experience with inquiries and ongoing projects as well as the reports of other solution and applications developers working with global Fortune 500 companies.

This is our take on the new approach and model.  We would love to hear your comments.

For more on this subject we have been conversing with our good friend – James Neville – also known as  Sitearm Madonna of SL – who posted a short conversation he and I had about corporate use and interest.  Sitearm’s blog conversation with me is found here:  http://sitearm.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/uptick-in-corporate-interest-in-use-of-second-life/ and is worth a look.

Linden Lab has released the beta version of the long-awaited browser-based viewer.  The link to the test site for this beta-version is here:  http://interest.secondlife.com/beta .  The site for the new viewer demonstration is so overloaded that you may not be able to log in – if so – it should clear soon.

This is an exciting new development.  For a long time, one of the serious impediments to the use of SL by business clients – especially clients at the enterprise level – has been the difficulty of downloading and installing the SL viewer through rigid corporate firewalls and through restrictive security policies.

While this new viewer only offers a very limited set of functions, it will allow users to navigate and interact in a simplified way in the environment with unusually good graphics for a browser plug-in.  Most importantly, it opens the door to customized viewers for business and special application – branded versions, menu-drive tool-set selection, and a host of other possibilities which give the SL platform a new edge and clearly point the way towards the cross-pollination between the world of Second Life and the emergence of a true Web 2.0 world.

We would suggest that everyone interested in serious use of SL try this beta portal.  It is set up for consumer users and especially for those used to gaming environments, it is true.  But as with so many things, this is only the first venture out into this new world of browser plug-ins for SL.  Just as we and others have been doing for years, we will customize and modify to need specific needs.

Let us know what you think.  Your feedback will help to shape the next generation of tools for using SL and VR.