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Comments: 96 +- IT: IBM Finding Business Uses for Virtual World on Thursday December 20 2007, @09:40PM
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Soulskill
on Thursday December 20 2007, @09:40PM
from the next-we-get-virtual-tps-reports dept.
from the next-we-get-virtual-tps-reports dept.
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jbrodkin writes "IBM has an unconventional take on virtual worlds for business use. Rather than strictly adhering to the laws of physics, IBM is letting its employees hold virtual meetings up in the air and under water. Employees are also being given wacky chores, such as kicking a giant boulder 1,400 kilometers. The virtual world, known as the Metaverse, has been in development for two years. Michael Ackerbauer of IBM says, 'I'd say more people are still finding it a novelty than a business tool. But ... if you build enough tools that they can use, they will come.'"
IBM seems to be following a trend of involvement in virtual worlds, which we have previously discussed.
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Whacky chores? (Score:5, Interesting)
"So Mr CEO, instead of letting the employees do something useful and making the shareholders some money you have them running around in pixel land kicking rocks? Even Microsoft and Zune makes more sense than that!"
Re:Whacky chores? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Probably the end-point of convergence for all the media that we have today is something like the metaverse but I highly doubt if we have the technology to do it today, and that will likely cause a misfire like the early attempts at virtual reality.
This kind of environment either works or it fails, there is no 'halfway there', immersion is not something you do on the cheap or with bad hardware. That just leads to frustration.
It's interes
Re:Whacky chores? (Score:4, Insightful)
Same thing could have been said of the "Word Wide Web" 12 years ago. The browser as we know it might not be the primary interface to the Internet in a decade.
Parent
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I have no problems with using virtual worlds as a venue for some sort of team building exercise or something, but I don't see how being in this environment would be useful for a meeting where actual information is expected to be absorbed. For meetings at a distance, you need something like the web conferenc
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About the boulders (Score:4, Interesting)
So far, the boulder has primarily been used to teach employees how to interact and cooperate in the world, but we've been surprised how much it acts as a focal point for people in-world. People are drawn together to play with it, without any direct benefit or goal.
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Meetings in Virtual Worlds (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps the most interesting thing
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Stand by for a "business idiocy" strip boom, as Wally, Catbert, Dogbert and the PHB get their own strips just to handle the tshi'nami this will cause.
Have you ever been to a meeting? (Score:2)
I've been in plenty of meetings where that would have in fact been a lot more productive.
What if the developers of Taligent had kicked pixelated rocks instead of wasting a lot of time on something that never flew?
And frankly, I'd be happy if more than half of Congress's term consisted of kicking virtual rocks instead of passing more bad laws...
Basically, I'm pr
"Dude! You got fired for WHAT!?" (Score:5, Funny)
Kinda kewl, but... (Score:2)
Am I missing something? (Score:2)
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Business reason for different locales (Score:5, Insightful)
The locale, sounds, environment, and general "feel" of a meeting can really impact the way the participants think. We've seen studies here before about high ceilings encouraging open creative thought, while low ceilings encourages disciplined thought. Different kinds of locations can help make the people feel more relaxed, fun, or whatever. Try having conversations with people in second life in different locales and see what you think.
There's some precedent for this. The Disney Imagineering process involves separating development into separate meetings for the "dreaming" phase and "critic" phase. In the dreamer phase, any idea is ok to present, no matter how impractical. In the critic phase, you shoot holes in ideas. Disney would hold the dreamer meetings in open, comfy places; and hold the critic meetings in more enclosed, trashy places. These ideas work in the real world.
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Another example. Today there was a Linden Labs business meeting with 80 or so people. After the meeting, they had a huge snowball fight together-- and many of the employees built their own snowball trebuchets and whatever. Also, lots of the people made their own Christmas costumes.
Some might say "so what" or "get a first life", but those people would likely also say that real life business parties serve no purpose, also. I say it's a good thing-- a bunch of the people have some fun together, they rub el
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Well, if's anything like this (Score:2)
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You do have access to something like that: Second Life. I do a lot of work in Second Life, in fact business I do there is my primary income source. I'm honestly not understanding your reasons for hating it. You say you'd love to have access to something like that, yet your reasons you list for hating it ring pretty hollow:
1. They're "Sadville wankers", sorry this means nothing to me and it's just name-calling anyway, what's your point here?
2.
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As I said, it is a Sadville wank, it is not a business tool.
MUD/MOO/MUSH/etc. (Score:1)
Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Cue the requisite... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it's hard to believe, but business DOES transpire in virtual worlds, just like it does in (gasp!) Skype and (double gasp!) AIM.
Mentality (Score:2, Insightful)
I've seen so many failed projects happen simply because there was no interest, despite the fact there was plenty of capital investment.
I think things should start with an idea and a goal as opposed to "hey, lets spend a ton of time and energy making this rnadom thing and seeing what happens" It could work for science experiments and I think it's a great thing to do on the small scale, but why take 2 on business meetings in the virtual world?
How
Who comes up with this crap? (Score:3, Interesting)
Virtual? You mean real (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps people should be more careful to use the word 'virtual' in an ICT sense. As if the 1's and 0's recorded on your harddrive don't exist, just because they represent imaginary worlds. That is nonsense.
At a critical moment, a miniscule group of electrons may ultimately determine whether a space shuttle makes it into earth orbit, or crashes into the ocean. A tiny magnetic area on your harddisk may determine whether you see a folder with your vacation pics on your desktop, or not. A single bit flipped in transit (due to some electromagnetic disturbance, or whatever) may cause an industrial robot to move a millimeter off the mark & junk the product passing underneath. What I'm trying to say: the environment may be imaginary for a great part, but these small groups of electrons, magnetic area's etc. are very real, and so is the effect they can have.
There's no such thing as a virtual meeting. With 10 participants, that's 10 people communicating with each other at the same time, like in any other real-world meeting. When you're dealing with bots, that's just you interacting with some company's ICT infrastructure, similar to shopping in a webstore or reading /.
Sure, the interface is radically different, but other than that it's just: communication. As creatures have done since the 1st braincell developed.
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Paging Morpheus (Score:1)
You think thats AIR you're breathing?
AGAIN.
The Office said it best about Second LIfe (Score:5, Funny)
Dwight: "Second life doesn't have winners or losers."
Jim: "Oh, it has losers."
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IBM is an evolutionary innovator (Score:1)
They are, however, pretty good at implementation, I think. Maybe.
Aha (Score:1)
Just get them WoW accounts (Score:2)
Patent infringement (Score:3, Funny)
Shirts and faces. (Score:2)
Also the article seemed more like an advert. "Can't see each other" so they go onto virtual world? News flash you still can't see them, but you can be distracted more. Just buy a web cam.
Why stop at meetings? (Score:4, Interesting)
Heck, this could do wonders for working from home. You could log into the virtual office on Mount Olympus, levitate to your workstation that is set up on an otherwise inaccessible crag, and do your work. I don't know about you, but I could write great code a mile above the Aegean Sea, with eagles hovering nearby. If people wanted to talk to me, they could always levitate on up to my aerie...as long as their level is high enough to have the Levitate spell, anyway. I'd still avoid meetings, though—I don't care whether they're held on top of clouds or caves full of glowing lava, meetings suck.
There would be some drawbacks, of course: for instance, my PBH would insist on an avatar that looks like Zeus. Ah, no problemo--I'll just hack the system so he looks like Goofy to everyone else...he'll never notice. While I'm at it, I'll make some...er...enhancements to the female avatars.
Seriously, I'm sorta serious. The tech is getting better, and gas prices ain't going down. Sooner rather than later, businesses are going to have to make the adjustment to letting those who have jobs that can be done from home do so.
IBM and following the trends (Score:2)
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I doubt that would be the case, as management has a lot more free time to PL and grind teh phat lewts.
Like the Cathy Calendar of Insanity, or the dreaded Cubicle of Holding. Poor bastards wouldn't have a chance.
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So? They are an INTERNATIONAL company and have been so for a long, long time. They have employees everywhere. Instead of INTERNATIONAL Business Machines they are often known as "I've Been Moved". As in, their employees get to keep their jobs only if they are willing to relocate. Where were you in the '80s and '90s? My bigger beef is that they sold off their Thinkpad line.
Now, if you want to take issue with Bank of AMERICA outsourcing way too much of their work t
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Well said. As a somewhat amusing ironic anecdote...I was shown the door by BofA at the beginning of the year, right after my contract ha