3D Education

Two of my interests are virtual worlds and enterprise collaboration. I attended an event recently that touched on both of these interests. Two University professors talked about their recently released book on collaborative learning in virtual worlds.

In the early days of education, the predominant model was a master/apprentice one which didn't scale as the population grew and as democracy became popular. So, the model switched to a declarative one. Now, with the advent of 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, the apprentice model becomes scalable since there is no economic boundary to physical location anymore.

Other movement has indicated an increased interest in virtual worlds for the enterprise. SAIC, Inc. provides scientific, engineering, systems integration, and technical services and solutions to various branches of the U.S. military, agencies of the U.S. Department of Defense, the intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other U.S. government civil agencies, state and local government agencies, foreign governments, and customers in select commercial markets. They have recently acquired Forterra Systems, Inc. which provides a virtual world technology focused on enterprise training.

What do you think? Will virtual worlds ever mature beyond that of video games? Is there a legitimate use of virtual world technology in the enterprise? I'd be interested in your opinions.

The Flat Enterprise Society

My company has a few collaboration products (Code-Roller and Cogenuity) so I often write about ECM because it is an exciting industry to be in these days.

Enterprise Collaboration is exciting in terms of growth but it is also exciting because its thought leaders have something interesting to say. Folks like Thomas Malone, Andrew McAfee, and Dion Hinchcliffe are doing a lot to advance modern corporate tribal thinking to greater levels of democratic culture.

Like any disruptive innovation, change is required in order to realize any benefits. Change has to come from both the board room and the water cooler in order for it to have any lasting effect. True change must come from above and below, from the executives and the rank-and-file. That turning point is what is usually called the watershed moment in the adoption curve of any paradigm shift.

That is why I got excited when I read this NY Times interview of the CEO of SunGard. Cristóbal Conde explains in day-to-day, boots-on-the-ground terms that any C level player can understand how the old ways of top down management simply won't scale in this modern age of global competition, cheaper communications, and the rising price of oil.

Conde does not come off as pompous. He talks about mistakes that he made before he understood the true value of collaboration. Other valid points that he makes include the fallacy of micro-management, the importance of intellectual curiosity, and the mental illness known as PowerPoint. Sounds provocative? Definitely give this one a read.

Understanding Google Wave

In late May of this year, Google announced a new technology initiative of theirs called Google Wave. What is this technology about and why should anyone care?

Early reports painted the picture of Google Wave being a hybrid between instant messaging and email with an emphasis on conversant collaboration. Because of that observation, people just thought it was an email killer and Internet attention went elsewhere. After all, who is dissatisfied with email?

Since then, many Internet pundits have weighed in on the subject. Some claim that it is too complicated for rapid adoption. Others see it more as a platform for enterprise collaboration than as an email killer.

Google Wave is scheduled to expand its beta audience in about a month from now. Many sources are now skeptical about whether or not the technology is stable enough to take that step.

So, why should you care? Whether or not Google can make its commitment by the end of the week is immaterial to me. What is important is that if they can carry this off and deliver on the promise of Google Wave, then I believe Google Wave can be a dramatic game changing innovation to those web properties that thrive on user generated content.

But innovation is not always well received nor easy to accept. I will go into more details about this in a future post but what Google Wave empowers is real-time conversations across multiple web properties. Imagine a world where discussion threads are transformed into persistent chat rooms that cluster around a particular topic instead of belonging to a particular article or blog entry. Each web page devoted to that topic could share in the discussion yet the participants could also track the complete conversation in a web GUI that does look like email on steroids.

So, what's the problem? What's the big deal? This means that web properties are going to have to be ready to let go of some traffic away from their site in order to open their site up to more traffic from other sites. This philosophy runs counter to the current practice of stickiness where web sites do anything to capture and retain visitors to their site.

I'm a big advocate of sharing information online as a necessary step to fostering healthy and prosperous communities of practice so here's hoping that this wave is one that catches on. Stay tuned for more developments in September.

Growing Your Business With The Freemium Revenue Model

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article today on The Economics of Giving It Away. The article describes how, in the past, web startups would use an advertising based revenue model and give away their product/service increasing the size of their audience until they were acquired by a bricks and mortar company willing to pay out the cash for mind-share at a premium. The global recession has changed the efficacy of that game where VC, advertising, and acquisition money has pretty much dried up.

Since the classic exit strategy is no longer available, new ventures need to generate revenue in other ways. It's not as simple as charge for the service for two reasons; the culture of the web now has a tradition of free services so people are hesitant to pay there and people have less discretionary money to spend.

So, what's an entrepreneur to do? The author suggests going the so-called freemium route where you build your network with a free service but allow users to upgrade to a premium service which gives them access to more features. First time and casual users are not likely to pay for your service but passionate users are. You continue to build social capital with the free version but also build economic capital with the premium version.

Authority or Community?

In a recent exchange at an online forum, I was criticized about this blog because I would comment on other blog entries and hyperlink to the relevant entry. The other person felt that "Improving incrementally on someone else's idea garners you less attention and respect than breaking new ground."

I'm sure that is very important if your goal is to garner more respect and attention than anyone else. I would prefer to view the Internet as a breeding ground for an open and free exchange of ideas where the goal is collaboration and mutual respect rather than a battlefield where you are supposed to beat everyone else in the game of gaining mind share. I suspect that the original inventor of the World Wide Web had something similar in mind when he proposed hyper linking as the fundamental feature of this new technology.

I don't believe that competition is always bad. If you are trying to build a web publishing business and you want to attract venture capital, then you are going to have to focus on beating your competition to become the most attractive business. That means garnering more mind share than your competitors. That means improving SEO so that searches list your site above those of your competitors. According to Google's own documentation, that means you don't link to your competitors.

Too much of anything isn't good, however. I believe that there is room in this world for cooperation too. It is dysfunctional if your competition button is always stuck in the on position and your cooperation button rusts away from disuse.

Are you somehow inferior for discussing with your friends what happened on a TV show last night? Shouldn't you be inventing your own shows instead of commenting on others? There is nothing wrong with inventing your own shows, of course; however, I believe that there is also nothing wrong with sharing your views on news, events, culture, commentary, society, sports with others in a dialog of free speech. How else can we discover our differences and find commonality? How else can we learn to relate to each other?

That is why you will always find links in my blog postings to other sources. I will not simply rehash what was said elsewhere but use that originating post as a starting point to tell my own story.

What do you believe? Is authority more important than community or vice versa?