|
Blog: Dan PowerApril 5, 2008HBR Breakthrough Ideas for 2008Harvard Business Review has an annual survey of ideas and trends that "will make an impact on business". The 2008 article identifies 20 transformations. I'll identify eight that are particularly relevant to decision support. Jerome Groopman, MD discusses errors of judgment and how physicians are beginning to acknowledge their fallibility "in an effort to teach others and to improve themselves." CEOs should have formal decision-making reviews for self-analysis. Do you think this will happen? Michael Sheehan suggests managers need to deal more effectively with opposition to strategic ideas. He notes "for a variety of reasons, businesses face better organized and more vocal opponents than ever before." The approaches for dealing with community-based opposition are not tied to tradional business intelligence, but good customer relationship decision support could help. John Medina suggests "imagine a brain-friendly workplace where board meetings are conducted on treadmills, desks are equipped with stationary bicycles, and people wear gym clothes, not suits." Supposedly we "learn 20% faster immediately after exercise than after sitting still." So exercise while you use your BI tools. Jane McGonigal writes "In the coming decade, many businesses will achieve their greatest breakthroughs by playing games - specifically, alternate reality games, or ARGs." "ARGs will provide a truly stimulating framework for doing everyday work." Supposedly alternate reality games help users develop 10 collective-intelligence competencies, like "influency", "emergensight" and "mobbability". Well the skill names seem strange, but I will investigate and blog about the competencies/skills in a future posting. Miklos Sarvary, Professor at INSEAD titles his contribution "The Metaverse: TV of the Future?". Sarvey asserts "Within five years, the dominant internet interface is likely to be the metaverse, a term used to describe interactive multiplayer games such as Second Life." Organizations need to prepare for the coming of the metaverse. INSEAD "opened a virtual campus on Second Life to find the answers." Jan Chipchase suggests "In an increasingly connected future, the data trails from all these sources will create a massive universe of metadata. ... In the brave new world of aggregated data, companies will need to monitor themselves as well." Lew McCreary suggests PDAs are and will become "excuse technology". "Anticipate, therefore, epidemic levels of BlackBerry and Treo-constrained recollection of important decisions made in your presence or of orders you've issued to your teams." Michael J. Mauboussin asserts "As computing power grows and networks unleash the wisdom of crowds, the unique value of experts in making predictions and solving problems is steadily narrowing." Well on to 2009 and more predictions next year. Thanks HBR for looking ahead once in awhile. Source: Harvard Business Review; February 2008, Vol. 86 Issue 2, pp. 17-45. March 30, 2008vBusiness, Entrepreneuring and Decision SupportRecently I received approval at my university, University of Northern Iowa, to teach an experimental course called vBusiness Entrepreneurial Strategy using Linden Lab's Second Life virtual world. My BI friends know how busy I am so I am planning to get help from my new friends in Second Life. We all have much to learn about operating and conducting business in a virtual world. The 3 credit course starts Tuesday, May 13 and meets for 7 weeks on Tuesdays and Thursday from 2pm-3:15pm PDT. Following each lecture/discussion workshop, students will take a tour, make a site visit, conduct an interview and/or meet with their mentor. The course includes writing a vBusiness Plan that must be reviewed and approved, executing it for 6 weeks and writing an analysis of the vBusiness successes, challenges and results. Final projects are due August 1, 2008. My students will be virtual business owners. They will experience operating a business in Second Life and they may have a real life link. For example, a student might sell Iowa post cards or memorabilia in Second Life and also offer to mail a post card from Iowa in real life with the sender's message for a fee and collect the payment in Second Life in the local exchange called Lindens. What does this project have to do with decision support? Students will need to use the Second Life reporting tools and find software to track visitors. Also, they will use and perhaps create decision support tools. In general, I think innovative decision support will help vBusinesses succeed. So what are the keys to entrepreneuring in a virtual world? I am still learning so this is a preliminary list: 1. Relationships are the key to success in a virtual business, so find a global network of partners, build customer relationships using a Second Life group. Give people who help a stake in your success. Always remember a virtual world is a complex social network. Participate and build a friends list! 2. Target a customer/product niche that can be identified. Know who will buy from you, why and when? A virtual world allows extensive segmentation, just make sure the niche is large enough to generate sufficient revenue. 3. Keep focused on 2-3 short range goals. Virtual worlds are changing rapidly as the technology improves. Get in quick, sell what you can, move on or grow. Remember franchising and formula facilities. Help newcomers. 4. Prepare a written business plan like you would for any start-up business. vBusiness is real business. Your goal is to make money. Make a plan! 5. A vBusiness should operate 24/7/365. Automate some operations, but in many cases you need to staff globally to keep the traffic coming. Find and hire people who have social networks and who are in different time zones. 6. Reward the people who make your vBusiness a success. Consider franchising or bonuses. Virtual worlds are expanding and good friends who help make a business a success are the future of any vBusiness. Strive to create stable relationships in the fast changing virtual world. 7. Start-up is reasonably inexpensive in a virtual world like Second Life, but cash management is important. The medium of exchange, Lindens, fluctuates and taking money "out of the game" may be difficult. Project cash needs and have a plan to get cash in and out. Good accounting and forecasting is still needed in a vBusiness! 8. Find a competitive edge or advantage that you can exploit. The vBusiness advantage may be a "hard to imitate" inworld product or service, quick response with delivery of real world solutions, entertainment tie-ins with copyrighted materials or ... ? let your imagination guide you to new sources of sustainable advantage. Everything in a virtual world is not free and easy to copy. Learn about permissions and ownership in virtual worlds. 9. Take calculated risks and be prepared to bail out if serious loses occur. Business in a virtual world remains fragile and problematic for some goods and services. Just because you can show a product to people in a virtual world doesn't mean there will be a real world or in world demand. Also, prices are generally low for products in virtual worlds. Of course once the product is created, production costs are also very low. The time spent creating a virtual product is a "sunk cost" so price accordingly. Premium pricing only works if the product is hard to imitate. 10. Change, adaptability and uncertainty are the reality of vBusiness. Entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on a virtual world marketplace need to learn about the rapidly changing market and become part of the relevant "community" targeted for the product or service. A day is 4 hours long in Second Life and sometimes it seems that given the global audience, one day in Real Life is six days of change in Second Life. Contact me if you want more information on vBusiness Entrepreneuring. March 22, 2008vBusiness Expo in Second Life April 24-27There is much angst and trepidation about moving real life business activities into virtual worlds like Linden Labs' Second Life. Why? The unknown, mixed press stories, large start up time to learn the "ropes", griefing/harrassing behavior, work place distractions, Internet addictions and pornography including virtual sex. Despite these very real concerns, virtual worlds and the 3D Internet are here to stay and will become more pervasive. So what should adventurous people in the business intelligence/decision support community do? How can you get on top of the 3D wave? I think a good starting point is attending the upcoming vBusiness Expo, April 24-27 in Second Life. Virtual Business opportunities including decision support are numerous. Our imaginations, our personal discipline and our intellectual capabilities are the only barriers. What is the vBusiness Expo? The conference aims to cover 4 key areas: 1) Virtual Workplace, 2) Virtual Education, 3) Virtual Marketing, and 4) Virtual Commerce. Check http://cleverzebra.com/vbusiness/expo . vBusiness Expo Day 1: The Virtual Workplace. "Virtual worlds are being used as a collaborative environment, as well as a distance management tool and for employee education. The virtual workplace discussions, panels, interviews and lectures will focus on sharing ideas, and broadening knowledge of how virtual environments can be used by companies as collaborative work spaces and viable alternatives to carbon heavy travel." vBusiness Expo Day 2: Virtual Marketing. "In many ways marketers are still feeling their way in virtual worlds. We’re only just getting started, and there’s a long road ahead." vBusiness Expo Day 3: Virtual Commerce. "The promise that virtual worlds hold for commerce is exciting and full of possibilities. Day three of the vBusiness Expo will look at how companies are using virtual worlds to sell real goods and services. We’ll discuss the technicalities of setting up shop in a virtual world, study how others are experimenting in the space and debate the future impact virtual worlds will have on retail." vBusiness Expo Day 4: Virtual Education. "There are already over 150 universities represented in Second Life and like the virtual workplace, education is an area where we can already see clear and measurable benefits for organizations." The sponsor of vBusiness Expo is Clever Zebra. Clever Zebra is a virtual company. According to the Web site, "We live and work in virtual worlds, and in fact have never met in the physical world. We operate from the US, Canada and Denmark. Our 'office' is a connection to the 3D web. The company was founded on the principle of promoting virtual worlds as a platform for business. Our ongoing goal is to make it easy and inexpensive for companies to work in virtual environments. We do this by providing the buildings, code and tools needed by organizations for free, and adding value through optional paid services." The movers and shakers of Clever Zebra are Caleb Booker, Jenn Lortz, Josh Eikenberry and Nick Wilson. In Second Life known respectively as Onder Skall, Jenn Hienrichs, Lordfly Digeridoo and 57 Miles. I am attending the vBusiness Expo and I am presenting a session on "What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Second Life for decision support?" Hope to see all of my decision support friends in Second Life. If you need help, email me power@dssresources.com . If you can't make the Expo, visit me in Virtual Iowa (IowaMetaverse.com) or at Decision Support World Headquarters (DecisionSupportWorld.com). March 16, 2008An island called IowaMost of my friends in the decision support community know I live in Cedar Falls, Iowa. In my opinion, Cedar Falls is a very liveable place in the Cedar River valley of Iowa. I was born and raised about 10 miles from where I now live in the neighboring city of Waterloo. The State of Iowa has been the home of my family, parents, grandparents and great grandparents for more than 125 years. Iowa is called the heartland of the USA. Looking at a map shows that Iowa is the fertile land between two great American rivers, the Mississippi and Missouri. So Iowa is a great place to call home and because of my attachment to Iowa, I recently started a new venture to promote my home State. My goal is also to do some fun things in addition to my Decision Support World research projects in the virtual world of Second Life. My new venture is called Iowa Metaverse, Inc., a Nonprofit Iowa 501(c)(3) corporation. If you do or have lived in Iowa, want to live in Iowa, have good friends in Iowa or want a great place to visit, join the Second Life group called Iowa and visit Iowa in Second Life. As I mentioned in my last blog post my plan is to use Virtual Iowa to explore location decisions by individuals and organizations, vacation decisions by individuals and college choice decisions. I will also enjoy being in both the real Iowa and Virtual Iowa. So I will explore if a virtual world experience can impact human choice behaviors. Much of the Web content has been about providing information. My sense is that riding a bike in Virtual Iowa will encourage some people to come to the real Iowa for a "real" bike ride. Also, experiencing a College or plant facility in a virtual world may impact intentions regarding the real place. Now I need to figure out how to design and specify requirements for the 3D user interface that will be Iowa. A 3D space of 512 meters by 512 meters is more complex to design than a Website and certainly much more complex than a single Web page. I keep very busy and multi-task and the metaverse helps me tremendously. For more information about Virtual Iowa, contact: Daniel J. Power aka Leinad Meriman
March 9, 2008DSW on YouTube and Iowa MetaverseMy week has been very busy and productive. Using Second Life leverages my time and my global connections. On March 3, 2008 a DecisionSupportWorld.com video went "live" on the net. It is narrated by me, Dan Power aka Leinad Meriman, and it was produced by Selby Evans aka Thinkerer Melville. Selby was a Professor of Psychology at Texas Christian University for many years until he retired and he continues to do independent consulting in behavioral research and on the use of Second Life for Decision Support. Follow the links: Video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OksmgCsYeZ4 (5 minutes 45 seconds) Video on Blip. tv -- the wmv version: http://blip.tv/file/get/ThinkererMelville-DecisionSupportWorld334.wmv The video is a tour hosted by my avatar of Decision Support World (DSW) headquarters in Linden Labs' Second Life. Decision Support World (DSW) also hosted Decision Support Workshop #9 on Friday, March 7, 2008 at 11 am PST. The host was George Kurtz aka Butch Dae on the topic "3D Mindmaps: SL Developments". Avatar Goedeke Messmer discussed programming issues for an inworld tool. The workshop was at TechTalk@SL Discussion Center. DSS Workshop #10 will be on "Active Spatial Immersion Meeting Tools for Second Life" with presenter Julio Cesar Molina, Graduate Student at the Technical University of Eindhoven, on Friday, March 14 at 11am PST. Join us. My newest project is Iowa Metaverse, Inc. (http://iowametaverse.com/). Iowa Metaverse, Inc. is a Nonprofit Iowa 501(c)(3) corporation. The mission and purposes of Iowa Metaverse, Inc. are educational and charitable. The specific mission is to develop and operate regions, islands and servers in and for virtual worlds, what has been called the the metaverse. Iowa Metaverse attempts to educate and inform people with regard to economic opportunity in the State of Iowa, to living in and relocating to the State of Iowa and opportunities for visiting and tourism in the State of Iowa. When appropriate Iowa Metaverse, Inc. will help other States and regions requiring aid in such projects. Metaverse comes from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. The term is widely used to describe the vision behind current work on fully immersive 3D virtual spaces like Linden Labs' Second Life or There.com. In these environments, people interact as avatars with each other, both socially and economically, and sometimes with software agents in a cyber space, that uses the metaphor of the real world, but without its physical limitations. Iowa Metaverse, Inc. now has its first island in Second Life called Iowa. I am trying to use virtual worlds technologies to help people make specific decisions about locating plants and offices, tourist destinations and even where to live and work. For more information on Iowa Metaverse, Inc., contact me: Daniel Power, Executive Director Visit Iowa in Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iowa/129/122/27 Now I have 2 computers and 2 monitors on my desk linked by a program called Synergy. One mouse and keyboard works with both systems. I just drag the cursor from one screen to another. My multitasking has moved to a new level. February 25, 2008Second Life Decision Support ServicesI have made many friends working in Second Life and it is time to venture into a new consulting area. My time is very limited for consulting, but I can leverage the talents of my SL partners and friends to offer the following services. 1) Creation of a private company island with meeting facilities and inworld orientation for a maximum of 100 employees. The island would have secure meeting facilities for up to 50 employees concurrently and would be restricted to only people in the company group. The base cost for 1 year of operation of the island with no custom builds and no ongoing staffing needs would be USD $25,000. This modest amount covers all charges from Linden Research for the year, office buildings, furnishing and orientation costs. Additional facilitation, concierge and building services can be negotiated. 2) Regular and ongoing leasing of meeting space on a shared island with other business leasors. The lease would include dedicated offices for 10 concurrent employees and the office facility would be secured with group land privacy and avatar detectors. Training for up to 50 employees in Second Life would be included. A six month contract and lease would be USD $5000 and a one year contract and lease USD $9500. Additional services in Second Life would be available as needed. 3) Hosting of a Second Life conference with complete conference support including orientation for up to 50 avatars. The conference would involve a preliminary meeting inworld to check for headphones and then two 3 hour sessions spread over 2 days at the customer's discretion. The facilities cost, services and orientation would be USD $2500. Speakers fees, video/audio recording and other costs would be in addition to the base fee. Most companies with distributed facilities can recoup these modest costs from savings on travel, hotel and meal charges and reduce significantly costs for real world meetings. These services should be especially appealing for organizations where teams work remotely and/or team building and collaboration of an experiential nature is needed to stimulate creativity and enhance competitiveness. If you are ready to jump into using the Second Life Virtual World for decision support, send me an email, power@dssresources.com. Real world training, presentations and workshops can also be arranged. Well this is a marketing pitch. Dan Power aka Leinad Meriman January 16, 2008Forrester -- virtual worlds analysisReaders know I have been working on DecisionSupportWorld.com and on a Second Life headquarters for Decision Support World and 2 major in-world decision support projects. So I read with interest the executive summary of Forrester's report "Getting Real Work Done In Virtual Worlds" (1/7/2008). Erica Driver, Paul Jackson and crew are definitely optimistic about the future of virtual worlds for decision support. The executive summary reads: "Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools. Major companies and public-sector organizations — such as BP, IBM, Intel, and the US Army — are investing heavily in virtual world technologies. But it's still early, pioneering days. You've practically got to be a gamer to use most of these tools — setup can be arduous, navigating in a 3-D environment takes practice, and processing and bandwidth requirements remain high. But within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Information and knowledge management professionals should begin to investigate and experiment with virtual worlds. Use them to try to replicate the experience of working physically alongside others; allow people to work with and share digital 3-D models of physical or theoretical objects; and make remote training and counseling more realistic by incorporating nonverbal communication into same-time, different-place interactions." The 24 page report costs US $279.00. Check
"Forrester interviewed 14 vendor and user companies, including Forterra Systems, Gemini Mobile Technologies, IBM, Icarus Studios, Kaneva, Linden Lab, PA Consulting, Qwaq, SAP, Sun Microsystems, Unisfair, Virtual Heroes, Vivox, and VRWorkplace." Definitely a small sample! What did they get right? It is time for major companies with distributed operations to seriously experiment with using Second Life for decision support. What did they get wrong? There is a learning curve, but you certainly do NOT need to be "a gamer to use most of these tools". Setup is a bit time consuming because the client is large, updates are still too frequent, bandwidth should not be a problem in most global companies. Corporate IT people can easily handle set for Second Life. Training managers to use Second Life will help and an in-world mentor is a big plus. We can do this! Visit me (aka Leinad Meriman) in Second Life at Also check Decision Support World Thanks to George Kurtz aka Butch Dae for forwarding me Virtual Worlds Weekly, Volume 2, Issue 2, January 15, 2008, which had a story on the Forrester report.
January 14, 2008Forecasting with Small SamplesSome readers may have noticed that my turnout forecasts for the Iowa Political caucuses were extremely inaccurate. "In 2004, 125,000 Iowa Democrats caucused. Turnout for 2008 should be similar, about 230,000 total." Well predicting demand using just a few data points generated 4 years apart is definitely a mistake. In reality, about 239,000 Democrats and 120,000 Republicans caucused. Why the enormous error and what is the impact of "bad" forecasts? Why? Many new attendees encouraged by the well organized campaigns, extensive media barrage, no incumbent candidate, good weather .... Turnout was also very high in New Hampshire. What is the impact of a "bad" forecast? Resources are misallocated, polling can be misleading, and perhaps worst of all, behavior may be impacted, voter, campaign staffers, media. Could we have avoided the horrible forecasts for turnout? Perhaps, combining historical data with voter intention data from phone surveys could have helped. Could we have made more accurate projections of votes for winners and losers? Maybe, but the electorate is undecided and some of us decide at the last moment. Also, in voter preference polls, people don't always tell the truth. The margin of error is very high right now for many reasons (certainly more than statistical sampling error). The best demand forecasting tools require that the future is an extrapolation of past behavior and that intentions capture future behavior. ... A very weak set of assumptions this year. Regarding Second Life: Group Notice From: Leinad Meriman aka Dan Power You are cordially invited to Decision Support Systems Workshop #3 with host check http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/4163 Also, please visit the new Decision Support World global headquarters in Second Life. It is still under construction, but you can get a sense of what is planned. January 4, 2008Decision Support Workshops in SLDecision Support World (http://decisionsupportworld.com) sponsored the first Decision Support Workshop in Second Life this morning, Friday, January 4, 2008, at 7am PST. I (Dan Power aka Leinad Meriman) spoke at the workshop on the topic of the most recent Decision Support Q & A in DSS News "What is a modern decision support system?". The workshop was hosted by Emil Stoyanov at the TechTalk@SL discussion area. We had 12 people for the workshop, but a great start. Next week, Friday, January 11, 2008 at 8am PST (1 hour later than today's session), DSW will sponsor Decision Support Workshop #2. The workshop focuses on a recent column in DSS News. Check Power, D., "Can multi-user visual simulations provide real world decision support?" DSS News, Vol. 8, No. 13, July 1, 2007, URL http://dssresources.com/newsletters/193.php. Also, check Richard Hackathorn's article "Serious Games in Virtual Worlds: The Future of Enterprise Business Intelligence" in his expert channel. I'll ask Richard to host a workshop on that topic at a future DSW Decision Support Workshop in SL. Decision Support Workshops are planned as a regular series of weekly workshops with new presentations each week. I will present at initial workshops and then we hope to have guest experts. The workshops are free and open, so join us and share this information with people interested in computerized decision support. Also, in SL please join the group Decision Support. Workshops in Second Life will be a supplement and in some cases replacement for Webinars. Today was a return to normalcy for me. The politicians are gone, decision support is center stage once again in my life both RL and SL. Last night I was elected as one of 2 Clinton delegates for my precinct to the Black Hawk County, Iowa Democratic convention in March. That is the next step in the Iowa caucus process. In my precinct, 257 of my neighbors attended and we filled a gym at the local middle school. 114 people registered to vote as Democrats at the entrance to the caucus room. Many were independents, many young voters, and most came to caucus for Senator Barack Obama. Obama brought many new people to the caucus process. In my precinct Obama received 5 delegates, Clinton 2, and Edwards 2. The race is under way to the Novemeber 2008 elections. My guess is both parties need much better decision support. November 18, 2007Snowcrash, Simulacron-3 and MWAISFlying back and forth to San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld I read Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel "Snow Crash". Stephenson is credited with defining and popularizing major terms associated with virtual worlds. Terms like avatar and Metaverse are integral to Stephenson's fictional future earth. Stephenson paints a bleak, anarchic view of first life in Los Angeles, overpopulated, drugs, confusion, corruption and franchises for everything. Also, he decribed the rich guarded suburbs and the storage container slums. But, Stephenson paints a version of the Metaverse that is very similar to Linden Lab's Second Life (http://secondlife.com). The similarities are striking, but happily Stephenson's Metaverse doesn't have the capacity constraints and some other limits of Second Life. For example, the amphitheater in Metaverse can hold a quarter million cheering hackers. Also, if desired, avatars can look more like the "real life" person complete with realistic facial expressions that can be controlled. Finally, a big plus, the hero of "Snow Crash" named "Hiro Protagonist" has the same name in both the real universe and the Metaverse. This is a fun story and quick read even though we want to avoid the real world future that is described. The other major virtual world classic is Daniel F. Galouye's 1964 novel "Simulacron-3". Galouye's novel is the basis for Joseph Rusnal's 1969 movie "The Thirteenth Floor". Galouye imagined a simulectronic world much like Second Life and the Metaverse. Yesterday Midwest Association for information Systems (MWAIS) held a workshop in Second Life titled "Beyond first life: e-Learning in Second Life". I was supposed to moderate the panel, but I confused my time zones, ran late with my MBA MIS class I was teaching, and then couldn't log on probably because of capacity constraints at our venue. I finally got on Second Life and attended the last 20 minutes of the event. Simha Magal the organizer kept things going in my absence. I'm sure the voice comments of panelists Blake Ives, Brian Mennecke, Benn Konsynski and Tony Adams were interesting. I don't think we had a recording. e-Learning using Second Life still has problems, but there are advantages as well. The Metaverse, the simulacra is here. Now our challenge is to figure out how to use this and other information technologies to shape a positive future for our planet Earth and for all of our people. If you are on Second Life, IM me aka Leinad Meriman and/or join the Decision Support group. References Galouye, D. F., Simulacron-3, New York: Bantam Books, July 1964. Power, D., "Can multi-user visual simulations provide real world decision support?" DSS News, Vol. 8, No. 13, July 1, 2007, URL http://dssresources.com/newsletters/193.php Stephenson, N. Snow Crash, New York: Bantam Books, 1992. November 4, 2007Videoconferencing over IP vs. Meeting in Second LifeThis past week I was in a videoconference and I had various meetings in Second Life. Given I try to blog at least weekly, I thought I would comment on the pluses and minuses of each technology. Approximately once a month, 5 or 6 colleagues and I use Marratech for a Midwest Association for Information Systems (mwais.org) board meeting. We have been meeting regularly since January 30, 2006. The current Treasurer of MWAIS, Chelley Vician, Associate Professor of Management Information Systems at Michigan Technological University (http://www.mtu.edu) in Houghton, Michigan, arranged for us to use the Michigan Tech Marratech® server. The Marratech website (marratech.com) describes the technology scenario. "Imagine holding meetings and video conferencing on the web, face-to-face, whenever you want. To talk, see each other and share applications and documents without being in the same room, the same building, or even the same country - that's exactly what Marratech® will do for you." To participate in the video conferences I purchased a Logitech QuickCam IM with a headset for approximately USD$35 at Wal-Mart. The camera has a flexible clip so I could mount it easily on the top of my flat panel display. Installation was easy. I also downloaded and installed the free Marratech client software. Chelley sent me some directions and a web link. I signed on about a half hour prior to the first meeting and Chelley helped familiarize me with the operation of the talk button and the whiteboard. I have been using Second Life (secondlife.com) for small and large group meetings since May 2007. SL materials note "Say good-bye to conference calls and say hello to real-time 3-D collaboration. The Second Life Grid allows for projects as limitless as the imagination." Well I like using both technologies. Each has a role to play in decision support. It is great to see moving images of the people you are talking with and have access to the whiteboard using Marratech. In some ways the videoconference is more task oriented and more ordinary. Using Second Life adds an imaginative dimension and the meetings are somehow more creative. The MWAIS Executive Board has held one meeting in Second Life and more than 20 video conferences. It will be interesting to see how much and for what purposes we choose to use Second Life rather than a video conference. Midwest Association for Information Systems (MWAIS) is sponsoring a workshop in Second Life with the theme "Beyond first life: e-Learning in Second Life" on Saturday, November 17, 2007: Panelists: Blake Ives, Brian Mennecke, Benn Konsynski, and Tony Adams Reference Power, D., "How does the use of a Communications-Driven DSS impact a October 22, 20073-D Mind Maps and Decision SupportAccording to Wikipedia, a mind map is "a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing." Mind map technology can be used for special decision support studies and to build document and knowledge-driven DSS. In general, we have too many documents and too much knowledge and we need innovative ways of organizing what we have written and what we know if we want to use the documents and knowledge to support decision making. We have shorter lead time for retrieving documents and knowledge if it is to impact our decisions. Today, I met with George Kurtz aka in SL Butch Dae to get a demonstration of his work with a 3-D mind map. George has assembled a great team with avatar Goedeke Messmer as lead programmer and avatar Llanna Lane as lead builder on the Virtual Information Technology World (VIT World) projects. George is using mind map technology to organize a vast amount of information he has collected on virtual worlds, virtual humans and other emerging IT concepts. To make that knowledge more accessible in Second Life, Llanna Lane helped him bring his 2-D map into SL. She developed three representations of George's mind map including an interesting tubular display. The displays let avatars get the "big picture" and read node names in the static map. The 3-D tube browsing tool might be very powerful in the future, if it becomes interactive and easy to traverse. I tried flying in the knowledge tube and that didn't work too well. Probably a reflection of my poor SL flying skills. Programmer Goedeke Messmer has been developing a 3-D interactive shell for accessing a database of content and links. The tool can display in Second Life nodes and provides for drill down into the knowledge or document data base. The tool needs refinement, but the feasibility has clearly been demonstrated. George and his team are also looking at other 3-D representations of documents and knowledge. George is a strong believer that 1) you can do anything if you've got the right information and 2) knowledge is "king" and we need to create knowledge faster. I agree and George is quick to acknowledge Ray Kurzweil's influence on his thinking. George Kurtz is semi-retired. His background is in Integrated Systems Management and IT Architectural design. He has made an extensive commitment to Virtual Worlds and Linden Labs' Second Life in particular. You can find the SL VIT World mind map at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Quiricosta/224/148/109. George notes "Developing a Mind Map helped me build the hierarchical structure of The Virtual Information Technologies Concept. Using the Mind Map, I can examine the relationship of all the components and by grouping the like components; I can identify the emerging patterns and sequences in today’s rapidly developing technologies." Thanks George for the interesting demonstration. I look forward to our future interactions.
Wikipedia, Mind map, URL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map . October 19, 2007Teamwork Dynamics and Association Works IslandAt 7am today Standard Linden Time, i.e., Pacific Daylight Time, I visited Tom Samson, known in Second Life (SL) as Samson Francis, at his new office and meeting facility in SL. Teamwork Dynamics is part of an entire island called Association Works dedicated to supporting team collaboration, meetings and training of managers and staff of not-for-profit associations. Tom is managing partner of Teamwork Dynamics, a real life (RL) Dallas, Texas consulting firm that works with executive and senior management teams. Association Works Island was developed to provide an introduction to the use of virtual technology as a communications platform for real life teams. Tom's facilities are very attractive and professional and have many useful meeting tools. The entire island is beautiful and yet very functional. Check http://www.associationworks.com/secondlife.htm. I am impressed that John Paul, principal with Association Works, and Tom Samson have made such an extensive commitment to supporting managers in Second Life. For more than a decade, Tom and his associates have conducted research about the critical success factors that allow teams to create a dynamic environment that consistently delivers expected results. Now Tom has decided that Second Life can support training team members, facilitating team processes and support ongoing team activities. Both Tom and Paul are carrying their enthusiasm for virtual worlds to real managers. Two developers, Karly Charlton and Murgatroid Mincemeat (SL names) developed Association Works Island. They did a great job! Tom did some of his own scripting and developed some interesting meeting tools. Thanks for the tour Tom. I look forward to future interactions with Tom in SL. Another impressive meeting and convention facility in Second Life is called Alpine Executive Center on MeetingSupport Island. Tony Adams aka in SL TonyEMS Heying developed and operates the facility. Tony is based in Zurich and has been a long time advocate of computer supported meetings. Alpine Executive Center is also worth a visit for managers interested in holding meetings in SL. Tony can support small as well as 70-80 person group meetings, lectures and multi-day conventions with speeches and breakout rooms. Tony has built a complete Alpine environment that includes skiing and snow boarding. So recreation can be programmed into an SL meeting event. For more information check www.groupvision.ch and www.meetingsupport.com". I recommend readers try a meeting in Second Life, it will change your perception of the future. Check DecisionSupportWorld.com. Also, for more information read my article: Power, D., "What are the best Second Life resources for communications-driven decision support?" DSS News, Vol. 8, No. 14, July 15, 2007, URL http://dssresources.com/newsletters/194.php.
October 16, 2007Teradata, Electric Sheep and CSI: NYThursday, October 11, I took a "red eye" flight from Las Vegas and Teradata Partners back to Cedar Falls, Iowa. Then, I taught my Business Planning and my Decision Support Systems classes that afternoon. My body and brain are still recovering from the lack of sleep and the caffeine. So why did I go? To learn about Teradata products and those of their partners, to meet with vendors, to identify sources of articles and case studies, to meet with people in the front lines of data-driven DSS in Fortune 2000 companies. Mission accomplished! Since then I worked on a new article, caught up on grading and prepared an Excel assignment on Pivot Tables for my DSS students. At Teradata, I especially enjoyed talking with Kristina Kerr, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Business Intelligence. The team in Redmond seems to finally be taking decision support as a serious market niche. "Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, 2007." But it is Excel 2007 and PerformancePoint Server that are the future of decision support at Microsoft. Kristina was in London today for the UK launch of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. Hope it went well Kristina -- check http://www.microsoft.com/bi/ . I also met with Michael Whitehead, CEO of WhereScape. WhereScape is all about prototyping tools for building data warehouses. I'm looking forward to an article for DSSResources.com from Michael and Marc Demarest on data warehousing prototyping. Marc is working with WhereScape. Well back here in Cedar Falls I have also been working in Second Life. I added some SLUrls to the DecisionSupportWorld.com web page. Also, I met with colleagues from Midwest Association for Information Systems (MWAIS) about a workshop we are holding in Second Life on November 17, 2007. This morning at 8am SLT, I attended an interview with Giff Constable aka in SL Forseti Svarog, VP of Business Development for The Electric Sheep Company, conducted by Mitch Wagner aka in SL Ziggy Figaro, Executive Editor of Information Week. About seventy people met at Dr. Dobbs Island in Second Life for the interview. Television is finding Second Life. The October 24, 2007 episode of CSI: NY will send detective Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) into Second Life to solve a murder. Electric Sheep has been working with CBS's Anthony Zuiker to create the media integration. CSI: NY will invite fans (16 million) to visit Second Life with a new "easy-to-use" viewer from Electric Sheep. The CSI fans can visit a virtual New York and solve crimes. Sounds like a game, but this development demonstrates the media convergence that is occuring. Also, the new SL viewer sounds exciting for bringing managers into Second Life and for integrating the 2-D and 3-D webs.. Also, on October 25, the comedy called The Office will visit Second Life. As Mitch Wagner jokes The Office will paint Second Life "as yet another haven for slightly twisted, socially inept, loser oddballs." I'm not a fan of The Office, what do those losers know! Also, I'm not a gambler. Only Shawn Rogers, Hugh Watson and I discussed Second Life at Partners ( recall my prediction in a previous Blog posting). The reality is that after October 25, 2007, Second Life and virtual worlds will be a much more viable platform for business decision support. I may even have a chance to attend a future Teradata Partners Conference hosted in Second Life or a similar virtual world in the not too distant future. I'm sure you will soon find workshops on business intelligence and decision support in Second Life. I'll even host some of them. Stay tuned. It will sure be nice to reduce the "red eye" trips and the caffeine. Please IM me when you visit Second Life, Dan Power aka in SL Leinad Meriman, attend a decision support workshop, or come chat at my virtual office. Also, join the SL Decision Support group. *************************** 10/12/2007 - Microsoft is positioned in leaders quadrant of latest magic quadrant for data warehousing, check http://dssresources.com/news/2269.php. Wagner, M., "'The Office's' Dwight Joins Second Life," posted Oct 15, 2007 06:13 PM at Disclaimer: Teradata provided financial support for my participation in the Partners conference. October 2, 20072-D vs. 3-D web, cars vs. planesToday's GridTalk in Second Life sponsored by Dr. Dobbs/Information Week focused on discussing the upcoming Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose, Oct. 10 & 11. At 8 a.m. PST/SLT, John Jainschigg CTO of CMP Metaverse/Dr. Dobb's Journal, (aka John Zhaoying in SL) and Kim Smith, CMP Metaverse, Director/Operations & Sales, (aka Rissa Maidstone in SL), led an hour plus discussion with about 25 in attendance. I can't attend Virtual Worlds, instead I'll be at Teradata Partners in Las Vegas. My guess is that Shawn Rogers, Ron Powell, and I will be among the few discussing Second Life and Virtual Worlds at Partners. That lack of visibility in the DW community will change as data warehousing technologies are used to support Virtual Worlds and as Decision Support comes to Virtual Worlds. If you are at Teradata Partners, say Hi (check http://www.teradata.com/teradata-partners/). Congratulations to all the employees at the newly autonomous Teradata company. You can find out more about the Virtual Worlds conference at http://www.virtualworlds2007.com/index.html . Also, I'm designing a new web site focused on Virtual Worlds for decision support called DecisionSupportWorld.com. At the web site, there are links to three recent Ask Dan! columns: Power, D., "Can multi-user visual simulations provide real world decision support?" DSS News, Vol. 8, No. 13, July 1, 2007, URL http://dssresources.com/newsletters/193.php . Power, D., "What are the best Second Life resources for communications-driven decision support?" DSS News, Vol. 8, No. 14, July 15, 2007, URL http://dssresources.com/newsletters/194.php . Power, D., "What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Second Life for decision support?" DSS News, Vol. 8, No. 15, July 29, 2007, URL http://dssresources.com/newsletters/195.php . The 3-D Web and Virtual Worlds are the frontier of collaborative computing and visualization. We can compare the 2-D Web we are so familiar with to automobiles (cars) and the 3-D web to airplanes (planes) . Both technologies will co-exist and complement each other. The 2-D technology is more advanced than 3-D today, but the pace of development of the 3-D web is amazing. I want to share some excerpts from today's discussion: [8:09] Jeffronius Batra: Perhaps we should talk about how to make sure that more people understand what VW are all about and what the benefits are. [8:12] Yazzara Robbiani: It does feel like Internet in early 90s, but with one important difference 8:16] Rissa Maidstone: Yazzara, I think if you took a good look at what happened recently during the 6-day Life2.0 conference here in SL, you'd be inclined to change your mind. [8:24] JayR Cela: Soph / that is why I beleave we should all be supporting the OpenSimm project 8:28] Leinad Meriman: we don't want 3-d viewer integrated into the desktop OS like IE [8:38] John Zhaoying: The current estimate is something like 50,000 users with positive monthly linden flow. [8:39] Dancer Morris: 50,000 is about all that the current infrastructure can support [8:40] Jeffronius Batra: John, OpenSim people tell me that the current infrastructure is maxing out at that 50K. [8:43] JayR Cela: ultimately it will be Google vs. Microsoft and LL will die in the dust [8:44] Jeffronius Batra: My wife and my son have had a family reunion in SL. My excerpts don't really do more than capture a few highlights. A chat discussion has so many threads and 10 or so people chatting concurrently can be hard to follow. The good news is we have a transcript. So Virtual Worlds are here to stay. We are in the early stages with Linden Lab's Second Life. The concurrency, load, open sim issues are major hurdles. Microsoft and Google are on the horizon. Find out about Virtual Worlds. Dan Power aka in SL Leinad Meriman September 17, 2007A second life?An active Second Life is wearing me out!! I am trying to participate in the Life 2.0 Fall Summit organized in Second Life (secondlife.com) by Dr. Dobb's, a CMP unit. The summit is co-sponsored by Sun and IBM developerWorks, see http://www.life20.net/. Lessons learned so far: 1) chat conversations become overwhelming in a group of 50 avatars 2) many people have little or no idea of the meaning of "decision support" 3) change and developments are happening quickly in Second Life 4) holding a conference in Second Life has new unanticipated problems, much can go wrong 5) "the star trek museum of science is cool", thanks Kentar Vendetta 6) a script called brokken book shelf turns SL note cards inside a box into a popup menu, as per Lazric Lane 7) there is a Chinese version of Second Life called HiPiHi 8) chat is a horrible way to share technical information, too slow and too disorganized 9) sculpties are neat in SL and are low prim, seeing a sculpty helps one understand the possibilities for real life analogues and simulations 10) Qarl Linden brought sculpties to Second Life, "sculpties allow us to build unique shapes" 11) it is much more focused to attend real life conferences than it is to attend Second Life conferences. Somehow SL conferences need to become part of my job description or I need two display monitors for my computers so I can more easily multi-task. Ideally, my SL display monitor should be a 42" high rez display! 12) SL still crashes, especially at events with large numbers of avatars! 13) I have too many time conflicts when I try to attend SL events. The number of great SL events is continually increasing in number. Help!!!!!!!!!!! In addition to trying to attend more Life 2.0 events all this week, later today, Prof. Robert Bloomfield of Cornell is talking at Metaversed about "Metanomics 101" (whatever that is!); on Tuesday, September 18th at 1:00PM, TechTalk@SL will have an event with guest Robbie Kiama, he will present a novel tool for social gridtagging "MetaHUD"; at 5:00 PM SLT Tuesday, I can meet with 1-800-Flowers Special Projects Director, Seth Lasser, at a program sponsored by SL Business Communicators. September 14, 2007Flying and Teleporting, SmartPhones and Business in SLEmail and the Web changed my life from 1995-2007. Now Linden Labs' Second Life is transforming my life and speeding up my business and interpersonal interactions. After real life religious services for the Jewish New Year here in Cedar Falls this morning, I posted news stories at DSSResources.com. Security threats and cyber-crimes are increasing. This trend impacts communications-driven and data-driven DSS. Then I logged on to Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) to attend 3 workshops. At Noon PST (SLT), I attended Greg Quirk's talk at Dr. Dobb's Island. Greg is the Technical Marketing Manager at Semiconductor Insights, recently acquired by CMP. He talked about and showed videos related to components found inside the Apple iPhone and two fake Chinese iPhones. At 1pm PST (SLT), I attended a Metaversed group informal discussion. We used a neat meeting tool, Mysti Tool table, but had too many participants and the island shut down. I relogged on and 57 Miles aka Nick Wilson, Metaversed head geek and nice guy, teleported me back to the group. A crash really dampens enthusiasm for an event. We mainly had had introductions at the session with about 25 people participating down from 50 prior to the crash. Metaversed focuses on understanding and promoting business technology in virtual worlds. My SL friend Samson Francis aka Tom Samson, with TeamWork dynamics, was attending. When I returned from the crash I sat next to Grace McDunnough aka Rhonda Lowry, VP of Emerging Technologies at Turner Broadcasting. She impressed me! The RL business community in SL is expanding and it will have an impact on real life business dealings. At 2pm SLT, I was planning to attend the closing session of the CSU FutureVisions (http://futurevisions.colostate.edu/) conference held in Second Life. Some problems with group voice changed my plans. Richard Hackathorn aka Hack Richard gave an introductory talk so perhaps he'll give us an overview in his BI Network blog. The group was touring some sites I'd previously visited, so I moved back to real life to do tasks like blogging, writing articles, and even preparing an exam for my Decision Support Systems students for Tuesday, September 18. This next week is the Life 2.0 Summit (http://www.life20.net/) in Second Life. I'm registered and plan to attend as much as possible given a busy, real life schedule. I will probably miss the Networking Breakfast at the Godel, Escher Beach Club from 8:00 - 9:00 AM SLT (Standard Linden Time aka West Coast US Pacific time) tomorrow morning. There is a small chance I'll attend the Linden Scripting Language University sessions beginning at 9:00 AM SLT Saturday. If you are in SL, say hi to me, Dan Power, known in SL as Leinad Meriman. |
Comprehensive resources for business intelligence and data warehousing professionals.
NETWORK WEBSITES:
BeyeSEARCH | BeyeBLOGS | BeyeRESEARCH | TDAN.com | BeyeNETWORK
Press Releases | About Us | Contact Us | Site Map | Privacy Policy | Media Kit
Copyright 2004 — 2008. Powell Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Business Intelligence Network™ is a trademark of Powell Media, LLC