Metaverse One

On the heels of an 'augmented' good time at the ARE2010, I headed to Denmark as a guest of Roskilde University to participate in the Making Sense of Virtual Worlds and User Driven Innovation workshop. Held at the lovely venue of Magleaas, just north of Copenhagen, this three day (June 7th - 9th) workshop, funded by the Danish Strategic Research Council KINO, brought together academics and a few industry players from all around to share with each other the research they have been doing in virtual worlds. 'SENSE-MAKING STRATEGIES AND USER-DRIVEN INNOVATION IN VIRTUAL WORLDS is a collaborative project, running from 2008-2011, that joins university researchers at two Danish universities, Roskilde University and Copenhagen Business School, and a range of different partners who work practically with virtual worlds in different organizational contexts (encompassing both public organizations and private business). The project has a practice-orientation both in the sense that the a...

From Canada it was back to Silicon Valley for the ARE2010 in Santa Clara. "The Augmented Reality Event (ARE), the first global event dedicated to advancing the business of augmented reality in the US, announced today that the inaugural event will be held at Santa Clara Convention Center, June 2-3, 2010. The activities will be kicked off by a highly anticipated keynote from the “augmented reality prophet,” world-renowned author, futurist, editor and critic, Bruce Sterling. Start-ups, developers, mobile and hardware companies along with organizations within entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more, will gather to focus on evolving the much hyped technology into a productive, sustainable and entertaining new medium. ARE will include more than 30 sessions organized into business, technology and production tracks. The exhibition floor will showcase leading companies and products in augmented reality and will also host a career fair to help kick st...

Saturday May 29th was the first Vancouver Augmented Reality Developer Camp . Like the AR DevCamps before it, the focus was to be a full day of information sessions, discussions, tutorials, and hacking opportunities in an open format, BarCamp style to which all interested people and organizations are invited. The goal of this event is to build on the momentum of the ardevcamp initiative, with a focus on technology sharing, collaboration, and the portability and integration of information across diverse platforms and AR environments. Downtown Vancouver was covered with posters promoting the event which was hosted at the office of animation and visual fx studio Digital Alchemy Entertainment , conveniently in the same building as the Vancouver train station. A small and dedicated group of AR developers attended from the area and one couple as far as Portland for a full day of sessions and presentations from: -Tagwhat - CEO David Elchoness shared with the group Tagwhat , an augmented real...

Friday May 28th in Vancouver Canada was the Centre for Digital Media's Digital Kung-Fu 2 (DKF2) event. Its focus to, "Bringing together experts and leaders from an array of sectors in digital media, this workshop offers a full day of interactive sessions to help inspire new ideas and develop them into realizable goals. Participants will be treated to insider techniques for the conceptualizing, visualizing, prototyping and pitching of ideas, as well as insights into current industry trends and technologies. This is your opportunity to get a crash course in digital martial arts! Part of Vancouver Interactive Digital Week, Digital Kung Fu 2 is a one-day intensive professional development seminar delivered by industry experts. Kick-start, augment and accelerate your digital ideas into realizable apps, services (or products) and start-ups." - DKF Website The Centre for Digital Media is a converted multimedia facility at Vancouver's Great Northern Way Campus that i...

I have embarked on a tech journey to a series of events worth sharing: - Digital Kung-Fu 2 - 2010 Workshop at the Centre for Digital Media (Canada) Bringing together experts and leaders from an array of sectors in digital media, this workshop offers a full day of interactive sessions to help inspire new ideas and develop them into realizable goals. Participants will be treated to insider techniques for the conceptualizing, visualizing, prototyping and pitching of ideas, as well as insights into current industry trends and technologies. This is your opportunity to get a crash course in digital martial arts! Part of Vancouver Interactive Digital Week, Digital Kung Fu 2 is a one-day intensive professional development seminar delivered by industry experts. Kick-start, augment and accelerate your digital ideas into realizable apps, services (or products) and start-ups. Proceeds of this workshop will be put towards scholarships for students in the Masters of Digital Media program. Click here...

This past week at Lat 37.329304, Lon -121.89051, I got the opportunity to attend my first Tim O'Reilly's Where2.0 Conference. 'Now in its sixth year, the Where 2.0 Conference is where the grassroots and leading edge developers building location-aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. In the O'Reilly conference tradition, Where 2.0 presents leading trends rather than chasing them. At Where 2.0, you 'll find source mapping tools, reality mining, open standards for data and location web services, and sensors for obtaining location data. We'll learn how the established geo industry is reacting to the first businesses making money from their grassroots geospatial projects. There's no better place to meet the people behind the mashups , the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to the future of geospatial . Join us at Where 2.0 to debate...

Anyone that has been following the virtual worlds industry has noticed the growing number of virtual world platforms that have closed recently. Now this is to be expected given the amount of virtual world platforms that popped up over night during the 2007-2008 virtual worlds gold rush, but it still saddens me to see these players leave the stage. I have witnessed that the closing of a virtual world platform is more than a company shutting down, people getting laid off, and investors losing on their return. It is the Apocalypse of a digital eco-system. Worlds are demolished, user creations are destroyed, relationships with digital family and friends are lost, and all at the literal flip of a switch. So I am taking a moment on my birthday to salute those virtual world platforms that have recently fallen: Metaplace - Raph Koster's virtual world open platform announced it was closing earlier this year. This really surprises me as I found Metaplace's world creation tools to be su...