SAS Design Meeting: Facebook good! Second Life bad! (apparently)

I went to an event this morning run by SAS Design at a (very swanky) hotel in London under the theme of "The web and social media: myths, legends and adventures". This was very much a crash course into social media for recruitment companies.

So I've trivialised the messages coming out of it, but in a nut shell...

Facebook good!

Second Life bad!

It looks like the public pullback from Second Life is well and truelly happening in the recruitment space. Its worth pointing out that they've not quite cottoned on to the whole "Second Life is just a platform and an example of a Virtual World" message, and on the bright side if this means that recruiters will stop engaging with virtual worlds purely on a brand association level and start thiking about how virtual worlds are actually used, that's got to be a good thing. However, the tendancy for these design agencies to jump on (and off) the band wagon without any long term vision is a bit frustrating.

A highlight though was hearing Dr. Adam Joinson from the University of Bath speaking about online behaviour, and the opportunity to follow-up with him afterwards about some joint efforts. Its a shame that he was not afforded more than a 20 minute slot.

However what amused me most in this event was that the overwhelming (and correct) message being portrayed regarding the important of authenticity and credibility in social media and not going about delivery in a very contrived and planned way. Makes you wonder how a design agency seems them self fitting in with that ethic really doesnt it?

ITMB eSkills Update...

Just found the video of the eSkills event, so if you want to see how the event actually worked you can!



*UPDATE: My dodgy embedding has not worked quite according to plan, so you can always go here

Run Matt, Run!

Am loving this site (thanks Andy for the pointer).

Like many a hopeful, I've started jogging to remove the Christmas spread and I'm finding a good way of motivating myself is to introduce new gimmicks each week to tempt me out into the cold. First it was new clothes, then a new mp3 player, now its maprunner. This site allows you to look at jogging routes that others have made, and add your own. Unfortunately at the moment there are no Southampton routes near me, however the google maps mashup that tells me how far I'm running is a real bonus, so I'll be trying to log all my routes on here from now on.

(Note: I'm saving the new trainers gimmick for when my motivation is really low)

Virtualising your Intranet...

Just a quick post to draw attention to a new blog...

This blog has been set up to track the progress of a join project by Warwick Business School and IBM to evaluate the potential of "intraverses" or virtual worlds attatched to a company intranet. The team is still in fact finding mode at the moment but the blog should serve as a good source to track information relevant to this subject, and will feature more directed updates as we mvoe towards the summer

Thankfully there are a few of us contributing on this blog, rather than just me hammering away quite infrquently!

Ebbsfleet United is MyFootballClub

I meant to post about this ages ago....but then that could be true of a lot of things.

A couple of months ago I subscribed to the website myfootballclub.co.uk. The premise quite simple, become an "owner" of a football club...well along with another 50,000 odd people. Being a fan of championship manager this is of course was the next logical step!

The interesting aspect is of course how this is actually going to work in reality, but now that the acquisition of Ebbsfleet United is complete some important decisions need to be made. The most interesting one so far being the decision whether to take Nike's deal for kit outsourcing. I must admit, its taken something like this to really spark my interest, but until the system is geared to look more directly at team matters I'm worried that my 30 odd quid might be going down the drain.

More updates to follow! (if I can get the blogging back on track)

eSkills Event

Information about the eSkills event we ran on IBM's University Relations Island in Second Life late last year. This was a joint event in association with eSkills, IBM and P&G, looking to raise awareness about the use of virtual worlds and 3d internet by using the medium itself.

This was a very successful event with many people attending, mainly from Manchester University. More events to follow!

To find out more about this event you can read the following article on computing.com:

http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/analysis/2208333/virtual-skills-real-world-3775332