Short takes: tl;dr; online influence (#digitalsurrey); and the Internet of things (#cloudcamp)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

It’s been another crazy week without any time for blogging so here are some quick highlights from the stuff I would like to have written about (and still might, time permitting!)

tl;dr

I was reading one of Matthew Baxter-Reynold’s articles on the Guardian website a few days ago and he gave a summary of the key points under the heading tl;dr.  I hadn’t seen that before but it turns out it’s an Internet meme – tl;dr is an abbreviation for “too long; didn’t read” – something that I suspect many of my blog posts suffer from. Maybe I’ll start including a tl;dr section in future…

Return on Influence

On Tuesday evening, Mark W Schaefer (@MarkWSchaefer) spoke at Digital Surrey about the use of influence marketing on the web. It was an enlightening talk and certainly something to consider as organisations increasingly judge our online influence in deciding how to (or whether to) react to and interact with us. My personal view is that Klout and its ilk are over-rated (Klout in particular is very much led by volume of online activity – if I go on holiday for a few days, my Klout takes a hit) but, if I were to give a “tl;dr” view on Mark’s talk it would probably include this diagram:

  1. Surround yourself with people who care about you (and your views) and have a pre-disposition to “move” (i.e. like, retweet, advertise, etc.) your content.
  2. Create unique and interesting content – have something to say (in order to make it “move”) – make it relevant, interesting, timely and entertaining.
  3. Be consistent in engagement – not just broadcasting but being authentically helpful and looking for opportunities to interact.

Common sense? Perhaps – but it’s how Mark suggests we build influence.  Read more in Mark’s book – Return On Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing.

(Jas Dhariwal has made a recording of Mark’s talk available.)

The Internet of things

The Internet of what? Well, depending on your source of technology reading material, you might have head that we’re increasingly connecting lots of “things” to the Internet – sensors, for example – and Wednesday saw a CloudCamp Special in London on The Internet of things. As usual, the evening was introduced by Simon Wardley (@swardley) with his well-practiced (but still interesting) talk on the cycle of innovation leading up to his vision of “augmented intelligence” supported by utility computing (cloud), big data, and intelligent mobile applications.

Then, onto the lightning talks with: Andy Bennet (@databasescaling)’s introduction to the Internet of things (it’s not new!); Raphael Cohn’s fascinating recital of how Smith Electric Vehicles overcame a major business issue in that “electric trucks rule, but batteries suck, and mobiles die”; Kuan Hon (@kuan0)’s rundown on cookie laws (which have a much broader impact than just websites); Paul Downey intruducing us to the wonderful world of open source hardware (which is far more extensive than I ever imagined); and Chris Swan (@cpswan)’s review of the Internet of Things in some of his favourite science fiction novels. Oh yes, a a couple of guys from Betfair stood up and tried to plug their new application cloud, which I’m sure is very good but seemed a little too like a vendor pitch to me…

Wrapping up with a panel discussion, before beer and pizza, it was a thoroughly agreeable way to spend the evening and I learned loads about the Internet of things… hopefully I’ll write some more on the topic over the coming weeks.

Ride it!

Posted on By Mark Wilson

The last time I went mountain biking was in 1998 (I think). Some friends and I had hired a cottage in North Wales and we spent a few days there over the new year period. I seem to recall a trip to Beddgelert (or somewhere like that), to cycle around what felt like almost vertical hillsides with very muddy tracks.  I liked coming down but hated going up and, since then, my riding has been confined to roads, cycle paths, towpaths and bridleways.

More recently though, I’ve felt the need to push a bit harder – to try something a bit less sedate than the family rides out (which I might describe as “leisurely”, if I was being charitable, or “pedestrian” to be more honest…) – and when the latest catalogue from Evans Cycles landed on the mat, their Ride It! events caught my eye.

These organised rides offer all the benefits of a race, without actually racing. In fact, racing is prohibited. Even so, we were timed with chips, the route (in multiple lengths) was clearly waymarked, and there were “pit stops” with refreshments (sports drinks, jelly beans and cake!) and the ability to carry out simple bike repairs (more on that in a moment).  There are two classes of event – mountain bike and “sportive”, with very different courses, run over very different terrain.  Even so, I was intrigued to see where I was going to go “mountain biking” in Milton Keynes!

The answer, it seems, is the Beds/Bucks border in and around Brickhill – I really enjoyed the trail (graded 2/4 for climbing – so not too bad, although almost everyone walked some of the hills of sandy soil that felt pretty much like riding on a beach…) but was let down somewhat by my bike (although they do say that a bad workman blames his tools).  You see, my “best bike” is a Trek 830, which cost me a few hundred pounds in the late ’90s and was recently serviced (by Olney Bikes) but it has no suspension, making it a bit rough for off road use. I also have a cheap full-suspension bike that I bought from a neighbour a few years ago and that’s the one I selected today.  Five miles in and I took a tumble as I turned from tarmac to gravel and my front wheel was badly buckled. Unable to straighten it at the next pit-stop (despite the best efforts of the Ride It! team – thank you!) the consensus was that I should disconnect the front brake and ride on back brakes only… which was “interesting” on some of the downhill forest sections!  Actually, there was some more advice too – buy a cheap wheel, then sell the bike, and buy a new one (something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but have so far failed to gain spousal approval for).  I kept going until the second pit stop but by then I’d decided to switch from the medium (25 mile) course to the short one (advertised as 15 miles, but nearer to 18 according to the GPS on my phone), missing a fairly flat road section around Woburn Sands and another blast up and down through Aspley Woods.  I was probably a bit ambitious going for the medium course on my first ride anyway – just because I can do a quick 6 miler from home on local cyclepaths and bridleways in half an hour, I thought it would take me about two and a half hours to do 25 miles – that may have been a little optimistic with this course!

So, the verdict on Evans’ Ride It! events: great fun; a good workout; friendly (both participants and staff); and well organised (although I was disappointed that the timing chip failed to register my start, and the GPX routes were not posted in advance on the blog as the FAQ suggests – and the link was broken in the confirmation email for my registration).

As for the verdict on my maintain biking abilities: needs more practice – and a new bike! My shopping list is something like: hard-tail; disc brakes; front forks with suspension; good quality; but not too expensive…

Those who are interested in the route can check out my workout from today on Endomondo (although not all paths are generally open to the public – some require a permit, which had been arranged for this event).

Returning to the analogue world of note-taking

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I take a lot of notes in meetings. I’d like to say that I’m good at it – although that’s a subjective view – some one say that the essence of good note-taking is to capture the pertinent points and not the whole discussion but I’ll save that debate for offline (although it did come up in my recent appraisal…).  My preferred tool is Microsoft OneNote (at least on the PC) but there are issues around storing notes from meetings on personal devices (iPad, smartphone – and supporting cloud services) that strangely don’t seem to be an issue in the analogue world…

After a recent meeting with some senior management, where I found myself becoming the “minute-taker” because I’d been taking notes (intended for personal use), I decided that this wasn’t helping me establish myself as any more than just the most junior person in the room (I’ve been advised to think about parent-peer-child relationships in business meetings – not as in hierarchy but in terms of managing stakeholders and engaging at an appropriate level). Consequently, I’m dumping extensive notetaking in OneNote (at least for meetings – it still works for me at external events) and going back to a paper notebook.

I was recently given some Moleskine notebooks as a present and these are perfect for the job (there is a Moleskine app for iOS too but that kind of misses the point). But Moleskine products are a) attractive and b) expensive – that meant that I needed to find a system for note-taking that would 1) work well and not just end up as a horrible mess of hieroglyphics and 2) not result in pages and pages of notes just like the ones I used to make in OneNote…

I called my friend (and long-time Moleskine user) Garry Martin (@GarryMartin) for advice – after all, why not start from a system that works for someone else? Garry recommended an approach that’s outlined by Michael Hyatt in his post on recovering (or even rediscovering?) the lost art of note-taking, including the use of symbols for scanning later:

  • Indent everything.
  • Use stars for important things.
  • Use an open square for an action (and tick when complete).
  • Use an open circle for an action on others that needs to be tracked (and tick when complete).
  • Use a question mark for items that need additional research.

Additionally, Garry recommended the use a different colour when going back later with additional information.

It’s early days yet – and this is only one small step on a long journey but let’s see if this return to a simple notebook will help me overcome the digital mess that I’ve created in previous attempts to streamline my work.

Fighting with competing eBook standards

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last year, I was involved in the production of Fujitsu’s White Book of Cloud Security (continuing the series after the White Book of Cloud Adoption) and earlier today I was sent copies in eBook form.  I emailed them to my Kindle (app), only to find that Amazon doesn’t support .EPUB format books.  Whilst I understand why Amazon might like its own content to appear in a different format, not supporting the .EPUB standard for people to add their own content seems strange (and I’m not alone in thinking this – Jason Perlow wrote about Amazon’s lack of support for .EPUB back in 2010).

Thankfully, it’s pretty simple to convert between .EPUB and MOBI formats, using freely available software (Calibre) – as  highlighted on Twitter by James Williams (@LoneGunmanUK) and Travis Atkinson (@TravisWhayne). It’s a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut (I don’t need an eBook library – just a conversion tool) but it’s undoubtably powerful and it seemed to do the job for me.

Incidentally, on my iPad, the .MOBI files viewed in the Kindle app seem to have better results than the .EPUBs in Apple iBooks (which seemed to resize some graphics to the point of illegibility).

Short takes: Kids coding in C (!); new car; and finally “fit at 40”!

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last week I kicked off my new initiative to actually get some blog posts out, despite not having time for all the details…

This week was less event-focused but nevertheless contained a few things that I thought were worthy of note.

Kids coding in C? (Our Arduino)

Last weekend, I was “playing” with my new Arduino proptotyping board, with my sons.  Understandably, my 5 year-old wasn’t too bothered (to be fair, he liked putting components onto the breadboard) but I was amazed to see just how my eldest (who is 7) grasped the programming side of things.  I’m not saying he’s writing C – but just using some example code to flash a set of LEDs in sequence, he asked why he was putting // in front of some lines.  I showed him that each was a function call and he was “turning on and off” different things that the program could do.  Before I knew it, he wanted to chain functions together, before then moving on changing the delay times on the lights.  I thought that the coding side of things would be an uphill struggle but I was really encouraged to see how quickly kids can start to adapt the examples. Hopefully our Raspberry Pi will arrive later this month – and then I’ll get him writing in Scratch or another child-friendly environment!

New toy for Mark

Last November, I wrote about ordering my new car and it arrived on Monday. No longer am I tarred with Top Gear-esque comments about Audi drivers (I did really like my A4 though) – I’m now a sensible, 40-something Volkswagen-driving type! The Tiguan (or “softroader” as my hardcore Range Rover-driving manager calls it) has a towbar too, so I should be able to load the family bikes on more easily and, hopefully, we’ll get out a bit more this spring/summer… which leads me on to the next feature…

Another decade on the clock – and my “Fit at 40” challenge draws to a close

Towards the end of the week I celebrated  my 40th birthday – which marks the end of my Fit at 40 challenge. Having hit my target weight a couple of weeks ago, I’ve managed to hold that off but haven’t managed to push any further yet.  The final numbers are not quite in, but it looks like I’ll have raised just under £2000 (plus gift aid) for The Prostate Cancer Charity – thanks again to everyone who has supported me and helped make me a happier, healthier husband and father to my wife and children!

Improving presentation content and style

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few weeks ago now, I attended a webcast as part of a series run by Citrix to promote GoToMeeting. Rather than saying “hey, look at our product it does x, y and z”, Citrix used the product to host others giving advice on presentation techniques.

Ironically, some of the presentations were awful – I dropped out of one on “presenting with impact” as (in my opinion) it lacked any kind of impact; suffered from poor audio on the main presenter’s line; started out with irrelevant facts (which were later suggested as an approach to make a session memorable); and then launched into a poll before even getting going.  I did later return to the recording of this session and  around presenting with passion, preparation, body language and the need for practice/preparation – but the fact remains that it initially turned me right off… (and I was surprised to find a professional communicator who hadn’t seen Prezi – although I’m not really a fan of that tool). Sadly, those first impressions stuck with me for the same presenter’s follow-up session on “communicating with impact”, which really failed to keep my attention (if I was being charitable, I might say that was perhaps as much an indictment of the delivery method as of the content).

Thankfully, another webcast was more useful – Roger Courville from 1080 Group spoke about “eight things we can do to improve virtual presentations” and, by and large, they were good tips (for face to face presentations too) so I’m sharing my notes here:

  1. Put a complete idea in the slide title – and keep slides visual for “picture superiority” (although the brain does see a few words as an image).
  2. Create a sense of presence – paint a vision to demonstrate 1:1 attention/facilitate a common connection.
  3. Draw the audience’s eyes to your slide’s main point – direct attention visually (additive) or reduce and simplify (subtractive) – make sure the audience doesn’t have to guess what the main point is!
  4. Keep “wholes” whole… and then build it out if you want to – i.e. show the big picture and then drill down into details.
  5. Analyse (who, what, where, when, why and how), synthesise (action or relationship), visualise (consider how things might look visually or spatially). It’s possible to get a tutorial (and template) for this tip by subscribing to the 1080 Group newsletter.
  6. Pause for power – in advance of a key point for a sense of anticipation or afterwards to allow the brain time to process. Pause for effect and pause for interactions. And, to add some insight from the communicating with impact presentation, allow silence, to give time to digest information and to add gravitas.
  7. Ask your audience what or when is best. Improve things based on feedback – either “on the fly” during the presentation, or by building an understanding over time.  And, although this wasn’t one of Roger’s tips, it seems like a good point to take another cue from the communicating with impact presentation: consider the audience’s DNA (demographic, needs, and attitude) – and be ready to flex your style.
  8. Start you next presentation by “storyboarding” (see the comments on “beyond bullet points” below) – think about the flow of the presentation (content), before filling in details (think how PowerPoint leads us to step straight in and start creating bullets!) – and “design in” interactions (demo, poll, etc.).  By way of illustration, Roger also referred to Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points book which I confess I haven’t read but is structured around three core themes:
    1. Tell a story – you only have a few seconds to create an emotional impact.
    2. Distil your ideas – instead of throwing everything into the presentation, go into the minds of the audience and figure out what to communicate (with an effective structure).
    3. Create visual prompts – not just pretty slides but building out the storyboard to take the audience on a journey to an effective presentation.

Two more points I picked up that I though were worthy of note:

  • The average soundbite dropped from 43 seconds in 1968 to less than 8 in 2010 – reflecting our reduction in attention span?
  • Slides don’t equal duration – more slides do not (necessarily) equal more content. [I particularly subscribe to this one!]

And a quote:

“The act of organising information is in itself an insight” [Edward Tufte]

Even the presentations I were less enamoured with presented some insight, like:

  • Get someone you trust to review your presentation style – and let them be frank, to tell you about your style, impact, and use of filler words like um and err (which come across as lacking in confidence).
  • Direct conversations with open and closed questions, together with summaries (for example, “let me just check…”, list key points and end with a closed question).
  • Online presentations lack feedback from listening noises (like those that might be applied on the phone).

Using this information, I’m hoping to improve my future presentations and, judging by the number of “death by PowerPoint” sessions that I attend, a few other people could learn from this too. There are also a few more resources that might come in handy:

Releasing and retracting a factory-fitted towbar on a Volkswagen Tiguan

Posted on By Mark Wilson

This post is probably of limited value because it only applies to a factory-fitted retractable towbar on certain Volkswagen models (mine’s a Tiguan Sport) but, being a towbar newbie (I don’t tow but I do want to fix a decent bike rack onto my car!), I wanted to see how to “fold out” the towbar (and to retract it again).  The driver who delivered the car didn’t know how, there are no instructions in the handbook, and googling didn’t turn up much either but it’s quite straightforward once you find out how…

  1. Lift the rear hatch (boot) door and look out for a cover on the top-left of the rear bumper.
  2. Lift this cover by tucking something into the hole and prising it off (the car key works well for this) – there is a “knob” underneath.
  3. Give the “knob” a good tug and the towbar will be released. Pull the towbar it out until it locks into place.
  4. To retract the towbar repeat steps 1-3 but push the towbar back in under the bumper.

Useful Links: March 2012

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A list of items I’ve come across recently that I found potentially useful, interesting, or just plain funny:

Short takes: from the consumerisation of IT to open data

Posted on By Mark Wilson

This week has been a crazy one – and things don’t look like getting much easier over the next few weeks as we enter a new financial year and my job shifts its focus to be less externally-focused and more about technical strategy and governance. This blog has always been my personal blog – rather than something for my work – but the number of posts is inversely proportional to the amount of time I have on my hands which, right now, is not very much at all.

So I’m taking a new tack… each time I attend an event, instead of trying to write up all the key points, I’ll blog about the highlights and then (hopefully) come back with some details later… well, that’s the plan at least…

This week (on top of all the corporate stuff that I can’t really write about here), I attended two really worthwhile events that were very different but equally worthy of note – for very different reasons.

IDC Consumerisation of IT 2012 briefing

Analyst briefings are normally pretty dry: pick a hotel somewhere; sit on uncomfortable chairs in a large meeting room; and listen to analysts talk about their latest findings, accompanied with some PowerPoint (which you might, or might not have access to later…). This one was much better – and kudos is due to the IDC team that arranged it.

Not only was London’s Charlotte Street Hotel a much better venue (it may have had a tiny circulation area for pre/post event networking but it has a fantastic, cinema-style screening room) but there was a good mix of content as analysts covered a variety of consumerisation-based topics from an overview (risk management or business transformation) through sessions on how mobile devices are shaping the enterprise and on the state of the PC market, on to consumerisation and the cloud before finally looking at the impact of consumerisation on the IT services market.

I did cause some controversy though: tweeting a throwaway comment from an analyst about the organisation’s continued use of Windows XP attracted attention from one of the journalists who follows me in the US (IDC suggested that I took the comment out of context – which I would dispute – although, to be fair, much of the industry suffers from “Cobblers Shoes”); and I was not at all convinced by IDC’s positioning of VDI as an appropach to consumerisation (it’s a tactical solution at best – strategically we should be thinking past the concept of a “desktop” and focusing on secure access to apps and data, not on devices and operating systems) – prompting a follow-up email from the analyst concerned.

It used to be vendors (mostly Microsoft) that I argued with – now it seems I need to work on my analyst relations!

Ordnance Survey Open Data Master Class

I recently wrote a white paper looking at the potential to use linked data to connect and exploit big data and I have to admit that I find “big” data a bit dull really (Dan Young’s tweet made me laugh).

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/dan0young/status/184997625865576448″]

What I find truly exciting though is the concept of a web of (linked) open data. It’s all very well writing white papers about the concepts but I wanted to roll my sleeves up and have a go for myself so, when I saw that Ordnance Survey were running a series of “master classes”, I booked myself onto a session and headed down to the OS headquarters in Southampton. That was interesting in itself as I worked on a project at Ordnance Survey to move the organisation from Microsoft Mail to Exchange Server in the late 1990s but that was at the old premises – they’ve recently moved to a brand new building (purely office space – printing is outsourced these days) and it was interesting to see how things have moved on.

After an introduction to open data, Ordnance Survey’s Ian Holt (the GeoDoctor) took us through some of the OS open data sets that are available before Chris Parker spoke about Geovation and some of the challenges they are running (working with 100%Open, who also collaborate with some of my colleagues on Fujitsu’s Open Innovation Service). We then moved on to some practical sessions that have been created by Samuel Leung at the University of Southampton, using nothing more than some open source GIS software (Quantum GIS) and Microsoft Excel (although anything that can edit .CSV files would do really) – the materials are available for anyone to download if they want to have a go.

Even though the exercises were purely desktop-based (I would have liked to mash up some open data on the web) it was a great introduction to working with open data (from finding and accessing it, through to carying out some meaningful analysis) and I learned that open data is not just for developers!

[Update 2 April 2012: I won’t be writing another post about the IDC consumerisation of IT event as they have emailed all delegates to say that it was a private session and they don’t want people to publish notes/pictures]

Virtual worlds in 2022 (Dr Richard Bartle at #digitalsurrey)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

It’s been a few months since I’ve been along to a Digital Surrey event but last night I went to see Dr Richard Bartle (the massively multiplayer online gaming pioneer whose work on personality types was mentioned last year in the first Digital Surrey event I attended, Michael Wu’s talk on the science of gamification) speak about the future of virtual worlds.

Dr Richard Bartle talks at Digital SurreyIn contrast to Lewis Richards’ Virtual Worlds talk at CSC last year, Richard Bartle’s talk was focused on three possible courses of development for the massively multiplayer online gaming (MMO) industry (slides are available).  He started out by commenting that, had he been asked the same question in 1992, he’d think we would be further ahead than we are by now…

Three views of the future

In the first view of virtual worlds in 2022, Richard looked at the legal issues that threaten online gaming, including:

  • Applying reasonable laws wrongly – for example a well-meaning judge applying the same rules in World of Warcraft to Second Life and “its just a game” is no longer a way in which to avoid the real world.
  • Unfair contracts – with End User Licensing Agreements (EULAs) found to be unfair and ownership over virtual goods bringing property laws into play (Linden Labs, 2007).
  • Intellectual property laws – ownership prevents the destruction or alteration of virtual property; it’s impossible to stop people from selling “stuff” (even if it ruins the game); an inability to deny access by banning things that have unintended consequences (leaving gaming open to compensation claims); and implications of publishing works of art (licensing, records of origin, etc.) – what happens if the rights to an object upon which others are built is suddenly removed?
  • Gaming laws – even free to play games have value in their objects (as proven in Dutch law in 2012) and, if everything has a value, gaming is essentially about chance and cash rewards – i.e. gambling! Some parts of the world (e.g. the USA) have fierce laws on gambling…
  • Money laundering – with a scenario something like: 1) Steal real-world money; 2) hand money to a front; 3) front buys virtual currency; 4) pass virtual currency to game characters; 5) sell virtual goods (legitimately); 6) clean money!
  • Taxation laws – if virtual money has real world value, then it becomes taxable (both income and sales).
  • Patents – it’s possible to patent obvious “inventions” for very little outlay but it costs a lot to get a patent revoked – this stifles innovation.

For these reasons, Richard Bartle says he sees a bleak future when he goes to legal or policy conferences – just a programmers see bugs in code, lawyers see bugs in laws – and accountants see bugs everywhere (it’s their job to highlight problems).

In the second view, the repeated incursions of reality into virtual worlds gradually break down the distinction between real and virtual – and virtual worlds are no longer imaginary places of freedom and adjuncts to reality.  New MMOs open up and recruit players from existing MMOs – but these are the disloyal players – or they get MMO “newbies”. With too much reality, MMOs become unsustainable as fantasy and existing players’ expectations are lowered whilst new players didn’t have high expectations to start with… Meanwhile there’s the question of monetisation – with 95% of casual gamers being funded by the 5% who pay – those who pay have the ability to do so (i.e. are richer in real life) and their ability to become more successful in the game removes any sense of fair play – is it still a game if one can buy success? Reaching out to children becomes attractive – both as a source of new gamers and also because micropayments make it easier to take money from children as the credits are paid for by the parents. And, as non-gamers use “gamification” in marketing and “edutainment” as a teaching aid, the attempts to combine the fun games and “un-fun” education lead to nothing more than un-fun games. In effect the sanctity of game spaces as retreats from reality disappears…

In Richard Bartle’s third view of the future, MMO designers found themselves able to influence politics. In 2010, the median age of the UK population was 40 (41 for women, 38 for men) so half the population were born in 1970 or later and grew up with access to computers. These people play games, don’t feel addicted to them and resent politicians imply gamers are psychopaths. Consequently politicians representing games as anti-social find themselves unpopular. Gaming flowers with new casual games, new players, and simplified creation of virtual worlds.

When Richard speaks to designers and developers he sees passion, imagination, and freedom of spirit because MMOs give something that your can’t get elsewhere – the ability to be yourself. If that goes away, they simply create new virtual worlds.

What is most likely?

As for which future view is most likely, Richard’s whole presentation was linked through three films (High Noon, The Misfits, and Dirty Harry) – all of which featured actors who were also in The Good the Bad and the Ugly. So he summed up the likely courses using that film:

  • The Good: virtual worlds provide a place for humans to be humans.
  • The Bad: virtual worlds are stifled with real-world laws and policy.
  • The Ugly: virtual worlds become mundane.

He considers that MMOs provide too much that people want in order not to be successful and that, if legislated away to obscurity, that would only be a temporary state and they would return. I guess we’ll see when we look back from 2022…

My view

As a non-gamer (perhaps more accurately a casual gamer – I play the odd game on a tablet or a smartphone, and I do have an Xbox 360 – upon which my sons and I play Lego Pirates of the Caribbean and Kinect Sports, so I guess they are virtual worlds?), I found a lot of Richard’s views on “reality” rather difficult to grasp – and I got the impression that I wasn’t alone. Even so, the vision of the real world tainting the virtual world was fascinating – and perhaps, I fear, a little too real (it’s not just online gaming that is impacted by well-meaning but ultimately flawed real world decisions).

Speaking with one of the other attendees at the event, who mentioned someone had been questioning the link between the Internet and the real world, I guess my inability to understand the mindset of a MMO gamer is not so far removed from those who can’t see why I would want to live my life on social media…

Credits

Thanks again to the Digital Surrey team for staging another worthwhile event, sponsored by Martin Stillman from the Venture Strategy Partnership and hosted by Cameron Wilson from Surrey Enterprise.

[Update 27 March 2012: added link to Richard’s blog post and presentation materials]