21st Century Organization

Bronwyn Stuckey: Thank You

Clearly Bronwyn your expert contributions as our guest make clear you are a thought leader at the center of the field of learning through games and virtual environments. 

THANK YOU for sharing your insights into what defines and differentiates online games and virtual environments like Second Life; and explanation of the language of this emerging field and the potential value: the development of essential 21st century skills.

Your quote from Morrison suggesting the key 21st century skill is learning itself and your observations about what games teach are thought provoking indeed:

"The most valuable skills someone can acquire are the skills to learn rapidly and efficiently and to go into almost any situation and figure out what has to be learned". Gamers are learning to learn not just through a relationship with the technology but through relationships with others. The games establish a real reason to collaborate and build social capital."

And you gave us a lesson in virtual ethics, norms and civil rights to guide those interested in the practice.

Given our increasingly networked, knowledge and social capital based businesses and organizations, I sense the field of virtual worlds and social contexts through which you have guided us will get increasing attention. I trust you will visit again to share your  expertise and forecast of what is ahead.

Thank you, indeed.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 6: The labor of fun

Why should organisations buy into the popularity of what could seemingly be dismissed as recreational activity? Did we take this much notice of television? It would be seriously wrong of us to see broadcast technology, even with developments in interactive TV, as comparable to the many-to-many social capacity of today’s MMORPGs and virtual worlds. Interestingly, research does suggest that the hours devoted to game play have been stolen from TV viewing. Interaction with people seems to be the lure not just vivid technology.

Two aptly titled articles might give us a clue to where this technology could be all taking us. ‘The labor of fun: How video games blur the boundaries of work and play" by Nick Yee and Hans Christian Arnseth’s research paper titled "Learning to Play or Playing to Learn

Playing to learn

Games are socially complex environments where players are continually required to deal with chaos and emergence, being called upon to strategize, make decisions and take on social responsibility. The games allow them to develop as sense of mastery of many real world skills. As the article that I launched this guest spot with suggests, most players do not just engage in the pursuit of mindless fun. Learning in games is less about acquisition (other than goals and rewards) and more about interaction Arnseth would suggest that the games encourage a "practice-oriented approach" and the reflection on that practice can clearly be seen in the accompanying community forums, fan sites and blogs.

Morrison (quoted in Galarneau and Zibit) suggests the key 21st century skill is learning itself. "The most valuable skills someone can acquire are the skills to learn rapidly and efficiently and to go into almost any situation and figure out what has to be learned". Gamers are learning to learn not just through a relationship with the technology but through relationships with others. The games establish a real reason to collaborate and build social capital.

The labor of fun

Fun is much more than escape and friendship. Jen Dornan suggested these games represent the new rituals; the places to build shared experiences.

Who are the people engaged in these rituals? Are they all spotty post adolescents? Yee suggests that "The average MMORPG gamer us is 26 years old. About half of these players have a full-time job. Every day, many of them go to work and perform an assortment of clerical tasks, logistical planning and management in their offices, then they come home and do those very same things in MMORPGs"

Yee proposes that MMORPG are work for the players and at the very least they are causing the boundaries between work and play to become blurred. Constance Steinkuehler’s view of MMORPG as third places would in part be supported by findings in Nick Yee’s Daedalus Project "On an aggregate level, the general categorization of why people play seems to be quite robust and can roughly be described as: 1) achievement, 2) socialization, 3) immersion, 4) vent/escape, 5) competition."

We don’t need to envisage our workplaces transformed into massive game spaces but we do seriously have to contend with understanding how games and virtual worlds motivate, enable and sustain learning and build effective learning systems. Whether we design games and worlds, or adapt and coopt them, we need to learn from them how we can in our workplaces sustain a labor of fun.

I am very grateful to have had chance to highlight some of the issues that intrigue me. Thanks

~ Bronwyn

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 5: Virtual ethics, norms and civil rights

I have been wondering how to conclude my somewhat staggered guest visit and how to say what I take from the current interest in MMORPG and virtual worlds. I have to say getting my head back into this after tramping the wilds of the south Island of New Zealand and Stewart Island was very hard. I plunged back to a 'reality' of sorts when I started facilitating online workshops for teachers and academics using the 3D virtual world and game space Quest Atlantis in their classes. The promise and concerns such environments hold for teachers are or should be shared by all organisations embarking on use of these environments.

What currently attracts them?

• Innovative ways to motivate and excite clients (learners)
• Providing interaction in social contexts outside the usual formal contexts
• Scaffolding independent decision making without dumbing things down
• Providing competition in a supportive environment
• Exposure to a diversity of cultures, languages and perspectives.

What concerns them?

• Regulating online behaviour
• Understanding the boundaries
• Maintaining a duty of care.

These teachers are as Gee suggests visioning new learning systems. This new virtual world technology provides opportunity for us to review our assumptions about learning and social contexts. With these new social contexts comes a raft of legal and ethical issues we cannot ignore. We have to ask what or who dictates the behaviour or establishes the norms, and when and how should we address issues of civil liberties and censorship? The program I am currently engaged in Quest Atlantis is a bespoke design of worlds and infrastructure that addresses many of the teacher concerns. But what can we expect if we enter the open space of already inhabited commercial environments where community norms have begun to develop? I don’t have answers but loads of questions.

Susan Tenby and Beth Kanter wrote on TechSoup describing nonprofit use of virtual worlds as efforts to “Change the world by working in a virtual one”. The article describes aid agencies are working and raising funds in virtual campaigns and projects similar to their efforts in the ‘real world’. The only thing is, as the nonprofit managers agree, we don’t as yet completely understand what those virtual efforts will entail. We know from the headlines that if you build it they definitely will come but they won’t always behave or react in ways that you anticipate. Nic Fulton (quoted in Jenny’s last post) reminds us we may have to be prepared for the totally unexpected. I’m sure we can all comfortably envisage how to behave in controllable circumstances like corporate meetings and talk back events when they occur in virtual worlds.

• Meetings
• Events

But what is happening right now in the open social framework of games and virtual worlds while exciting is equally dark and unknown. Take for instance this noted example of "griefing", a term that excuses sometimes heinous behaviour

So where does the responsibility ultimately reside if we decide intellectual property, ethics and civil liberties are important? In many cases I have watched as educational virtual world communities mature, the members moderate each others behaviour and norms emerge that the members own. The community becomes somewhat self regulating. But in all these environments the convenors carry responsibility for the initial regulating, policing and modelling of some basic tenets of behaviour. They are not free for all spaces with open membership and untraceable levels of anonymity nor are they open market places with competing agendas. What are the ethical considerations for organisations seeking to market, inhabit or sponsor virtual environments? And what backlash can organisations and education institutions expect from natives when they immigrate to their worlds?

• Where does the responsibility lie?
• Violence as a norm
• Law enforcers

Gamers themselves are thinking about these issues.

• Ethics in games
• Second Life - bans in marketing and PR for false claims
• Intellectual property and freedom of the press

Constance Stienkheuler sees MMORPG games and virtual worlds as “third places”. Third places were described by Ray Oldenburg, like the English pub as the sanctuaries people maintained between home and work. Places where people would find a warm and inviting community to drop in on whenever needed. If organisations are to embrace these environments do managers/convenors need to start thinking like publicans to take responsibility for keeping order to provide for the safety of their patrons? Or at least recognise that responsibility comes with the license.

I will close this guest spot formally tomorrow by returning to where we began examining the notion of 'fun' in games and virtual worlds.

~ Bronwyn

IBM & Reuters- Doing Business in Second Life

Prepared with Bronwyn Stuckey's insights about learning in virtual environments and thanks to Thomas Falconer, February 13 I was a fortunate guest at the Internet Strategy Forum's Second Life presentation. Hats off to Lee Huang for enticing Nic Fulton, Chief Scientist, Reuters and David Leip, Chief Innovation Officer, IBM.com, (representing two of the most high profile companies doing business in Second Life) to share their experiences and learning.

A very rich conversation but essential takeaways:

1. Nic Fulton's insights into creating Second Life environments to engage participants and warnings about being prepared for the totally unexpected.  I gather doing business in Second Life is not for those with a penchant to be in control.

2. David Leip's focus on the need to measure effectiveness of Second Life investments.

David offered a thoughtful list of metrics to consider from day one. (Shared with permission, thank you). 

• Number of visitors, preferably unique
• Measuring attention to assets
• How long do visitors stay?
• How often are the various assets used?
• With how many clients does each staff member interact?
• How often does a visitor to your property leave satisfied?
• How many leads and sales are connected to Second Life experience?
• How many web downloads originate from Second Life?
• How is lead generation?
• ROI on Second Life investment. (Expenses include property development and staffing.)

I wonder how many web site, let alone virtual world, owners have easy access to these  metrics? 

Having just come from the FAST Forward conference in San Diego with people from leading companies scurrying to give access to enterprise knowledge, and people, through search, I also wondered who is thinking about giving wide enterprise visibility to Second Life assets?

Thank you Nic, David and ISF for a terrific session.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

FAST Forward Ommission: Apologies Chris Heuer

Testimony to FAST's smart keynote speaker and strategic blogging strategy that a week after the FAST Forward conference in San Diego conversation around issues raised at the conference continues.  Andrew McAfee's post The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders, inspired by an exchange with Euan Semple at the conference continues to grab attention.

Reading that post I realized a serious oversight in my conference report was Chris Heuer's terrific session on Social Media. Testimony to Chris's World Cafe facilitation skills that he had a room filled with interesting people in animated conversation Friday afternoon following 2 session filled days.

I especially appreciated Chris providing an opportunity to think about what we did not hear at the conference but should be considered. Of course given the focus of this 21st Century Organization blog it was the fact that any technology, be it search or social media or prediction markets or virtual worlds or technologies not yet invented need suppportive management and organizations to leverage the full benefits. Interestingly the topic that has come to life on Andrew McAfee's post conference discussion.

And given the growing body of knowledge emerging around organizational network analysis ONA) through the work of Rob Cross and the Network Roundtable, Valdis Krebs, Steve Borgatti, Duncan Watts and a growing number of ONA practitioners, it was surprising to me that even tools like ConnectBeam appear not to be fully leveraging the social networking elements, yet. Perhaps business social networking platforms like LinkedIn and VisiblePath are working with other search companies to have an impact in enterprises?

When I've seen a Roundtable presentation describing a member organization combining ONA and NTags to strategically connect people across their organization to promote innovation, clearly there are interesting new opportunities to marry technology and emerging disciplines to aid enterprises beyond those discussed in San Diego. 

Thanks Chris Heuer for prompting my thinking.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

 

FAST Forward Conference 2007 Report

Thanks to wise advisers (happily acknowledge with permission), I landed in San Diego for the FAST Forward O7 Conference prepared for the vendor hype and boys with a hammer, SEARCH.  Simon Wardley's wonderful Ghenghis 2.0 post captures the spirit. Do we need to "dominate" in a networked world or is it possible "collaborate" might even be more effective?

Regardless the conference was absolutely worthwhile for what I didn't expect: the 1,000 very smart people from significant enterprises and organizations representing 29 countries.  Like Jerry Bowles prior to the San Diego Conference I had not heard of FAST or had no grasp of the dollars enterprises are investing in search as both a business necessity and strategic edge. FAST's Oslo Bours filing announcing Q4 2006 results reveals a 57% Y/Y revenue increase and an 80% gross margin.

So FAST is a smart company that attracted extraordinary people to San Diego for rich conversations. David Weinberger and Kathleen Gilroy did a fabulous of job of capturing  key messages from high profile speakers. All are recommended watching.

For the record, here are my conference highlights:

• Andrew McAfee's unscheduled Enterprise 2.0 round table discussion. He asked the question: "how long before Enterprise 2.0 is pervasive in the organization". I wonder what you think?
• Post Chris Anderson presentation coaching on applying long tail metrics to web site analysis
• Michael Schrage's observations about the importance of search not just delivering "the" answer but providing a wider view
• Discovering that within organizations a whole new skill area and roles are emerging in "search" product management
• The mind expansion that comes from fortunately sharing a dinner table with Simon Wardley.  3D printing. Smart briefcases using RFID. Discovering what I thought was new was old.

Thank you FAST for a very thought provoking gathering.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

 

Bronwyn Stuckey Update: First Life Research in New Zealand

Bronwyn Stuckey reports an unexpected delay contributing her promised last post.  She finds herself doing "First Life" research on connectivity restraints in rural New Zealand. 

We have no doubt given Bronwyn's thoughtful and eye-opening blog contributions to date that her last will be enriched by the delay.

Meantime Bronwyn ENJOY your New Zealand adventure.

~ Jenny Ambrozek