Awakenings - Roo Reynolds Talk

Roo is a metaverse evangelist based at IBM’s Hursleys Park Laboratory and is part of a team which facilitates the use of Virtual Worlds within IBM. Although Roo is an employee of IBM he made it quite clear that IBM’ers are encouraged to have their own opinion and what they believe is not necessarily the opinion of IBM. He introduced himself as a self confessed geek with far too many usernames and profiles to mention, but he did anyway! He is an active user in Second Life, uploads his photos to Flickr, keeps his bookmarks on del.icio.us, updates his playlist on Last.fm. His location is tracked on plazes.com and he texts Twitter several times a day so his friends can see what he is doing. Not only that but he reads and writes several blogs. Roo believes that these new emerging technologies enable people to keep in touch and collaborate socially at times when it may not be usually possible. He also believes that all this digital information gives people the “hook”, that connection, something to talk about and to strike up friendships with other people and to help extend their social network. All this digital content is created by users and is highly personalised. The use of virtual spaces are used within IBM for many different purposes. IBM'ers are represented in these virtual environments using a virtual identity. Some users choose a virtual character that is close to their real life persona, others do not, in fact Roo reported that one fellow IBM'er is a 'cloud' within second life! Below are some of the uses IBM have for virtual worlds:

• A place to chill, hang out with fellow IBM’ers and socialise
• A place to collaborate, think tanks, brain storm by sharing applications
• Escape real life when real life is boring, i.e. Airports
• Overlay real life and enhance and enrich it with digital information

Roo admits that he can competently complete his work from a train, car, or plane and that work is really only a place for him to actively socialise and interact with his fellow workers and for serendipity to occur. However, in a global organisation it is difficult to create situations were fellow colleagues can meet and interact and for links to be made. The use of these emerging social networking technologies allows people like Roo to connect and interact with friends and colleagues. Roo thinks that work doesn’t have to be boring, in fact it can be fun. If he had to work at 10pm at night he would much rather log into Second Life and have a meeting with a colleague than do a video conference. He believes that it’s not so much about being totally immersed in a virtual world but more about overlaying the real world with interesting things.