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Future of the Enterprise: Special Event Live from San Francisco

Are virtual worlds ‘ready for enterprise’? How is immersive media being used for training, communication and collaboration? Are there advantages to having virtual world platforms deployed behind enterprise firewalls? What are the lessons learned from leading companies and organizations?

Our very special Metanomics episode was a great success, broadcast live from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco during a mixed reality event on November 4th.

Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab, unveiled “Nebraska”, a stand-alone solution based on the technology that runs the popular Second Life virtual world. “Nebraska” is the much-anticipated behind-the-firewall solution which will allow enterprise to host their own virtual world environments within their organizations. Mark spoke about the benefits of the platform, the intended audience, and how it fits into the broader challenges and opportunities of “enterprise 2.0”.

Mark was joined by a number of customers who have used Nebraska during the closed beta phase of development. The panel explored the benefits, lessons learned, barriers and opportunities which arise from integrating virtual world solutions into the enterprise.

The event included panelists appearing live in San Francisco and others who joined from the Metanomics Main Stage in Second Life.

Robert Bloomfield kicked off the event from the Metanomics main stage, and was joined by Doug Thompson (Dusan Writer) who moderated the discussion from San Francisco.

Event Details:
Following is the event listing from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference:

“We all feel it. Today’s economic, environmental, and business climate is putting tremendous pressure on enterprises to cut costs, innovate faster, and work in a more eco-friendly way. And, these business imperatives are driving forward-thinking organizations to explore emerging technologies that enable teams distributed around the globe to communicate, collaborate, learn, and create more effectively.

Second Life, developed and launched by Linden Lab in 2003, is the world’s leading 3D virtual world environment and solves many of the challenges that we collectively face and offers unique benefits that complement other enterprise collaboration tools. Second Life Residents, including enterprises, have logged more than one billion user hours, generated more than USD1 billion in user-to-user transactions, and over 18 billion minutes of voice.

Join Mark Kingdon, the CEO of Linden Lab/Second Life, to learn more about how hundreds of enterprises and governments are working both in Second Life and find out how they are saving money while taking giant leaps in creativity, innovation, and productivity. Kingdon will also unveil and demo the much anticipated “behind the firewall’ product (code named “Nebraska”). A few enterprise customers will join him to discuss the product and future outlook of immersive, virtual workspaces in a mixed-reality event at the Moscone Center and in Second Life.”“

Join Us
Produced in partnership with Linden Lab and TREET.TV, audience members were able to participate in this mixed reality event in three ways: live at the conference in San Francisco, in-world at the Metanomics Main Stage or one of our Event Partners, and on the Web (broadcast live from this page).

Guest Biographies

Mark Kingdon, CEO Linden Lab

Mark Kingdon is the CEO of Linden Lab which he joined in May 2008. Mark leads the day-to-day management and operations of the company, working closely alongside Linden Lab founder, former CEO and current Chairman Philip Rosedale. Prior to joining Linden Lab, Mark served as Chief Executive Officer of Organic Inc. a leading digital communications agency, building its reputation as a groundbreaking, innovative provider of user-centered design. While at Organic, Mark built the company’s social media and social computing services and launched the company’s emerging platforms practice. Prior to Organic, Kingdon worked with idealab!, providing strategic guidance and operational support to emerging companies. Before that, Mark was a partner with the consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PwC), where he held a variety of senior roles throughout his twelve-year tenure. He received an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from UCLA.

Neil Katz

Neil Katz is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. Currently, Neil is responsible for the IBM technical strategy for immersive virtual worlds as part of the IBM CIO office. Neil has technical experience in multiple disciplines in his over twenty five years in the industry that he now leverages in working with key customers, partners, and as part of the IBM CIO office. This extensive experience includes the mobile computing and wireless industries where he has designed and managed everything from mobile handheld devices (He holds patents on the power management system used in today’s ThinkPad computer) to architecting solutions for IBM’s largest wireless telecommunications customers. In addition to his background in wireless communications and mobile device design he has in depth knowledge in technical areas such as online games, web 3D, messaging, wide area networking including content delivery networks, and network delivered applications including Software as a Service Neil has filed over 50 U.S. patents and is an IBM Master Inventor. Neil holds a B.S.E.E. from the University of Florida and an MBA from Nova Southeastern University.

Steven Aguiar

Steven Aguiar is an Electrical Engineer at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport, Rhode Island. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (1988) and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering (1990) from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. In 1990 he joined NUWC’s Combat Control department and has been involved in all phases of submarine tactical control development and training. In 2005, he acted as NUWC’s Technical Project Manager (TPM) for the U.S. Navy’s Advanced Processor Build – Tactical (APB-T) program responsible for introduction and assessment of new tactical control capabilities into 688i and Virginia class submarines. Most recently, he was appointed Project Lead for the Virtual Worlds Exploration & Application Program and is the estate designer of “Virtual NUWC” (NUWC’s Second Life presence) aimed at the study of various virtual world technologies for potential application to U.S. Navy mission goals.

Douglas Maxwell

Douglas Maxwell holds a MS in mechanical engineering with a focus in modeling and simulation. He is currently a staff researcher at the Center for Advanced Systems Technology (CAST) in the Combat Systems Department at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Division Newport. He has worked successfully with industry and academic partners such as Linden Lab, Qwaq Forums, Forterra, Aptima Systems, and the Naval Postgraduate School’s MOVES Institute to identify virtual world/synthetic environment technology issues related to undersea Navy mission areas.

Mr. Maxwell, working with Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life), organized the first official US DoD presence in Second Life. Mr. Maxwell is also the primary author of the establishing charter for the Military Lands, a coalition of US DoD Second Life sims. The Military Lands Senate was organized by Mr. Maxwell in cooperation with Linden Lab as well as representatives from the Air Force and Army. The purpose of the Military Lands Senate is to provide guidance to other military users of Second Life in the areas of security, deployment, content creation and more.