Here at IBM, we receive many requests from academics interested in virtual worlds research, about our work in Second Life and other virtual environments. For some time, we’ve been wondering what to do with these requests, as there are generally many more than we can field, but yet we’d love to engage. So…. we’ve decided to use our own (new!) Lotus Connections community tools platform, to setup a community for anyone interested in engaging with IBM and their academic peers. The idea being, that many of the requests we receive have similar themes, so by forming a community we can ensure that we don’t all reinvent the wheel and we can all address the big topics that are bubbling to the surface.
Bear with us…
- the tool itself is new (read Beta!)
- it’s early days for us in deciding how best to ”run” this community
- it’s probably me that will have to go in and approve your request
However, rather than waiting for ages and navel-gaze as to the answers and issues above, we thought we’d be ibm2.0 about it and get the thing running and see what happens!
So consider this a very soft and quiet “launch”. If you want to come and play:
- Register for an IBM ID. You’ll need to use an “academic” email address from your academic institution so that we can verify you are an academic.
- Request to join the community.
- Fill our your profile so people know who you are.
- Get collaborating!
Please let us know how we can make it better too!
So… if it becomes something people find useful and is a “success”, we’ll make a bit more of a hoo ha about it, you never know, we might even do a proper launch!
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 23, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Gia
Great idea, Kevin & Co, I am really pleased to see this.
One problem though: What about us independent researchers/academics/academic community supports who have no ac.uk email address?
Very often it is us ‘community megaphones’ who provide the vital nodes and connections to bring community together effectively.
Any thoughts on how we might overcome the verification challenge?
Gia,
Sloodle Community
November 23, 2008 at 7:15 pm
kevinaires
Well, initially we’re planning to do the approvals by hand, so as long as people can point to genuine academic research undertaken and we can verify that the applicant is the person who has done the research, no problem. The email thing was just an obvious way we can show that people are academics, rather than from say recruitment companies etc.
December 4, 2008 at 11:25 am
Climate Conference 08 « Boris in Wonderland
[...] see how others are using Second Life for conferences, especially as we at IBM have just launched an online community for academics interested in virtual worlds. This was their first conference, so they were pretty pleased with the results – well done!
[...]
February 23, 2009 at 11:20 pm
subquark
I have the same inquiry. I am an eLearning developer by day reaching 70,000 in 110 countries and own 12 sims. But when both of those combine, I lecture at conferences on how to use Second Life as a video studio (bring SL to the learner if they can not access SL). I am constantly approached for information on others using SL for educational purposes. I often cite IBM and would love to be more accurate in doing so.
This looks like a great initiative and I wish you the very best with it. Thank you for sharing your expertise and continuing your outstanding example of what collaboration can be.