Here is a short little tour of my White Mountain Studio. I made this to test out how to get video into this blog!! I also have a new gallery show in our Third Life Galleries in SL. Just search for Third LIfe, and at the Pier teleport up to the Galleries.
If you want to catch my free VizThink webcast on January 4 at 8:00am PST, on the topic above, register by clicking here. Register. I'll be answering some of these questions. How did National Semiconductor get 95% vision recognition worldwide during its turnaround in the 1990s? Why did HP train its engineering consultants worldwide to use Graphic Guides? Why did Adobe and Macromedia commission a graphic history when they merged two years ago? Why did Alias (now Autodesk) bring David in to teach their visual planners how to work the boards? How did he get 50 NGO and 8 foundations to collaborate in cleaning up the energy system in the upper midwest? What in the world is The Grove doing in Second Life? I'll be working on the tablet and sharing some graphics-- so come join in the fun. it's free.
I just completely a 40 page illustrated retrospective on my learning from an initial year and half exploring Second Life. I've focused on 12 themes that have posed the most interesting questions and learning in this new medium, which increasingly represents an integrated experience in self-organizing, web 2.0 phenomena, all embedded in a 3D dynamic environment. The paper is too long to include here, but you can down load it by clicking on this link. I would love to hear your comments and reactions here however. The picture below is my SL self, Sunseed Bardeen, contemplating all this in my Deimos studio.
Download SecondLifeRetrospective.pdf (2518.2K)
Recently I returned from a trip to England where I led a workshop on Expert Facilitation with our partners, Meeting Magic, and conveyed our first ever Grove Worldwide Network Meeting with six partner firms that are using our products and methods in places like Australia, South Africa, Denmark, Sweden, and England. This post is not about that directly, but about some reflections I had on the way to those events that crystallized some clarity about my purpose and intention for doing this collaborative work that has been my passion for more than 30 years now.
I have finished building out a Grove Gallery on an island sim in Second Life called Third Life Lab. The Grove is collaborating with Gary Merrill, one of our consulting associates to create this space dedicated to exploring the relationship between virtual worlds and real life, with an eye toward increasing our sense of interrelatedness and appreciation of natural systems.
This year is the 30th anniversary of becoming an independent organization consultant and information designer. Thirty years! As this new years begins it’s triggered some reflections about what it means to be in “business” and where we are going with The Grove, the worldwide network of people who are working with the many methods and tools we have developed over those years. What does it mean to be in business? What does it mean to be in business for oneself, which is the way it’s put when a person gets a “DBA” (doing business as) registration and prints business cards? What does it mean to be deeply in service using business as a medium for contribution?
