Link: We've been blogged at New World Notes

New World Notes, an influential Second Life blog, has our Augmented Reality video listed.

However, he thinks we are from New Zealand, not that I mind too much about being confused with our neighbours. Choice bro'!

I was wondering why my Google Analytics stats were high for this month. ;-)

Ross

Video: Augmented Reality Process Modelling Tool

In this video we show a prototype BPMN process modelling tool which uses Augmented Reality techniques to increase the sense of immersion.

The avatar represents a remotely logged in user, and facilitates greater insight into the editing actions of the collaborator than present 2D web-based approaches in collaborative process modelling.

We modified the Second Life client to integrate the ARToolkit in order to support pattern-based AR.

Open Source version of this project will be available soon.

Ross

News: Unity Powered Web SL/OpenSim Viewer

Tipodean technologies has just released a web-based browser called Canvas, for OpenSim and Second Life.

Tipodean is run by an Australian, Chris Collins, ex Linden Labs.

November 29, 2010 - Tipodean Technologies is pleased to announce the preview launch of Canvas, a web-based viewer for both Second Life and Opensim. Licensed from IBM, Canvas is unique in that it is highly scalable and easily customizable. Built with Unity3D and open web technologies, the web development community will be able to create unique and branded immersive virtual world experiences without having to know/learn new or complex code. The viewer can run as a hosted solution for individual use or be deployed to be hosted by others. "Canvas gives you the ability to have a light weight web-based virtual world solution that can configured to whatever your needs may be. Combing Canvas with OpenSim allows for an out-of the-box scalable virtual world deployable in the web", said Chris Collins, CEO of Tipodean Technologies.

Tipodean will be distributing and supporting Canvas. It will be offered in two forms: on a per user basis and as a completely customized deployment. Distribution of Canvas will start the week of December 6th, 2010. For more information, please contact Tipodean at +1 (415) 669-4028 or canvas@tipodean.com.

Tipodean Technologies is a company focused on virtual world technology that is easily accessible to all.

Ross

VIdeo: Second Life to SAP Netweaver

An older video here of SAP Netweaver system integrated into Second Life as a user interface.

The example shows a 3D interface to an airline booking system. While not a generalised interface to business processes like our work, it is a great example of the interface possibilities for Second Life style systems.

Ross

CFP: SIOP MUVE Conference 2011

REQUEST FOR PAPERS

The study of Multi‐User Virtual Environments (MUVEs), like Second Life and OpenSim, is a brand new area of investigation in industrial/organizational psychology. Researchers in I/O
Psych study the application of psychological principles to workers and worker behavior in a
wide variety of settings, from large multinational corporations, to small businesses, to the
military. MUVEs are being used in these settings for many reasons, including recruitment,
selection/interviewing, training and development, leadership studies, and many others.

We are currently seeking collaborators for a symposium submission on MUVEs to the 2011
conference of the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology [SIOP]. The SIOP conference
attracts approximately 4000 academics and practitioners from a variety of fields, most typically
including I/O psychology, human resources, organizational behavior, and management.
OBHRM professionals are also often in attendance. Together, this composition offers ample
opportunity to establish new partnerships, collaborations, and contracts with a wide variety of
organizations.

Symposia at the SIOP conference are one‐ to two‐hour presentations consisting of 3 to 7
individual theoretical or empirical presentations, followed by a discussant that gives
commentary on the papers presented. Individual presentation lengths vary, but are typically 20
to 30 minutes. For this symposium, we are targeting empirical submissions, but high quality
theory is also welcome. Case studies of MUVEs deployed in actual organizations (outside the
lab) would be of high value.

The 2011 SIOP Conference will be held in downtown Chicago, IL. Each paper submitted in a
symposium is abstract‐length, and the deadline for this submission is September 15, 2010.
If you are interested in being a part of this symposium, please contact Richard N. Landers
(rnlanders@odu.edu), Assistant Professor of I/O Psychology at Old Dominion University to
discuss it in further detail.

Relevant URLs:

General SIOP Conference Website: http://siop.org/conferences/default.aspx
R. N. Landers: http://rlanders.net | http://neoacademic.com
SIOP: http://siop.org

Book Chapter: Virtual environment visualisation of executable business process models

I have just uploaded a Book Chapter draft reference to QUT eprints that will be part of a book being published - Virtual Technologies for Business and Industrial Applications: Innovative and Synergistic Approaches.

This details our work regarding the linking of YAWL and Second Life, as per this video.

Contact me for further information about the paper.

Ross

Paper: AMCIS 2010 Collaborative business process modeling using 3D virtual environments

I have just uploaded our new paper accepted for AMCIS 2010 to the QUT Eprints Site. This paper details a collaborative BPMN modeling environment that my Masters student Stephen West has built for Open Simulator and Second Life. The main outcome is the creation of a useful 3D space to collaborate around a process model. A video of the work is posted here.

Jan Recker will be presenting the paper at AMCIS 2010. This work is part of our ongoing projects in the area of collaborative process modelling. Contact me if you need a copy of the paper before AMCIS.

Well done Stephen.

Ross

Video: Auckland University Hospital Sim

Scott Diener, a Virtual Worlds researcher at University of Auckland, has a great Hospital Sim he and his team have developed on the Long White Cloud region in Second Life. The full version of the video is found here. He is also part of an Open Sim grid being operated by New Zealand Universities.

He has also assisted us in some of our research, with a demonstration of our process system being developed within the Auckland Sim for a book chapter we have had published. Details soon.

Ross

Video: Collaborative Second Life BPMN Editor

Stephen West, a Masters student I am supervising, has created a BPMN editor in Second Life as an assignment for one of our BPM units at QUT. Full size video here.

His idea is to create a BPMN pool on the ground, upon which tiles are laid to create a process model. This form of representation is very amenable to collaborative modelling, due to its use of a flat shared space in the Virtual Environment. We are writing this work up as a conference paper, that will appear on this site shortly. We will follow up with a teamwork example in this space, to explicate the collaborative capabilities of such an editor.

Ross

Second Life Business Report Q2 2009

Second Life continues to grow, despite doom reports about its demise. These results are from Linden Labs., so some sping is assumed. However, there are rules about financial reporting for businesses that should be assumed here as well. So despite reports to the contrary, Second Life continues to be a viable and growing environment.

For me this is not such an issue, since my work in this space is around the Open Simulator project, in particular, using such a world to visualise Business Process Models. But I do have to comment, that this field is still gaining pace as a serious place for business...

Just wish I could get some content out (once purchased) and into my other sims!

Ross

Second Life and Medical Processes

Interesting post at the Dr Yesha blog about medical training in Second Life. Seems that Health is now a big user of virtual environments, with a lot of research being performed into its benefits. Intersects with a lot of my research with the Smart Services CRC in Australia.

Back on a Positive Note

Has been a while since I posted on this blog. Have been very busy with various papers and research and other work. So, thought I would begin the return with a reference to the positive results from Second Life's economy in this article. Have noticed myself that the online numbers of people has actually been steadily rising each time I log into the virtual world.

As I have suggested before, once the Gartner hype cycle dies, we will see the real applications emerge for such virtual world technology. Seems the savings in cost for in-world meetings is becoming attractive now, with the GFC draining a lot of travel budgets.

Ross

BPMVE at BPTrends.com

Our work at QUT in using Second Life and YAWL to visualise business processes has made its way to the popular website www.bptrends.com, run by Paul Harmon.

The link to the article is here.

Ross

Name droppings

Yep, we have been written up in the news again at Metaverse Online Journal.

Ross

BPMVE In the News

It has been a while since I have blogged here - due to a double teaching load this semester. So I will start proceedings off with a bang. My work, as blogged here, has made it to the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and the Courier Mail - Brisbane. All the papers are owned by the same people of course.

Apparently I am the creator of YAWL now...not sure Arthur ter Hofstede will be that impressed.

Ross

Kzero Metaverse Analysis Information

Kzero have released their analysis of population and marketing statistics for virtual worlds. This is represented as a Universe Graph. Note the position of Second Life in the 30 plus age bracket. Others are larger, but have a younger demographic.
Possibly suggesting more scope for serious use of the technology, than other fields.

I would argue that this is due to the configurability of SL, and its ability to garner information from other sources on the internet, and produce visualisations as such in situ, as we have shown with business processes at QUT.

BTW, the graph is a nice intuitive visualisation of Age Demographic with Age of World using a Polar Coordinate approach.

Ross

YAWL and Second Life Linked

My intern student from France has been very busy, and has completed his project with me at QUT. We now have YAWL and Second Life talking to each other, in a similar way to my earlier work with Half Life Two in previous posts.



I have embedded a video from Youtube of the system in action, titled Clik Goes to Hollywood. What we have done in effect is to facilitate the 3D collaborative visualisation of dynamic business process models. The visualisation has been developed from the 2D YAWL control flow model illustrated at the top of this post, into a 3D animation in Second Life, embedded below as a video. The process model illustrated is drawn from the YAWL4Film project being undertaken by the BPM Research Group at QUT. Clik, the avatar in the animation, is not controlled by a human, but is controlled by the YAWL workflow engine.



More will be revealed as I duly publish some papers...

Ross

IBM and Linden Lab Interoperability Announcement

Maybe I should have title this one "Beam me up Scotty." Over at the Second Life blog there has been a recent announcement of the ability to teleport out of Second Life, and into Open Sim environments on other servers. Thus a portal technology, developed as an OpenGrid protocol, means that avatars (not real people yet :-) ) can move between different forms of virtual worlds.

Suddenly struck me tonight that this is a change in perspective, with regards to logging into an IT system. Your embodied avatar (your ego centre in these worlds) is able to transfer itself along the Internet. Thus instead of you having a sense of being stationary, and traversing the computer systems you use, now your ego centre (embodied as an avatar) moves to the location of the computer system you are interacting with in a faux spatial transformation.

What has this to do with business processes? This means that instead of dealing with an abstract system with menus, dialogs and such, you actually can map the process system into a 3D space for interaction. My questions are:

• What does this do to your perception of an information system?
• Does it make it seem more immediate? - as its controls are mapped to intuitive, spatial and temporal artefacts for you to manipulate.
• Do you have a greater/lesser sense of control?
• Does it change your understanding of what the process model is doing?

Lots of research questions here to explore...

Ross

Amazon Dynamic Systems in Second Life

Over at a blog by an Amazon worker Jeff Barr, there is a great article on him visualising Amazon services within SL. Looks like excellent work, and am awaiting the slurl to take me to the live version...

Such visualisations make it a lot easier to understand the Dynamics of the service being investigated. Much easier, as I have said many times before, than using static diagrams to simulate business processes. Plus the collaborative nature of Second Life facilitates interactions with fellow stakeholders in the business.

Stay tuned, QUT will have its own offering in this area soon.

Ross

Interesting Blog

Just came across this blog at http://www.dryesha.com/. Israeli researcher looking at various aspects of business and standards within Second Life. His latest an entry is about a Mobile interface to SL.

Useful for being summoned to in world chats, and being contacted by in world business applications. I imagine a graphical representation of SL will be coming soon for this application.

Ross