ThinkBalm’s “Distillery” — an immersive technology selection experience
by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
What do whiskey and enterprise immersive software have in common? Not much, unless you’re on ThinkBalm Island in Second Life (or, shortly, the ThinkBalm region of ReactionGrid). We are excited to announce that construction on The Distillery is complete!
About the Distillery
In January, we published a ThinkBalm Immersive Internet analyst report titled The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide, a use case-based guide designed to aid business decision makers in the enterprise immersive software selection process. This report was sponsored by Linden Lab, ProtonMedia, Teleplace, and Virtual Italian Parks. To develop this report, ThinkBalm analysts held structured briefings with nineteen enterprise immersive software vendors and conducted interviews with fifteen early adopters who were involved in the technology selection process. In the report, we present “if/then” scenarios and highlight good-fit vendors for common situations, with a focus on the most prevalent use cases: meetings, conferences, and learning and training.
The report offers guidance on how to: 1) ask core business questions to frame the discussion, 2) choose a research-and-demo, do-it-yourself, or combination approach, 3) identify requirements based on your use case, and 4) filter your options based on important limiters. The Distillery is an immersive experience built around these concepts. Our intentions are to replace the boring ole’ webinar with an engaging, interactive activity, and create an unforgettable immersive learning experience.
Instead of grain mash being processed and distilled to make whiskey, ThinkBalm’s technology selection process helps business and technology decision makers winnow their vendor options from dozens down to just a few. Stop 1 on the tour is the Options Vat, where we discuss core business questions. Stop 2 is the Requirements Room, where we lead participants through a discussion about the features and functions needed to satisfy the most common use cases: small meetings, large meetings and conferences, and learning and training. Stop 3 is the Filter tower, where we discuss important limiting factors like security concerns, system integration requirements, scalability requirements, and technology prerequisites. The final stop is the Recommendations Room.
Preliminary tour schedule
ThinkBalm will be offering public tours of The Distillery in Second Life at the following times. All times are Second Life time, which is the same as Pacific time. Here is the Time Zone Converter, should you need it.
- Tuesday, March 2, 8-9AM Second Life time (morning)
- Wednesday, March 3, 6-7AM Second Life time (morning)
- Monday, March 8, 5-6PM Second Life time (evening)
We will publish additional tour dates as they are scheduled. We also offer private and semi-private tours for members of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community and for ThinkBalm clients. Let us know if you’re interested.
© 2010 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
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Super, I’m looking forward to the tour! Will you be doing any kind of evaluation/assessment either of learning or some other outcome? I’d be curious to compare the outcomes of the simulation to another approach. If for example, it’s being able to:
1) ask core business questions to frame the discussion, 2) choose a research-and-demo, do-it-yourself, or combination approach, 3) identify requirements based on your use case, and 4) filter your options based on important limiters
It’d be valuable to know to what extent the distillery simulation achieved these competencies in participants as compared with another approach. Just a thought.
Though I’m very new to Second Life, I must say that I am totally amazed by your screenshots! This structure looks immaculate! Furthermore, I’m thoroughly impressed with the concept you created oby combining immersive technology to stimulate business decision making with whiskey. THAT is very creative in itself. Coming from a small coal region town in Pennsylvania that literall has more distilleries than churches, I think this idea of tying two “processes” together can have multiple directions of success. Since I have been inside many plants in my day, as well as researching the art of winemaking and beercrafting, I believe that this can be a huge hit. A process may seem strange for anyone who is unfamiliar with it (especially when I tried to make my first batch of brew…it wasn’t so pleasant). But the more you are exposed to any type of thinking, the easier you can correlate that process with others. The ability to pair and match words or concepts can be extremely helpful in promoting creatinve thinking, and i concur that this structure will be a true gem for both designers and business leaders alike.
Suzanne: You raise a good point, which is the importance of metrics for immersive learning environments. In this situation, I am not sure if we could come up with meaningful metrics. This is because the alternative way that Immersive Internet advocates and explorers can learn about the concepts we are communicating in The Distillery is to read our research report, “The Enterprise Immersive Software Decision-Making Guide.” We don’t measure the amount or quality of learning people get from reading our research, so even if we put some sort of metrics in place for The Distillery, we would have nothing to compare it to. Despite this, you’ve planted a seed and I’ll be thinking about how a company could measure learning outcomes if they created an experience like The Distillery with the explicit aim of training their workforce.
We created The Distillery as another example of the next-generation webinar (our first example was the ThinkBalm Data Garden, which is also on ThinkBalm Island in Second Life. The ThinkBalm Data Garden was based on our report, “The ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009″). Rather than telling people about the power of immersive software, or showing them pictures, we are giving them an *experience* we hope they won’t forget.
Lee: Thanks for the comments. You’ll have to come on one of our tours of The Distillery. We created The Distillery as a stage set, in a way — as a background for a story. I visited the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee a few years ago. Even though I don’t drink whiskey I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of the place, and learning about the processes that go on there. Our distillery entirely unrealistic (anyone who knows anything about whiskey distilleries would laugh at it), but we think it’s fun and we hope it creates a memorable experience for business and technology decision makers trying to select an enterprise immersive software product.