ThinkBalm Consulting Update

The change in focus from industry analyst for the immersive technology market to consulting for both software vendors and businesses deploying the technology has been an interesting and exciting few months. In the latter half of 2010, I made the change, and it has led me to take an active role in shaping the product offerings, which is a substantial change from the more impartial role of analyst. Providing consulting has meant a much lower profile than when we were operating the ThinkBalm Innovation Community and publishing research reports, and so I am revamping the ThinkBalm blog to report on some of the interesting developments that are emerging from project deployments.

One major trend is tied directly to the maturation of the products and advocates’ thinking about immersive technology. Experiments are more often giving way to polished project launches, and it is very helpful for adoption to see immersive projects treated the same as any other collaboration or training software solution. Providing consulting to businesses using the technology has likewise given me some exposure to project and product plans that reflect a traditional technology adoption profile. This will enable projects to expand within larger organizations, and will serve as a powerful marketing tool for the vendors, who depend on success stories to drive new leads, particularly because of the emergent nature of immersive technology.

I have also been looking at some elements of online gaming as they relate to collaboration, and will explore a new classification of software tools and capabilities based on individual attendee’s roles rather than the use case for the project. Understanding why different types of people might attend a training session and building tools, habits and techniques to support a varied attendee list can dramatically improve positive experiences for new users.