ThinkBalm Innovation Community is now Tandem Learning Innovation Community
After we broke the news that we planned to disband the ThinkBalm Innovation Community, members of the community expressed lots of interest in finding new leadership for the community moving forward. We are excited to announce that effective immediately, Tandem Learning will assume the community management responsibilities of the newly named Tandem Learning Innovation Community.
The value of this community is in the membership and the collective wisdom and experience of the group, and Tandem’s focus on new technology, user experience, learning design, and strategic business innovation allows them to touch on the areas of interest that bind our community together. We believe the leadership at Tandem is committed to maintaining the integrity of the community while finding new and exciting ways to add value to everyone who participates.
Exciting times are ahead for all of us and we’re looking forward to what happens next!
Erica Driver, co-founder and principal, ThinkBalm
Sam Driver, co-founder and principal, ThinkBalm
We’re so pleased to have the opportunity to continue the amazing work that Erica and Sam began in 2008 as we assume responsibility for the newly deemed Tandem Learning Innovation Community. While we know many of you from our work in virtual worlds and immersive technologies, we’re looking forward to interacting with all of you in the weeks ahead as we plan for the future of the community. In our new role as the community managers, we will honor the tenants of the community as established under ThinkBalm and will seek even more ways to bring value to our members. Please feel free to contact me directly with your thoughts, ideas, and feedback…this community belongs to all of us and it’s your input that will continue to make it valuable and successful.
Koreen Olbrish, CEO, Tandem Learning
Koreen.olbrish@tandem-learning.com
Change is under way at ThinkBalm
by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
At ThinkBalm we’ve had a couple of great years as industry analysts dedicated to covering work-related use of immersive technologies—an early-stage, emerging technology market. We have worked with some terrific people at great client organizations like Altadyn, BP, Chevron, Forterra Systems (now part of SAIC), Linden Lab, Moondus, ProtonMedia, Teleplace, and Tandem Learning. We’ve published nine comprehensive reports spanning market overview, business value, technology selection, barriers to adoption, and best practices—and made this research freely available via our Web site. We launched the ThinkBalm Innovation Community, grew it to more than 470 members, and hosted more than 35 facilitated work sessions, training sessions, and networking events. More than half of our research reports arose directly out of ThinkBalm Innovation Community activities.
We believe that mainstream adoption of immersive technologies in the workplace—virtual worlds, immersive learning environments, and virtual event platforms—is a matter of when, not if. But these technologies are still a new concept to most organizations and overall the barriers to adoption are quite high. In April, we modified our earlier prediction that we expected to reach the early majority adoption phase in 2013, to say we think it will take longer than this. (See the blog post, “Immersive tech for meetings/conferences must be scalable and easy to use.”) One thing is clear: this emerging market does not yet need full-time, dedicated industry analysts to cover it.
In early July, Erica will be joining the marketing team at QlikView, a business intelligence software vendor. Sam will stay on with ThinkBalm for some time to work on client consulting engagements. We won’t be publishing any more general research, and plan to disband the ThinkBalm Innovation Community.
Erica: “My ride is here”
For the past fourteen years, I’ve been a software industry analyst. I’ve researched, written about, and delivered consulting to clients on a wide range of topics. Emerging technologies have always been near and dear to my heart. You’ll find my name not only on ThinkBalm reports about work-related use of the Immersive Internet but on Forrester Research reports about enterprise collaboration platforms, virtual worlds, information workplace platforms, message archiving, and other topics.
One thing I haven’t done yet in my career is influence a software market from the inside. Here’s my chance! It is with great enthusiasm that I have accepted a position as Sr. Director, Global Product Partner Marketing at QlikView. QlikView is an innovative software company with a great product and culture and I can hardly wait to dig into my new role.
One of the greatest gifts of the past two years is the people I’ve met. The people who are working on Immersive Internet initiatives are innovators and free thinkers—truly a special breed. Thank you to all of you who have participated in ThinkBalm Innovation Community events and activities, and in ThinkBalm’s research. I hope you’ll stay in touch.
Sam: “Building businesses”
As a late entrant to the analyst role, the past two years at ThinkBalm have been a tremendous learning experience for me. I had always favored the experimentation and excitement of entrepreneurship and the act of doing things, so I’ll keep working on client solutions as we wind down the analyst business, and will continue to look at individual projects moving forward.
Perhaps the most exciting part of ThinkBalm for me was the exposure to so many innovative thinkers and problem solvers all concentrated in one area. The energy associated with startup businesses, be they tiny shops or a project team inside a larger organization, is what has brought everyone together and made our all-volunteer innovation community such a great resource for us all. I hope to see this spirit continue as the market matures. The connections I’ve been able to make within the community already serve up a wide variety of interesting business ideas directly or peripherally related to immersive technology, and I am looking forward to the future.
© 2010 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
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.
New video: The “global” un-lecture event
By Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
Today ThinkBalm published a new ThinkBalm Innovation Community work product: a seven-minute video titled, “The ‘global’ un-lecture: a ThinkBalm Innovation Community event.” This video is a record of an un-lecture event held on November 6th, 2009 in the virtual world of Second Life. The un-lecture event format consists of four ten-minute presentations, demos, or tours about work-related use of immersive technologies, held in an immersive environment. The theme of the November 6th event was “global.”
This video describes presentations by:
- Dr. Yesha Sivan. Dr. Sivan is a senior lecturer at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design and founder of Metaverse Labs. Dr. Sivan shared insights into Immersive Internet adoption trends in Israel. Some of the barriers Israeli early adopters face are the same as those around the world: technology and perception. Other issues are specific to the region. Yet a handful of immersive technology efforts are under way in Israel and Metaverse Labs is hard at work on technology standards.
- Sid Banerjee. Sid Banerjee is CEO of Indusgeeks, a virtual world development and services company based in Mumbai. Sid gave insights into adoption trends in India. A point Sid wanted to express was that India is an excellent test bed for immersive projects. He made this point: “If you can sell Immersive Internet in India you can sell it anywhere!”
- Claus Nehmzow. Claus Nehmzow is managing director of ALCUS, in Hong Kong. Right now in Asia, the initial focus for immersive technology is on the consumer side, with a number of recreational public virtual worlds and games. Claus’s perspective is that businesses in Asia want to capitalize on the power of immersive technology but explorers are uncertain how to move forward.
- Barbara Westmoreland. Barbara Westmoreland is founder and CEO of nTeams. nTeams provides consulting to help companies develop more cohesive, unified teams. The heart of Barbara’s presentation was a short demo of a part of nTeams Island, which her organization uses to help teams work through issues around values. At the end of the un-lecture event, Barbara and her team gave a magic carpet ride tour around the rest of the facility.
About 25 people participated in this un-lecture event. Participants joined us from all over the US and from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In one hour’s time, we learned about the potential opportunity for adoption of immersive technology in emerging markets in Asia and the Middle East, as well as barriers to entry. We got a first-hand glimpse of the way immersive technology can transform how global teams work together. And we formed new or reinforced existing connections with other innovators and early adopters. If you’re interested in attending future ThinkBalm Innovation Community events, send us a request to join the community via our LinkedIn group.
© 2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
ThinkBalm seeks interviews about the technology selection process
by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
Are you a business or technology decision maker who helped your organization choose an immersive platform or application during the past year? (A partial list of immersive platforms and applications is here.) If so, we would like to interview you for an upcoming research report. These interviews will contribute to our analysis for the upcoming ThinkBalm report, “The Enterprise Immersive Technology Decision-Making Guide.” We expect to publish the report in December and it will be freely downloadable from the ThinkBalm Web site.
If you would like to be interviewed for this research, please contact us at info@thinkbalm.com.
More info about the study
We will be conducting research into how Immersive Internet advocates and implementers involved in the technology selection process picked the right solutions for their organizations. The primary question we are setting out to answer for business decision makers is, “How do I choose the right enterprise immersive technology for my organization’s needs?” The resulting ThinkBalm report will be a tool to assist business decision makers in the technology evaluation process.
This report will not compare particular software or service offerings against each other or recommend one vendor over another. Rather, it will be a use case-based guide designed to help business decision makers ask and begin to answer the right set of questions for their particular situation. We’ll focus on use cases like meetings, learning and training, conferences, business activity rehearsal, collaborative design and prototyping, data visualization, system and facility management, and human resources management. You can find additional details about The Enterprise Immersive Technology Decision-Making Guide in this blog post.
© 2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
Welcome to the new ThinkBalm Web site
by Sam Driver.
We’ve overhauled our web presence, with a focus on finding information more easily.
Some highlights:
- The new and improved homepage, with access to a web-browser based 3D meeting space
- The Reports tab, with quick access to our research reports.
- The Services tab, with descriptions of our offerings for both technology vendors and businesses adopting immersive technology for work.
We hope you like the new look and feel.
© ThinkBalm 2009. All rights reserved.
We’re keynoting 3DTLC!
by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
We are proud to announce that we’ve been invited to deliver the opening keynote at the 3DTLC conference, taking place on September 23rd and 24th in San Jose, California. Our session is titled, “Crossing the Chasm, One Implementation at a Time.”
Before work-related use of the Immersive Internet can reach the early majority phase of adoption we face a wide chasm filled with barriers. This can be overwhelming when looked at as a whole. But the barriers – as well as the benefits – depend on why and how this emerging technology is put to work. Across industries and company sizes, hard-working project teams are applying immersive technology to burning business problems in eight major areas. In this session, we’ll share our research into the business value of the Immersive Internet and offer a set of good practices for knocking down the barriers to adoption.
Here’s where you come in! We are kicking off a new research report digging into how Immersive Internet advocates and implementers are overcoming – or not – the barriers to adoption. We expect to publish this report, which is a follow-on to the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009, on the opening day of the conference. We would like to interview you if you have been part of an Immersive Internet project team and have a story to share about overcoming (or avoiding) barriers like target users having inadequate hardware, corporate security restrictions, getting target users interested in using this emerging technology, or user training taking more effort than you expected. Please contact us at info@thinkbalm.com.
The 3DTLC conference team is offering a $200 discount to attendees who mention this discount code when they register by August 14th: SPEAKERVIP. To register go here: http://www.3dtlc.com.
© 2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
New video: 9-minute tour of ThinkBalm Data Garden
by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
A new video is live: a 9-minute tour of the ThinkBalm Data Garden, which is an experiment in data visualization. The ThinkBalm Data Garden is open to the public on ThinkBalm Island in the virtual world of Second Life. A tour through the garden is an interactive next-generation “webinar” experience based upon the findings of the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Business Value Study, Q2 2009. This video is a ThinkBalm production, with special help from ThinkBalm Innovation Community members Eric Hackathorn, Jeff Lowe, Jonas Karlsson, and Keely Algiere.
© 2008-2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
Immersive Internet professional networking event
by Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
Mark your calendars! We have a date and venue for the the first-ever ThinkBalm Innovation Community professional networking event!
- Who: People passionate about work-related use of the Immersive Internet who are looking for a job, looking for someone to fill a job, or simply curious about their options
- What: First-ever ThinkBalm Innovation Community professional networking event
- When: Tuesday, Aug. 4th from 11AM-2PM EDT / 8-11AM PT
- Where: Amazon Developers island in Second Life (thanks to ThinkBalm Innovation Community member Jeff Barr)
- Why: Make valuable professional connections
- How to RSVP: Please email us at rsvp@thinkbalm.com. You can also RSVP to the event notice on LinkedIn here and we will follow up with you directly.
Preliminary format for the event (subject to vetting — feel free to post comments here):
- Attendees who have something to share (e.g., their resume or a job description) will sign up in advance to deliver a 5-minute presentation. We’ll use a virtual gong (yes, a gong) to make sure we stay on
time. Each presenter will be allowed to use one image or 3D object in support of their presentation. - We will have a rapid networking session using a tool called Poinky’s Pods built by ThinkBalm Innovation Community member Jonas Karlsson. The tool seats you with another person for a five-minute exchange, after which all participants are shifted to another random seat. You never know who you’ll end up talking to!
- We’ll have some kind of solution for people to upload resumes, job descriptions, presentations, etc. . . . and it will all be integrated with LinkedIn.
More details TBD. Hope you can make it!
© 2008-2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
Q and A: ThinkBalm and the ThinkBalm Innovation Community
By Erica Driver and Sam Driver.
The two of us sometimes get questions about what we do for a living. We seem to have created a bit of confusion about the distinction between our industry analysis and consulting business and the ThinkBalm Innovation Community. To clear things up, here’s a Q&A. Let us know if you have additional questions and we’ll answer them in comments on this blog post.
Q: Is ThinkBalm the same thing as ThinkBalm Innovation Community?
A: No. We wear two hats: ThinkBalm is our revenue-generating business, and the ThinkBalm Innovation Community is a volunteer effort we spearhead for the benefit of everyone involved with work-related use of immersive technology.
- ThinkBalm. ThinkBalm is an independent industry analyst firm founded in June, 2008. We are headquartered in Rhode Island, USA. We are two people: Erica Driver and Sam Driver. We deliver Immersive Internet analysis and consulting services to technology marketers and Immersive Internet explorers, advocates, and implementers. We publish industry analysis, good practices reports, and blog articles, all of which are freely available from our Web site at www.thinkbalm.com. The manner in which we create our reports is not business as usual; four of the six published ThinkBalm reports are issues of the ThinkBalm Immersive Internet Storytelling Series, which document ThinkBalm Innovation Community experiences and offer up good practices – and feature contribution from dozens of community members on the “with” lines.
- ThinkBalm Innovation Community. The mission of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community is to advance adoption of work-related use of the Immersive Internet. Since its launch in August of 2008, the ThinkBalm Innovation Community has evolved into a mix between a social network, collaborative laboratory, and guild. It is made up of bright and passionate Immersive Internet advocates, practitioners, and technology providers. This community is focused exclusively on work-related use of the Immersive Internet — virtual worlds and campuses, immersive learning environments, and 3D business applications. We are interested in use cases like learning and training, meetings and conferences, business activity rehearsal, collaborative design and prototyping, collaborative 3D data visualization, remote system and facility management, and human resources management. We have approximately 250 community members in the ThinkBalm Innovation Community group on LinkedIn.
Q: What does the ThinkBalm Innovation Community do?
A: Since its inception, the community has generated nearly a hundred ideas, some of which evolved into projects. Software tools, experimental event formats, and research reports have come out of community interactions and activities. The learning has been phenomenal. We’ve held dozens of brainstorming sessions, role-playing sessions, “un-lectures” (four short presentations, tours or demos in an hour), and other kinds of events. The culture of the community is what makes it so special: we have created a marketing-free haven for explorers to meet and learn from each other, collaboratively solve problems, discuss big picture theory, and network with an open and helpful group of people. The challenge for most of us is in finding a fellow explorer: often there simply aren’t any allies within one’s organization, and the ThinkBalm Innovation Community can provide that gang of allies.
Q: Do I have to be a ThinkBalm client to be a member of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community?
A: No, not at all. We encourage anyone with an interest in work-related use of immersive technology to request membership in the ThinkBalm Innovation Community.
Q: What is ThinkBalm’s business model for the ThinkBalm Innovation Community?
A: ThinkBalm derives no direct revenue from the ThinkBalm Innovation Community; participation is free. All activities are volunteer-driven.
Q: What is ThinkBalm’s research methodology?
A: We conduct surveys and interviews, like many industry analysts do. But ThinkBalm analysts also have daily interactions and deepening relationships with hundreds of people who use the immersive technologies we cover. As of late today, the ThinkBalm Innovation Community group on LinkedIn has nearly 250 members. Also, rather than analyzing the technologies we cover from a distance and making recommendations based on what vendors and their customers tell us; we use immersive technologies hands-on every single day. During the 13 months ThinkBalm has been around, we have held ThinkBalm Innovation Community events and planning meetings in Altadyn 3DXplorer, IBM Sametime 3D (now called Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime), Qwaq Forums, our OpenSim private grid, ReactionGrid, and Second Life. We’re planning future events in Forterra OLIVE and Nortel web.alive. We administer our own immersive environments, have learned how to build 3D content (albeit in a kindergarten kind of way), and have hosted dozens of immersive events and tours. We experience first hand over and over again how difficult it is for new users to get accustomed to working in an immersive environment. We live and breathe the Immersive Internet. It has become a way of work for us. All of this gives us a unique perspective on this emerging technology market.
We hope this helps clear up any confusion. Let us know if you have any questions.
© 2008-2009 ThinkBalm. All rights reserved.
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