Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime announced at Enterprise 2.0

June 24 2009

This is pretty cool stuff...



IBM today announced that a new service, Virtual Collaboration for Lotus Sametime, is now available. The service allows Lotus Sametime users to set up and use virtual meeting spaces securely behind-the-firewall with avatars. ...

Using Sametime 3D, people can select colleagues from their Lotus Sametime contact list, and then invite them to participate in a virtual meeting. Participants can meet in a boardroom, an auditorium or a collaboration space.

Once they enter the virtual meeting, avatars can use text or voice chat, or both, to communicate. They can then share presentations or other materials, and take notes using virtual flip charts. In the collaboration space, they can share ideas and other information on a brainstorm wall. Participants can then store, update, prioritize and vote on this information. Content can be imported and acted upon both in and out of the virtual meeting space.
Link: Made in IBM Labs: Secure, 3D Meeting Service Now Available with Lotus Sametime >

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Sametime Unified Communications  Add/View Comments [26]

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  1. 1  Chris Miller http://www.IdoNotes.com | 6/24/2009 11:18:26 AM

    I got to play with and see this earlier. Cool stuff, but will take some effort to get everyone using it instead of just chats and instant meetings.

  1. 2  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 6/24/2009 11:22:26 AM

    Will IBM ever actually ADVERTISE (Gasp!) LotusLive products?

    It doesn't have to be TV or Radio (although that would be nice). But I would just once like to not see a "WebEx" ad when I log into LinkedIn (and countless other sites).

    Citrix and Cisco both seem to find this genre of service worthy of some pretty heavy advertising budgets, how come IBM does not come to the same conclusion? Do they feel that Citrix and Cisco are simply throwing money out the window?

  1. 3  Rory Wohl http://www.rorywohl.us | 6/24/2009 11:36:38 AM

    Hey Ed -

    Whatever happened to IBM's big push into Second Life? We don't hear much about it (or Second Life, for that matter) much anymore. Is that because it's been so widely adopted within IBM that it's just "business as usual" or did the initiative fizzle?

    Thanks,

    - Rory

  1. 4  David Bell  | 6/24/2009 11:51:23 AM

    @3 - VCS is an actual business collaboration tool that has been made possible by the IBM work with Second Life; an on-premise version of SL is the foundation of this solution.

  1. 5  David Bell  | 6/24/2009 11:51:51 AM

    @3 - VCS is an actual business collaboration tool that has been made possible by the IBM work with Second Life; SL technology is the foundation of this solution.

  1. 6  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/24/2009 11:52:28 AM

    @2 this isn't about LotusLive. And as far as LotusLive, until it is a pay-by-credit-card approach, there's no point in doing end-consumer advertising as you describe.

    @3 Good question. I was never really connected to those efforts. I think SecondLife suffered from an extremely heavy client and the perception issues related to the adult content that moved in early. While I'm excited about the virtual meetings technology (and have used it a couple of times internally already), I already am too busy in first life to spend time in secondlife.

  1. 7  tom http://www.codepress.net/b | 6/24/2009 12:21:54 PM

    I will sadly admit that I got caught up using Google's Lively client.

    I applaud the efforts. I don't think it will be the "norm" for meetings... but I think it's great for disparate teams to meet in such an environment.

  1. 8  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 6/24/2009 1:52:58 PM

    @6 - That actually brings up another question. For a little while anyway, one could actually put in a credit card number. Now one cannot, as you described. What happened?

  1. 9  Joseph Hanke http://www.ntc.edu | 6/24/2009 3:39:47 PM

    Our site was one of the pilot participants. It could be a very promising tool in our educational enviornment. We had a wide range of users. Users who were familiar with 2nd life to users who didn't know what 2nd life was. I would say in 30-45 minutes, everyone was able to fully function on the server, putting up post-it notes, to chatting, and even changing their avatars. We are very excited about this product. I am hoping we dump our 2nd life island and get this instead. Actually knowing who is in the room instead of guessing who the person is, is a big selling point for us.

  1. 10  Kurt B  | 6/24/2009 6:15:50 PM

    This IS cool. Does it support multi-way audio?

  1. 11  Carlos  | 6/24/2009 6:21:06 PM

    I don't get it. Where is the business value in this over just using regular Sametime meetings with chat, whiteboard etc.

  1. 12  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 6/24/2009 9:58:08 PM

    @11 really? I think for those of us who frequently participate in e-meetings, this is a great tool for visualization, more free-form interaction among meeting participants (as opposed to one-at-a-time on the microphone), things like that. Did you read the comments @9 above?

  1. 13  Phil Salm  | 6/24/2009 9:58:26 PM

    @11, I couldn't agree more.

    @6, When Cisco advertises its Telepresence on TV, are they trying to get me to buy it for my home? When I see their phones in what seems like every NBC TV show produced, are they expecting that I'll replace my home phone with a Cisco IP phone? Ed, you've pulled out this excuse for lack of consumer marketing before, and it doesn't hold water.

    How about Apple's iPhone--consumer marketing out the wazoo. You could say it's a consumer device so of course they have lots of consumer focused marketing. But why has there been such uproar over the delay in full Lotus Notes support for iPhone if it's just a consumer device?

    Drop this offering and put the money to advertising.

  1. 14  Brian Green  | 6/24/2009 10:31:24 PM

    @13, I've been using the iUi toolkit to create lightweight Domino applications for the iPhone. It's similar to the iNotes Ultralight idea. The lesson here, for me anyway, is that simple UI can make an application much easier to use. (I understand this better every time I see Chris Blatnick's present at 'sphere). What would be interesting is if IBM provided a companion toolkit for iUi, to help write iPhone (Safari) applications.

    @Topic, I wrote this on Alan's blog a few years ago. :)

    Future Press: IBM released their innovative "Sametime World" conferencing solution. Users were impressed! Network Administrators, of course, demanded more granular Sametime Policy settings to lock-down user preferences like: clothing choice, theme song, and dance styles.

  1. 15  David Bell  | 6/24/2009 10:55:04 PM

    @11 - so do you prefer to be (or work with) a faceless voice behind a two dimensional display or do you prefer to be in a meeting room where you can see gestures, interact with different mediums and tools, and generally express your real self ?

    Personally I feel face-2-face meetings are more interesting.

    This solution begins to bridge the gap between the two.

  1. 16  Randall Shimizu  | 6/25/2009 2:49:07 AM

    Ed

    @4 Do you mean that a 2nd life server can be running on a customer site.

    The only problem it's hard to view text and presentations. Either 2nd life needs a higher resolution or more bandwidth or both... This where the economic stimulus package is needed.

  1. 17  Carlos  | 6/25/2009 6:07:04 AM

    @15 "bridge the gap" - if you want something closer to face-2-face then why not use video conf. How do I get my cartoon avatar standing in a park to shake its head, CTRL+LEFT ARROW+RIGHT ARROW+LEFT ARROW ?

    @Ed - still come across many users that struggle with basic email/calendar functions let alone online meeting tools. Adding an avatar that needs to be dressed, placed and controlled just adds complexity.

    @14 I like the iUi companion toolkit idea. Now that porn apps are allowed { Link } we should see a major spike in iPhone sales. Hmmm where's that old image repository app I developed years ago ;-)

  1. 18  Mike McP http://openntf.org/mPortal | 6/25/2009 7:39:16 AM

    I agree with Carlos. This is just too much 'fluf', and I can imagine users (paid employees) spending countless time setting up and tweaking their avatar, to the point where it becomes a distraction to the meeting. It's cool as a pure experiment, but I wouldn't put much effort into trying to sell this.

    I'd rather throw a cheap webcam on the PCs in the office, which would be a likely cheaper and more authentic experience.

  1. 19  Paul W  | 6/25/2009 12:06:30 PM

    @18 by authentic you mean seeing people picking their nose, teeth and other personal habits best not mentioned? Some people just arn't comfortable with the way they look on camera so this solution is ideal. It doesn't need to be complicated setting up a personna in the virtual world, you can keep the tweaks to a bare minimum.

  1. 20  David Bell  | 6/25/2009 11:47:28 PM

    @16 - it's not SecondLife, it's the technology/platform on which SecondLife is based, to generate the virtual worlds/meeting locations, but running on-premise as opposed to publicly accesible. At least that is my understanding.

  1. 21  Henning Heinz  | 6/26/2009 4:23:05 AM

    Ok, I had a good laugh. That's a joke, isn't it!?

  1. 22  Bill Brown  | 6/26/2009 1:32:17 PM

    @17 I can only imagine what sort of key combination would be required to perform a one finger salute. :)

    @18 We have users that do the constant tweaking to their desktops now. Tweaking their avatar will be just one more thing to mess with.

    @19 Those problems already exist w/ f2f meetings and existing video conferencing. Only advantage will be we won't know if Ed is attending VCS meetings in his jammies.

    Does this make anyone else think of Max Headroom { Link } ) ?

  1. 23  Bill Brown  | 6/26/2009 1:49:10 PM

    Link above is broken by the link generation code. The closing ) in the Wikipedia URL was not included in the URL.

  1. 24  Wayne  | 6/29/2009 2:54:23 AM

    I actually think this is cool. To be able to start out with a large group of people and break out into smaller sub groups (walk into another room) and then come back together is something which cannot be done with other remote meeting tools.

    As some of the other people commenting have pointed out I don't think its for everyone right now but just as an asife, I used to work for a company where people drove for two hours to meet up in service stations on the motor way to have their meetings. They didn't see that as a waste of time. Those people have most likely moved to tele-conferences now but give them another 15 years and they will be doing this.

  1. 25  David Bell  | 6/29/2009 5:36:08 PM

    One point that should not be missed.

    While our competition is focusing on helping you write a better document, spreadsheet or presentation and charging you more for the privilege (i.e. the document-centric collaboration model of the 90's with 2009 prices), IBM is not only researching but delivering new paradigms of collaboration, by advancing the thinking and technology behind it.

    Whether you think your business is ready to adopt or use something like this is another matter; one vendor is leading, the other is asking you to wait yet again for their next version of collaboration 1.0.

  1. 26  Randall Shimizu  | 6/29/2009 8:48:49 PM

    @Ed please clarify...?

    @20My understanding is that this is 2L internal server that IBM is running. So this not a publicly accessible. There would also probably be private islands for companies to host private events. There is also supposed to be the ability to move from IBM 2L server to the public 2L environment as well.

    I am wondering if companies will be able to hose their own 2L servers.