Roo Reynolds - What’s Next?

Guild Dinner Party

Posted by Roo - 22/07/08 at 09:07:52 am

A couple of weeks ago, just as I was finally getting sucked into World of Warcraft, I received this mysterious invitation.

Now, this guild is actually a bunch of real-life friends who use Warcraft to hang out together. Members who have outed themselves include Alice Taylor (who recently blogged about receiving some guild postcards) Kim Plowright (who made some awesome cross-stitch patterns) James Wallis (who presented a geophysical study of the World of Warcraft during Interesting 2008 and then wrote up his findings in an essay). I was excited to catch up with these people, and also to get to know the members I have not met yet.

Being a humble level 18 hunter, I didn’t have any suitable clothing for a formal dinner (my skinning and leather-working abilities extend to the embossed leather boots I was wearing and not much further) but Alice Taylor lived up to her name and kindly tailored many beautiful tuxedos and dresses for the guests.

The Wayfarer’s Rest Inn, like the rest of Silvermoon City, is beautiful. A great setting for a formal dinner. James dished out lashings of beer and wine and scrumptious food which included soup, rat kebabs and strawberry ice-cream. We danced and joked and generally, you know, had a party.

Eventually the party spilled out into the street, forming a conga line through Silvermoon City. We then moved on to Thunder Bluff and skinny-dipped in the pool there, before James revealed his final surprise of the evening: a fish course called ‘Savory Deviate Delight‘ which magically transformed us into ninjas and pirates. Yay.

More:

• Alice’s blog post
• Margaret’s blog post
• Mike’s pictures
• My pictures

Moving on from IBM

Posted by Roo - 18/07/08 at 09:07:10 am

Having been an IBMer for more than 10 years, I’m moving on.

I’ve accepted the position of Portfolio Executive, Social Media at BBC Vision. What that means is that I’ll be helping to define, develop and execute BBC Vision’s strategy in relation to social media. Simon Nelson gave a speech in September 2007 about some of the progress made (and challenges faced) by the BBC in regard to multiplatform (more discussion about that here). That’s the backdrop to what I’m going there to help with. No doubt I’ll talk more about the specifics in the coming weeks and months. Oh, and I get to work with such cool people as Dan Taylor and Jo Twist.

10 years is a long time (I got my pen last year) so although I’m very excited about the new role I always knew that I’d be sad when the day finally came to leave IBM. Hursley is a great place to work, but more than anything I’ll miss spending time with some very good friends who work there.

Things I’ll miss about IBM:

• Friends. Lots of friends. So many very good friends. The good thing is that we don’t have to lose touch, but not seeing you all around on the intranet and in person is going to be sad. (Which leads us on to…)
• Regular tea runs. The Hursley Cha Bar is a sort of second home. 66p for a small PG Tips. The Starbucks in White City just might not be the same.
• Hursley itself. The site is a big gorgeous leafy campus with a nice walk around the site, a library, a reading room, 2 pubs in walking distance as well as an onsite bar/clubhouse and a couple of thousand geniuses. It’s beautiful.
• A short drive to work, with a lift-share. (A train + tube journey from Southampton to Wood Lane is probably going to hurt a little bit, even factoring in some working on the train. I haven’t started yet and I’m already looking forward to the London Overground line opening. Southampton - Clapham Junction - Shepherd’s Bush has to be better than Southampton -> Waterloo - Bond St - White City)

Incredibly, I’ve been an IBMer ever since I finished school and started my degree as a sponsored student, way back in 1997. I was initially based in North Harbour before relocating to Hursley because that was where the interesting technical work seemed to be. I had roles in middleware development teams including spells in test, service and development. I’m glad to say that each role was more interesting and fun than the last. I have never had a master plan. I’ve never had long term goal, other than to say yes to everything I physically can, and have as much fun as possible.

In more recent times, that attitude has meant helping develop Business Integration for Games (before IBM, or the world, really took games seriously). I went on to be the the lead developer for a small messaging product called Microbroker before joining the Emerging Technology Services team making proof of concept and first of a kind prototypes for clients. Most recently, I was pleased to see that it really is possible to carve out a new role when I joined Ian in calling myself a Metaverse Evangelist and we were both picked up by the CIO office’s Innovate Quick team on a virtual remote assignment.

I got to meet a lot of clients and business partners in this role, so I know very well that IBM continues to impress people as being surprisingly advanced and interesting for a company of its age and size. Not only that, but IBMers are treated as grown ups; we get to use our common sense. If it was not for the freedom and trust which IBMers enjoy, I’d have left a very long time ago.

The thing that has made IBM such a great place to spend a third of my life (!) is the people I’ve worked with. Don’t lose touch - I’ll still be on LinkedIn, blogging, Twittering, etc.

I’ve worked with some great people and on some great projects, and it’s good to be leaving on a high. I don’t regret anything about my time at IBM, and I’m only going because it’s time for me to have even more fun elsewhere.

Goodbye, IBM. Hello, BBC.

Update: I’m overwhelmed by your lovely comments, compliments and travel tips. Thank you, everyone.

Headphone Fun

Posted by Roo - 17/07/08 at 04:07:29 pm

I have a pair of JVC HA-FX300B sound isolation headphones which

come with three different sized silicon rubber earpieces and a pair of memory foam earpieces for a customized fit

They look like this

and cost me a bit less than $100 (somehow I only buy headphones in airports, and usually American airports). These rely on a good fit from the memory foam to block out external noise. It’s a lot like popping in a pair of earplugs, but with built in headphones.

I have a pair of Sony MDR-NC22 noise cancelling headphones. These

have an inside microphone on each earpiece that work with an electronic circuitry to create an opposite sound wave to reduce wave. Up to 75% ambient noise cancellation (12dB at 30Hz)

They look like this

and also cost me a little bit less than $100.

Taking the memory foam earpieces from the JVC HA-FX300Bs and fitting them to the Sony MDR-NC22s cost me nothing, and really works. The fit is (just) good enough that the memory foam pieces don’t fall off and get stuck in your ear canal, which is what I was scared of when I first tried it and still terrifies me. Apart from that, I can’t see any reason not to upgrade them in this way; now I have the best of both worlds: sound isolation and noise cancelling. Great for long flights.

Jesse Thorn interviews Ze Frank

Posted by Roo - 16/07/08 at 10:07:34 am

Perhaps the two most awesome people on the internet, making each other laugh and talking about the web for half an hour.

Ze Frank on The Sound of Young America from Jesse Thorn on Vimeo.

Ze talks about ‘internet icebreakers’ and the web as a participatory platform

“…around 2003 it became very obvious that the web wasn’t just a publishing platform, it was a participatory platform as well. You could provide little areas where people do the work for you and you take the credit for it. It’s called Web 2.0″

They talked (of course) about Ze’s daily video blog, The Show (which you may remember I mentioned last year, as it was coming to a close). More things: “The great thing about a conversation is that the other side fills in the gaps for you”, If The Earth Were a Sandwich. Did you know that Ze is co-writing a movie? Color Wars, “Place can’t be the dominant metaphor”, games which cross boundaries, and more.

* is what a(n) * calls a(n) *

Posted by Roo - 15/07/08 at 10:07:43 pm

A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist.

- Sir Humphrey Appleby, ‘Yes, Minister’

Searching the web for variations on the “* is what a * calls a *” snowclone turns up things like

• A cynic is what a romantic calls a realist
• A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist
• a cult is what a big religion calls a small religion
• A stable is what a pimp calls a group of women that prostitute for him
• a Squid is what a dumb Jarhead calls a sailor
• A Hottie is what a racing drivers calls a fast lap
• a hypothesis is what a scientist calls a theory
• a “deli water bottle” is what a New Yorker calls a bottle of water purchased in a deli
• a player is what a woman calls a guy who doesn’t want to go out with her
• a “flea” is what a surgeon calls a pediatrician-in-training
• a calorie is what a physicist calls a kilocalorie
• a pressure ulcer is what a doctor calls a pressure sore
• A bulkhead is what a sailor calls a wall on a ship
• a jarpie is what an Aussie calls a saffie

I love the way these open up more questions. A Jarhead is a marine, but what’s a saffie?

Of course the web also turns up some staggeringly stupid examples, including A pessimist is what a realist calls an optimist, if I recall the quote correctly. Wuh?

Given my investigation into * is the new * last year, I naturally wondered how I’d go about graphing these. A quick experiment with Graphviz gives me a couple of alternative approaches.

Even just wondering how to map these three-way relationships (in which all three parts might be re-used) gives some interesting choices. So far, I think B works better than A. You learn more from it. To tell me which two people call the realist a cynic using A, you’d have to read all the labeled edges. B is much easier. I’m sure I’m missing some obvious alternative approaches here though.

Maximum Fun

Posted by Roo - 14/07/08 at 03:07:14 pm

I’m proudly wearing my brand new ‘Sound of Young America’ t-shirt today. It looks a bit like this.

Since I’m probably Southampton’s biggest fan of Jesse Thorn (you may remember that I’ve raved about the amazing ‘Jordan Jesse, GO!’ podcast before) I was really pleased, having started donating, to get some parcels this week. There was a poster (of which I need to take a decent photo), this lovely t-shirt and, perhaps best of all, a Maximum Fun Club membership card which states that I am “committed to being more awesome in all matters” and “a proud adherent of the principles of The New Sincerity“. The fact that even posting all of this stuff to the UK has cost Jesse more than I’ve donated so far just makes me love him all the more. What an investment in the fans. Thank you, Jesse.

Open Tech 2008

Posted by Roo - 07/07/08 at 04:07:56 pm

Photo of Kim Plowright speaking at Open Tech 2008 shared by O’Reilly GMT.

I went to Open Tech 2008 on Saturday. Open Tech describes itself as

an informal, low cost one-day conference on technology, society and low-carbon living, featuring Open Source ways of working and technologies that anyone can have a go at

['at which anyone can have a go', surely?]

If you’re wondering about its heritage, before Open Tech 2008 came Open Tech 2005 (at which BBC Backstage was launched), NotCon 2004 (which saw the launch of TheyWorkForYou, which Cory Doctorow called the worlds finest advocacy web site and I also love) and the NTK Festival of Inappropriate Technology in 2002.

Those of you who know me know that I am a geek, but I was thoroughly outgeeked by many of the participants at the event. In fact, it which was every bit the geek-fest I expected it to be but (with very few exceptions) the presentations turned out to be engaging and interesting. It was easy to find something of interest in the packed schedule with its three parallel sessions. To give you a sense of how packed (and how easy), here are just some of the things I missed…

• Tom Watson MP
• Paul Downey talking about ‘The Web is Agreement‘
• Simon Willison talking about OpenID
• David Hayes talking about Edenbee
• Francis Irving talking about mySociety
• Jeremy Keith talking about Microformats
• Danny O’Brien talking about ‘Living on the Edge of the Network’
• Ian Forrester talking about Data Portability
• Adrian Hon from Six To Start talking about We Tell Stories

And here’s what I saw, with my woefully inadequate notes for each session…

Continue reading Open Tech 2008…

Argh. A wasted opportunity for an ARG

Posted by Roo - 06/07/08 at 09:07:25 pm

Considering that season two of Torchwood had an accompanying Alternate Reality Game, I was excited to see what was apparently a mobile phone number prominently featured in the penultimate episode of Dr Who.

It even completely filled the screen for a few moments.

Considering the amount of screen time given to something that was ostensibly Dr Who’s mobile number, it seems more incredible that this wasn’t the beginning of an ARG. It turns out to be one of the telephone numbers reserved by Ofcom for drama purposes.

Bah. What a wasted opportunity. That was a rabbit hole waiting to happen.

Current Cost presentation at Open Tech 2008

Posted by Roo - 06/07/08 at 09:07:54 pm

Here’s the presentation Nick and I gave at Open Tech 2008 yesterday.

Brief thoughts on virtual worlds

Posted by Roo - 27/06/08 at 01:06:59 pm

My boss’s boss Luba recently asked me to put together a short video for an internal conference on the future of applications. I didn’t have long, so I wandered around Hursley with my camera and my laptop for an afternoon, thinking out loud about the near future for virtual worlds.

For anyone following virtual worlds, none of this will come as a surprise. It’s just a very quick summary covering some subjects I tend to talk about a lot anyway.

In putting it together, I distracted myself by buying the full version of ScreenFlow, which made the gratuitous picture-in-picture stuff from 2:09 onwards stupidly easy and is generally a lot of fun.

Update: transcript:

Introduction
Hello. My name’s Roo and I’m here in IBM Hursley.

There’s a number of virtual worlds projects now. Not all of them are external. Not all of them are public-facing, although there are some of those as well There’s a variety of recruitment events and conferences - public outreach is definitely a big thing for IBM in virtual worlds - but unlike most companies it’s not the only thing we do. We’re also exploring collaboration. There are a number of different projects now, inside IBM’s firewall, exploring what does it mean to come together and work as a team when you’re using a virtual world. Is it different to Instant Messaging? Is it different to using a teleconference? And the answer seems to be that yes, it is different.

Interoperability

In the last 12 or 18 months there have been a lot of people meeting and talking and signing deals and agreeing to interoperate and open up a lot more. Linden Lab have made a joint press release with IBM in which we talk about avatar portability and being able to move your avatar between virtual worlds. A lot of people hear that and they get confused. They start thinking, well I don’t want my Dwarf from World of Warcraft to move into my Second Life space, that would be nonsensical. And indeed it would be. There’s very limited appeal for that kind of interoperability. I think what people really could be thinking of instead is more like could I bring my friends list with me? Could I bring my contact list? Could I bring my wallet? Could I bring my inventory? What are the standards what are the services that are going to be required in order to make true interoperability between virtual worlds make sense.

Bringing together different services APIs and data sources in the intranet and visualising them and allowing people to come together and collaborate around those things. It’s all SOA. It’s all just Service Oriented Architecture. We’re simply treating a virtual world as another endpoint - another way of consuming and composing different services and bringing them together.

Augmented reality

Once you get into the idea of a mobile device with a screen and a camera and sufficient processing power to do some interesting things then augmented reality starts to rear its head as well. This idea of dynamic overlays on top of the real world, and holding up your mobile phone and looking through the screen and using the camera and the onboard processing to display real-time information about the real world.

I don’t like making predictions, but I think I can pretty confidently say that we should pay attention to augmented reality. I think it’s going to be a pretty important theme in the next generation of applications.