Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Future of Collaboration

Thursday kicked off with BIF-3 co-host Walt Mossberg joining storyteller Irving Wladawsky-Berger on the stage. They began by reflecting on IBM's great rise followed by a "near death" as the PC rose in dominance; IBM failed to innovate in this space and left it to its competitors. Wladawsky-Berger thinks that you need the near-death experience to drive the kind of innovation that IBM has done since: embracing the Internet, Linux, grid computing, and more. After some backs-and-forth about the differences between how Microsoft and IBM approach research (Wladawsky-Berger asserted that IBM is more "out in the field" in the ballgame of research, while Microsoft does it all from the dugout).

They shifted to Wladawsky-Berger's latest area of focus, virtual worlds, and specifically Second Life. It first caught Wladawsky-Berger's interest when he learned how some people were using Second Life to replace conference calls. The Second Life meetings improved on conference calls in many ways, such as allowing for the kind of pre- and post-meeting chitchat that conference calls support poorly. So IBM left the dugout, and started working with their clients to see how Second Life could become the next collaborative platform. Mossberg mentioned the alternative approaches that are being worked on: powerful telepresence systems like the HP Halo Collaboration Studio. Wladawsky-Berger responded that such systems are incredibly expensive and don't scale well. What if you want to add a third location? What if you want to hold an event with hundreds or thousands of people? Mossberg asked about the limited number of gestures available in Second Life. Wladawsky-Berger responded that this is constantly improving.

Posted October 11, 2007 09:10 AM by Brian Jepson | Permalink