john seely brown
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Spin looks to bring high-fidelity group video chatting to iPhone and iPad
For the past year, three relatively low-profile but intriguing iPhone and iPad apps from developer Net Power & Light have graced the App Store: Together Talks, Together Justice and Together Learn are all built on the company's core Spin technology. Each app provides a collaborative video chat community around a specific content source; Talks aggregates TED talks, for example. But this week NP&L is doubling down on Spin with a standalone, user-driven free iOS app that's meant to give you a new way to connect with friends and family. The Spin name, according to company co-founder and CEO Tara Lemmey, comes from the concept of quantum spin and the ability of subatomic particles to be "entangled" with one another, preserving their connection even over cosmic distances. This Spin, while not quite so complicated, still brings a lot to the table. The new app is "capable of delivering truly immersive real-time 'together' experiences," says NP&L, by putting real-time, high fidelity video chat (even over LTE networks) alongside synchronous media sharing. Spin makes it easy to call up a video chat with a group of contacts (up to 10 simultaneously) or schedule chats around shared events (sports, favorite TV shows, etc.). Once in the Spin experience, participants' camera feeds share space with YouTube and Facebook videos, or photos sourced from Facebook, Flickr or the device itself. With a flick of a finger, different bits of media can take center stage, and users can add their input with onscreen doodles, fun animated props (a vuvuzela? really?) or just chat away. Want to focus your attention on one participant? Make their avatar bigger and they'll get louder, just as though they were closer to you in real life. The whole experience is pushed out at the maximum available quality for both audio and video; full AirPlay mirroring support allows you to push out the conversation to the big screen. NP&L has some high-powered investor/advisors to go along with a deep technology stack; the company boasts the former Xerox PARC director and current Deloitte innovation guru John Seely Brown on its roster. JSB, as he's generally known, is enthusiastic about the potential of Spin to help move the needle for interpersonal connections through technology. "Social media revolutionized how we connect online," he says, "but the hard work that went into creating the technology platform powering Spin goes even further. Digital interactions finally begin to feel more human, more real, and less digital, deepening our relationships in ways that are more fun, rewarding and fulfilling." The Spin app, along with its three Together predecessors, is engaging, responsive and fun to use; unfortunately it's not that good at preserving state or the progress of a video playback if you happen to switch to another app while you're using it (at least in single-user testing). Hopefully that's an iOS 7-related hiccup that will be cleared up with a patch in the near future. In the meantime, you can download Spin for free on the App Store and take it for a... well, you can try it out.
Researcher would rather hire WoW players than Harvard MBAs
Veteran researcher John Seely Brown says some accomplished World of Warcraft players would probably make great employees. "I would rather hire a high-level World of Warcraft player than an MBA from Harvard," he states at the top of a video republished this week for Big Think. Brown says that WoW achievers stand out because of their passion for the game and their willingness to succeed in an environment that is largely devoid of meaningful bonus-based structures. He also comments on the nature of guild politics and their usefulness in preparing people. "These guilds are truly meritocracy-based," Brown explains. "So even if you were the leader of this particular high-end raid, at the end you do an after-action review, and [during] the after-action review each person is open to total criticism by everybody else." Massively's Karen Bryan offered her own take on Brown's assertions in a fall 2012 edition of The Guild Counsel. Check out the original video after the cut; the new edition of the video is available only on YouTube.
The Guild Counsel: Can guilds save the economy?
Wait! Before you hit that comment button about the absurdity of the title above, hear me out! A few weeks ago, I stumbled on a video that touched on this very topic, and I felt it was a perfect discussion point for this column. The video is actually titled How World of Warcraft could save your Business and the Economy, and it's a commentary by John Seely Brown that's part of a series called Big Think. What Seely Brown argues is that he'd prefer to hire an expert World of Warcraft player over someone who graduated from Harvard with an MBA, and he goes on to explain why businesses can learn from the way top players and guilds function in game. It might sound crazy, but it's worth considering, and in this week's Guild Counsel, we'll look at the topic both from Brown's WoW point of view and from a broader view of MMOs in general.
How World of Warcraft could save your business
I don't know about you, but I sure am feeling validated after watching John Seely Brown explain why he'd rather hire a WoW leader over a generic MBA. While his bold claim might sound cheesy to those of us in the know, his logic presents the same, sound argument we've been making for ages. Essentially, everything about building a guild, succeeding in WoW, and accomplishing anything in the game mirrors corporate challenges. Build a group structure, measure, adjust, and incorporate thousands of new ideas every day. Brown even quotes a favorite gamer line: "If I ain't learning, it ain't fun." While this is probably an old argument for most of us around here, this will be a favorite video to bust out for new job interviews in the future.
15 Minutes of Fame: Joi Ito on player relationships and connecting
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. Last week, we set the stage with internet superman Joichi Ito in a conversation that meandered through the old days of gaming, from getting his feet wet in MUDs to why he misses 40-man raiding in WoW. This week, we're back to discuss why some people with MBAs make crappy raid leaders, how WoW builds stronger bonds between people who work together, and his plans to bring WoW along for the ride at the MIT Media Lab. Catch up on last week's part 1 of our interview with Joi first. 15 Minutes of Fame: So what's your own guild focused on now? Joi Ito: The Horde side had kind of wound down a little bit. It still exists, but it's mostly the Alliance side now. When we were both going strong, it was really fun because we did a lot of joint stuff. [laughs] What we would do is do sort of sister guild PVP -- but it would always get messy because you'd find people from other guilds noticing and then jumping in. Right now, we're definitely not first in the realm, but we just hit level 25. I'm pretty delinquent; I need to level myself up, so as not to embarrass everyone too badly. [laughs] Every expansion, we go through several iterations of discussing the governance and stuff like that, and a lot of the old-time guild leadership aren't active. I got grandfathered in because it's hard not to have someone in the background, I guess, being the custodian of things to do when no one else can decide. There was a really interesting paper written by Dmitri Williams, who's an academic, and they did a study on the relationship between guild rules and stability of the guild. It said that in guilds that called themselves "casual" but didn't have any rules, the players tended to have more anxiety than those guilds where there were rules, and that "casual" didn't mean no rules, that rules help people feel comfortable. Our guild rules are pretty anal, a pretty extensive set of rules, and there's a lot of participation by the guild members in working on these rules. I don't know how formal rules are in other guilds -- I haven't been in too many other guilds -- but discussing the rules and the governance of the guild seems to be a thing that a lot of our guild likes to spend time on. That's primarily where my focus is these days, making sure that the leadership and the guild rules aren't too out of sync with what's going on in the game.
