Virtual Communities

Hyper reality: merging physical and virtual realities

Neville Hobson 4 Comments Artificial Intelligence, Business, Communication, Experiences, Innovation, Marketing, Mobile, Society, Software, Technology, Virtual Communities, Wearable Tech, Web

Augmented reality will be a huge part of our individual and collective experiences in the not too distant future. Our daily lives will be like a journey in virtual reality except in actual reality, immersively overlaid with personalized information that we will engage with, where everything we do is part of a giant contest that awards points to reward behaviours and actions. This is a future vision that I think is persuasively presented in a high-definition video (embedded below) that runs a little over six minutes, created by London based designer and film-maker Keiichi Matsuda. It’s a project Matsuda calls Hyper Reality: Hyper-Reality presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, […]

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FIR Speakers and Speeches: Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz on Building Community with Podcasting

Neville Hobson 2 Comments Business, Communication, Events, For Immediate Release, Podcasting, Presentations, Professional Development, Social Media, Virtual Communities, Workplace

Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz co-presented a session on the second day of Ragan Communications’ Public Relations and Social Media Summit at ING House in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on April 12, 2012. The session covered how a podcast can transform independent listeners into an engaged community. The presentation included audio clips of familiar FIR voices including correspondents Dan York and Michael Netzley, as well as other PR podcasters, and explored how the communities these podcasts build can be attained by businesses. You can listen while following along with the PowerPoint deck below: How Podcasting Can Build a Community View more presentations from firslideshare Get this podcast: Download the MP3 file (25.1Mb, 62:45) Get the show on iTunes Subscribe to the […]

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Guidelines for using avatars in business

Neville Hobson 14 Comments Business, Communication, Public Relations, Reputation, Society, Trends, Virtual Communities, Web, Workplace

Do you ever pause and think about the avatar you use online as the visual representation of you: your persona or alter ego? What it says to others about you and the organization you work for or represent? Avatars are creeping into business environments and will have far reaching implications for enterprises, from policy to dress code, behaviour and computing platform requirements, according to a report from industry analysts Gartner. Gartner predicts that by year-end 2013, 70 percent of enterprises will have behaviour guidelines and dress codes established for all employees who have avatars associated with their organization when they’re online. Gartner suggests six tactical guidelines that organizations can follow to make the best use of avatars in the business […]

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Watching the Watchmen

Neville Hobson 11 Comments Communication, Entertainment, Films, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Virtual Communities, Web

I’m watching with great interest some of the social media communication Dan Light is involved with as part of the marketing for Watchmen, a movie about American superheroes based on a DC Comics series, due out in the UK on March 6. Directed by Zack Snyder – who directed 300, adapted from a classic Frank Miller graphic novel – the flic is at the top of my ‘must see’ list at the cinema for this Spring. I’ve worked with Dan before on movie marketing and Second Life, notably on the movie 300 in 2007, during my time with crayon. I’ve also seen some of the other cool things Dan and his colleagues at The PPC have done with a movie […]

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Workplace collaboration on the 3D web

Neville Hobson 2 Comments Business, Communication, Employee Communication, Technology, Virtual Communities, Web, Workplace

A news item Shel and I discussed in FIR #390 yesterday was a report in the Wall Street Journal’s Technology Blog about a partnership Linden Lab, the developer of Second Life, is announcing this week with Rivers Run Red, a developer of content, applications and tools for virtual worlds like Second Life: […] [Rivers Run Red] has developed software that it styles as a Web-based companion to Second Life, allowing companies to manage their 3D meetings, store multimedia information, manage news feeds and keep meeting records. Rivers says users can take part in virtual meetings even if they are not in Second Life, which requires extra software besides a browser. The announcement was made yesterday after we recorded that FIR […]

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