Take a deep breath, find your happy place.....

There was a surpising amount of chatter in the blogosphere about the meeting last week among a number of companies interested in interoperability in the virtual world space, as well as the subsequent IBM/Linden Labs announcement.

To avoid any misconceptions, this was a first meeting of interested parties in this space to discuss what could be done. As with any meeting, there were people missing that would have contributed to the conversation, however, (to paraphrase Lao-Tzu)

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

What was agreed upon was that we would continue the conversation further and iterate on what made sense (and what didn't) with regards to cross-world interoperability, as well as interoperability with the other billion or so people on the Internet not already using virtual worlds.

There were many companies present, as this needs to be an industry-wide initiative, like the MMI, in order to be successful. Press proclamations aside, the parties at the meeting recognized that and this is the reason we are going to continue to move forward as a group.

It was already discussed that the user community was under-represented at the meeting, and the group is working on how to best integrate user feedback into the process. As with any large group of people with often competing interests, the process will not be overnight nor easy, so please bear with us as we get this effort started.

Comments

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Thanks. I will watch this with great interest, and hope that the work will take into consideration "non-standard" avatars--in SL, for example, people have done a great deal to overcome the limitations of the SL avatar model, and would be very disappointed if that cross virtual world mobility strips them of the results of all that work when they move from one place to another.

[Wangxiang Tuxing]

Laozi actually wrote : "A journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one's feet". He regarded action as something arising naturally from stillness and did not place emphasis on the "first step".

I like your blog very much.

[Christian]

Wangxiang,

Yes, your translation is the accurate one (which I actually prefer), but I chose to paraphrase to the common English usage so people could understand that we are taking baby steps at the beginning.

Thanks for the comments. - Christian

[Prokofy Neva]

Actually, now I'm reminded of Osip Mandalshtam:

"We are alive but with no sense of a country beneath our feet" in his 1933 "Stalin" poem, describing his compatriots.

I have to ask: If it was a room that was including everybody, why did only two of the major players put out a press release (that had to have been cleared in advance some weeks, surely) without the rest? Why not have all of them sign on to a very basic and generic statement, announcing something more like what you indicated, the Virtual Worlds Interoperability Forum?

Well, despite this somewhat rocky beginning, it's obvious that it will get more inclusive and there will be lots of conversations in various configurations. I do hope you stick to your resolution in the post below and eat the dogfood right in the virtual worlds themselves. I hope you'll sponsor an SL conversation on this topic soon, for example.

[Peter T]

I like the by-line on your blog. So our employers will find what Flickr, librarything and words? I deride swearing on the net I hope I am ok at work.