Sogeti Engineering World 2008

This saturday I attended (and spoke) at the first Sogeti Engineering World conference, an engineering event for software engineers with various technology updates and workshops.

Today's keynote speaker was IBM's Scott W. Ambler, the practiseleader in Agile Software Development. His presentation about an agile approach to developing software and projects was very inspiring, though at times a little blunt. On the other hand, that made his points come across very well. Here are some oneliners I picked up:

"Most software development is based upon false standards and don't work that well."

You have to step back sometimes and observe what works and doesn't work, rather than just do what we've been told what work"."

"Agile challenges the religion of traditional software development"

"Business isn't really interested in 'on time' and 'on budget' projects. Yet they ask for it in the contracts because they have so little faith in the software community."

"RfP's with long lists of requirements are meant to minimize financial risk, but do the opposite: They increase risk. 45% of development generally goes to functionality that's never used at all."

"The best timeframe for development iterations are usually 1 to 4 weeks. A 2-week iteration works best for its short feedback cycle."

A question from the audience: "How much time do you take between iterations?" "I usually call it the weekend."

"We don't want to have repeatable processes, we want repeatable results. Nobody cares how you do it if you do it over and over again."

"The worst possible time to do testing is at the end of a development phase."

"Testers don't need a set of specs, they need to break the system. The defects are your requirements."

"Every product works on powerpoint slides, but the longer you wait with actually starting coding, the bigger your risks are."

"At the beginning of the project we write big documents, but in the end when things go wrong we throw them out the window and we solve the problem. So why bother to write stuff that nobody uses anyway?"

After the Ambler's Keynote there were three technology update sessions with our partners Microsoft (on silverlight, linq, wpf etcetera) , IBM (on SOA Service Oriented Architecture and there Websphere and BPM solutions) and Oracle.

The afternoon was filled with break out sessions by Sogeti on various expert technologies, such as Microsoft, Security, Oracle and Java and yours truly did a presentation on Second Life again.

The first edition of the Sogeti Engineering World ended with a very interesting presentation by Playlogic, a Dutch gamemanufacturer on how the production of a game looks like and how they are starting to approach this in an agile fashion as well to make their development a lot more effective (whereas the old approach was very much like traditional software development)

Wakoopawhat?

Yesterday I stumbled upon yet another Web 2.0 application, that looks cool, but really doesn't do much: Wakoopa. Okay, it does a few things.

Let's have a look:

"Wakoopa tracks what kind of software or games you use,
and lets you create your own software profile. Ready for you to share with the
world. Why? Because what you use on your desktop is who you are"

Wakoopa is a little program you install from a slick looking website:

Once installed Wakoopa tracks which applications you use. Why? Because what you use is who you are so the site says. Why would I want to track what applications I use? Haven't we furiously tried to ban all sorts of trackers and other malware from our PC's?

Here's the next level: I can see which programs my friends use through the Facebook Widget.

I crossed out the face of the one Facebook friend who also uses this software. He's definately geek.

For what it's worth, here are my most used apps, including my background thingies. Now, this is a business tool. My boss will make this mandatory software and see what I do all day. Can anybody tell me why we would like to use this? Judging from the usage of Internet Explorer and Firefix I'd say probably around 15.000 people.

I must say: The website looks cool and slick, very professionally web 2.0. As far as website technology goes, it's a sound piece of work. The technology behind the app... the tracker is pure evil in my opinion. I'm going to ban this sooner or later.... (like the first time I'd start up strip-poker or some other 'private' application I don't want my wife or boss to know about - but probably sooner)

The future of entertainment

Heavily updated.

Wednesday, 2:30pm - 3:30pm session

Entertainment in Virtual Worlds - It's Not Games. it's Not TV. It's....

With the advent of virtual worlds television networks, individual channels and individual shows can now create interactive versions of their franchises and engage fans directly, immersing them into the environment. Find out how to successfully extend a television brand, including measuring audience participation and extending the advertising business model. Speakers will discuss activities on multiple virtual worlds platforms.

Panel (r2l):

• Jerry Paffendorf - Wello Horld (Moderator)
• Daniel Schiappa - Microsoft
• Reuben Steiger – Millions of Us
• Sibley Verbeck – ESC
• Blake Lewin - Turner Broadcasting (CNN and all the rest)

It’s not games its…

Here are my notes on the panel discussion:

Sciappa: Microsoft involved in VW’s? Have been involved from a gaming environment for some time (like Halo 3) and are pretty aggressively looking at how they can partake in this new business.

Steiger: Most important word in the industry is storytelling and how do we do that in these worlds?

Sibley Verbeck on the question "what's your most exiting VW Experience: Jerry.... well, my most exciting experiences were all things I did with Jerry...

Lewin: Turner is very interested in VW’s. The concept of the virtual space is a living network that needs programming. Turner Broadcasting is looking into Kaneva to find media consumption habits.

Places online where people have faces and at the same time talk face to face with eachother.

Sciappa (again sidecommenting CSI):The internet for the most part still is a research tool. It doesn’t offer the incredible immersive, interactive experience VW’s do.

Sciappa:I’ve never watched CSI, but I’m sure I’m gonna watch the show on the 24th and go into Second Life to be part of the team, to participate and help solve the murder.

Like the Sheep, Millions of Us also have a project up and running with a televisionshow for which they build part of New York. (forgot the name of the show). It also involves gaming and other interactivity.

Are VW’s going mainstream in entertainment?

Lewin: People wanna be engaged in creating their own entertainment. It’s flipped the industry upside down. Kaneva save for us as it is more controlled. Turner has lots of great 3D modelers, they want High End things.

Sciappa:Virtual Earth is Microsofts most advanced endeavour in 3D outside a gaming environment. MS has lots of products that have scale. Scale is the issue, the key carrier needed for VW’s to go mainstream.

Steiger: We build Scion City. Went up and down as it goes, than we let people move in, that didn’t move the world either. Now we’re focusing on a narrative, set about 500 years in the future. It’s compelling, but it’s advertising as well.

Is the grid ready to go mainstream:

Verbeck: We’ll see.. keep our fingers crossed at the 24th.

Steiger: The features will follow the crowd, rather than the other way around

SFO touchdown

A virtual life certainly has its advantages over real life in some ways. Like travelling. Yesterday was a long and tiresome day. I'd rather TP-ed into SFO than spend hours in planes trains and automobiles.

First up was an hour traindrive to Schiphol airport, which became a two hour drive as the train broke down. Then the flight was delayed by about 1 our as well. Instead of waking up at 5.30 am I could have slept to about 7!

Then 11 hours of non-stop and non-smoking flying, check out accompanied by several forms for the Department of Homeland Security, fingerprinting and photography. Finally outside...



The weather's nice though. A lot better than I'd expected. SFO airport a lot smaller than I'd expected. Lots of grey concrete as well.



It was about midnight (according to my bio-clock, so about 3pm local time.) when we finally got into our car and drove south on the 101 to San Jose past the IBM, Microsoft offices, Stanford Bridge University and turned to the 237 for Milpitas. First stop was Denny's for a mixed lunch/midnight snack and then our hotel.

After a hot bath I hit the sack at 7pm (about 4 in the morning), totally knackered after a 22 hour day.

25% of Global top 100 in SL

In June I wrote 30% of Dutch Top100 corporations in Virtual Worlds, listing the top Dutch companies in Second Life. Earlier this month though SLionheads' Timbo Urbanowicz did the math on the global top 100 companies.



Based upon the Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard he checked to see which companies were in Second Life and concludes 20% of these Global brands have a presence in Second Life:

"Interbrand takes many ingredients into account when ranking the value of the
Best Global Brands. Even to qualifyfor the list, each brand must derive at least
a third of its earnings outside its home country, be recognizableoutside of its
base of customers, and have publicly available marketing and financial data. "

1. Coca Cola

2. Microsoft

3. IBM

6. Toyota

7. Intel

10. Mercedes-benz

13. BMW

18. Cisco

25. Sony

29. Nike

31. Dell

42. Philips

43. Siemens

44. Nintendo

52. MTV

62. Amazon

69. Adidas

76. Reuters

81. ING

98. Nissan




Missing on this list are apple (33), SAP (34), eBay (48), Accenture (50) and BP (84) though, so it's closer to 25%.



Some, like Coca Cola and SAP only hold a small spot in Second Life, others such as IBM have a multble island presence and others (like eBay and BP) are still under cosntruction.

Microsoft defies challenges

Thursday May 10 (yes, that is tomorrow) Microsoft will officially open shop in Second Life. The sim's build has been completed about 5 months ago, but had restricted access up till now. We went in for a little preview. With many companies staging their opening this month it is a challenge to be on the good half of the charts, but Microsoft is up to the challenge. I'm a notorius *NIX fan, but have to admit the

On the sign you'll see about what Microsoft Island has to offer. Aside from their kick-off event and the sim experience there is also a supportive website here. What it basically comes down to is that Microsoft uses Second Life as one of their staging areas for a Visual Studio campaign themed "Defy all Challenges"

A nice feature is the Auditorium, placed inside a big ball that's hanging from solid beams and some craftly sculpted prims. There's no question on who's responsible for the build, since it is practically leaning against the MoU island, but upon entering the auditorium I immediately recognised the hand of this site's co0blogger Lordfly Digeridoo.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft/128/128/0

Microsoft admits defunct in Xbox

After several thousand complaints from X-box 360 users, Microsoft finally admitted that their X-box has a defunct. For months Microsoft stuck to their statement that there was nothing wrong with the X-box and held gamers responsible. According to Microsoft the X-box would not damage discs as long as it was placed solidly.

During the Dutch television programme "Kassa" (about consumer rights) Microsoft finally admitted that cd's and dvd's can be damaged by te X-Box.

SLUC: Second Life Under Construction

A number of corporations have sims under contruction

Millions of US

• Microsoft (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft/128/128/0)
• ComCast (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Comcast/126/116/23)
• Warner Brothers (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Warner%20Brothers/85/130/23)

These sims are not accesible yet, but at least Microsoft and Comcast look nearly completed.

Electric Sheep

• Too many half finished sims makes you wonder if they can finish anything soon.

Rivers Run Red

• Heineken (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heineken/128/128/0)
• Channel 4 radio (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Channel4Radio/128/128/0)

Lost in the Magic Forest

• Content, job agency (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Content/128/128/0)
• Aegon, insurance (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Aegon/113/109/23)

SLionhead

• According to the CEO they've recently started working on some major projects. I'' try and scoop them.