Virtual Spaces and Places for Work and Learning

You are invited to participate in a Tekes seminar on Virtual Spaces and Places for Work and Learning. The seminar will be held at Tekes, Kyllikinportti 2, Länsi-Pasila, Helsinki, on the 19th January 2009. The morning training session and the afternoon seminar are followed by light refreshments and sauna. Informal networking among participants is encouraged. The meeting agenda is included below.

________________________________________________________________________________

Eilif Trondsen, Director, Virtual-Worlds @ Work (SRI International)
Virtual-Worlds @ Work is a global consortium and network of thought leaders and early adopters of virtual worlds. VWW helps its members to explore and exploit opportunities along the value chain.

Neil Katz, CTO of IBM's Digital Convergence business unit
IBM has experience about tens of virtual world implementations inside of their organization. They have also helped their customers to get business benefits out of using virtual worlds.

15:45                 Virtual worlds in real use right now - panel discussion
                        Moderator Riku Mäkelä / Tekes
                        Eilif Trondsen / VWW
                          Sampsa Nissinen / Tekes
                        Antti Ilomäki / RealXtend
                          Neil Katz / IBM

16:45                 Summary notes

17:00 - 20:00     Networking, roundtable discussion groups, virtual worlds hands on, and physical sauna

Seminar participants include representatives from organizations that use or develop 3D online virtual worlds and related services to support collaborative work and learning as well as companies interested in doing that.

The seminar is organized by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation and its Spaces and Places Program www.tekes.fi/tila

Dr. Charles Woodward is the Research Professor of Multimedia Technology and leader of the Augmented Reality research team at VTT, Finland. Woodward received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at Helsinki University of Technology in 1990, where Woodward and his team were the pioneers to develop easy-to-use 3D modeling and ray tracing visualisation for industrial designers. The years 1991-2000 Woodward worked in international 3D CAD software business at DeskArtes Oy, in which he was the co-founder and CEO. Joining VTT year 2001, Woodward has lead various projects in the fields of Video Coding and Augmented Reality, and he was nominated as Research Professor in 2004. Woodward's current reseach interests include Augmented and Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, 3D Modeling, Computer Graphics, Computer Entertainment and Mobile Multimedia.

Neil Katz is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. Currently, Neil is the CTO for IBM’s new business unit focused on Digital Convergence with a key emphasis on the emerging opportunity in immersive 3d Virtual Worlds. Neil has technical experience in multiple disciplines in his over twenty five years in the industry that he now leverages in working with key customers and as part of the Digital Convergence EBO. This extensive experience includes the mobile computing and wireless industries where he has designed and managed everything from mobile handheld devices (He holds patents on the power management system used in today’s ThinkPad computer) to architecting solutions for IBM’s largest wireless telecommunications customers. In addition to his background in wireless communications and mobile device design he has in depth knowledge in technical areas such as Online games, web 3D, messaging, wide area networking including content delivery networks, and network delivered applications including Software as a Service Neil has filed over 50 U.S. patents and is an IBM Master Inventor. Neil holds both a B.S.E.E. and an MBA degree.

Eilif Trondsen is the Research and Program Director of the Virtual Worlds @ Work (VWW), a research consortium for innovation and learning at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI) in Menlo Park, California. The focus area of his research and consulting at SRIC-BI—a spin-out of SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute)—is the use of technology for business performance improvement and learning. He has 29 years' experience at SRIC-BI and at SRI International, leading or contributing to a variety of projects for U.S. and foreign clients in the private and public sectors. For ten years, Eilif held the position of Research Director of the Business Intelligence Program (now the Scan program) at SRI and currently leads VWW ( www.sric-bi.com/vww ). In his tenure at SRI and SRIC-BI, Eilif has given numerous presentations on various eCommerce, eLearning and virtual worlds topics at conferences and to SRI clients around the world. Eilif has also the author and co-author of numerous publications on eCommerce, eLearning and virtual world topics. He also serves as co-chair of the SDForum’s SIG on virtual worlds.

Virtual Spaces and Places for Work and Learning

Paikka: Tekes, Kyllikinportti 2

Aika: 19.1.2009