Striped pyjamas, book thieves and the meaning of life

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a little movie doing the rounds at present that many people say is very moving and a great story: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, based on John Boyne’s children’s “fable” of the same name, published in 2006 (DVD due out in March).

Soap Life - a playful history part 3

In my previous two posts I have been looking at computer gaming history and how it relates to the upcoming phenomenon of virtual reality worlds. My conclusion so far has been that virtual worlds like Second Life potentially supply a cornucopia of opportunities for the public sector. Examples include service delivery, citizen engagement and consultation (and many more).

From Utopia to Second Life - a playful history part 2

In my last post, before Christmas (and doesn't that seem like a long time ago already?) I gave a brief history of the type of game that evolved into today's online virtual reality game like World of Warcraft. You may have wondered what this has got to do with new ways of working – well I'm coming to that, but some background was needed.

Virtual Worlds – a playful history part 1

In the Disney movie "Tron" – the first movie to use computer generated imagery (CGI) extensively back in 1982, the hero (a computer games developer) gets sucked into the virtual reality world of a huge computer matrix. Most of the action takes place as he struggles to win against the evil central controller and get back to normal reality. Throughout this encounter he remains aware that he is real (and even some of the virtual characters get to know this) but at the same time he is totally immersed within the virtual world. Fast-forward seventeen years to 1999 and the first of the "Matrix" trilogy is released. Here human beings – in a distant future – live out their entire conscious lives within a virtual reality generated for them by a massive world-wide computer matrix. Only a few humans have escaped from this to find out that the real world is in fact very different – a dark and menacing reality where human beings are essentially "farmed" to provide the energy needed to sustain the matrix.

Social Media roundup

In my series of posts on using social media I've mentioned a number of sites. There are so many now that it's almost impossible to track them all, but one social media expert, Brian Solis, has created a useful visualisation tool which he calls the Conversation Prism.

Social Media part 13

In this last post on the current series, I'll give some examples of "Embracing" the customer using Social Media. In fact some of the examples I've already given in previous posts relating to supporting, etc. overlap into the embracing arena. This is because Social Media tools are just that - tools - and the use you put them to can vary.

Social Media part 12

In this penultimate part of the current series on Social Media, I'm going to cover the subject of "Embracing", starting with some groundwork on what we mean by this.

Social Media part 11

From my last post (14th November) I set out the aim of providing support for communities that use Social Media tools in such a way as to relieve us of some of the effort of providing support by other means and/or generating higher levels of positive energy within our target groups.

Social Media part 10

I'm sure those of you who have been following these postings will have noticed the high degree of overlap between the stages of "Listening" and "Talking", and to a lesser extent, the following stage of "Energising". As we move on to "Supporting" you'll see that this trend continues and that just as the first two are a highly related pair, so too are Energising and Supporting.

Social Media part 9

Energising through Social Media: some tools

Two key components for energising one's customers are to provide them with a means of developing their interest in what you do and giving them a feeling that they are valuable and special - and this must be genuine. There is some cross over between these in terms of what the tools can offer, so rather than list the tools under these two categories, I have just listed the tools and tried to show how they can help. This list is not meant to be exhaustive.