Looking Forward: My New Role at ReactionGrid – Chief Learning Officer

It’s been a year since I started working at ReactionGrid, and my initial role with the company was Director of Community Development.

As of this month, I’m very excited to announce that I have been promoted to Chief Learning Officer.

As Chief Learning Officer, I’ll be responsible for all aspects of knowledge management at ReactionGrid, both internal and external.  My primary responsibility will be to help ReactionGrid identify, evaluate and effectively use a combination of the right knowledge management tools and best practices.  Educating our customers is also critical, so I’ll be focusing a great deal on ways to help our customers learn to successfully use our products and share their strategies for success.  I want to make sure everyone has the necessary knowledge and confidence to succeed at their own goals.

I’ll also be helping guide the company in feature prioritization and R&D efforts.  By listening carefully to our customers and the community at large, we can make smarter decisions about how to evolve our virtual world platforms.

Lastly, I’ll be working with new clients on large-scale virtual world projects, focusing on grant proposals, project management and plenty of hands-on Jibe development work.  I’ve been using our Jibe platform for only a few months, but I’ve quickly learned how to do quite a bit with it.  To be perfectly honest, this fact is less a testimony to my own skills and more an indication of just how simple our Jibe platform is to learn and use effectively.

Taking on this new leadership role brings with it a great deal of new responsibility.  I am now part of the executive team directly responsible for helping ensure the future success of the company.  It means a great deal to me that our CEO and the rest of the management team have the confidence in me to offer me this wonderful opportunity.  Thank you.

I strongly feel that virtual world platforms are poised for broader adoption, providing new opportunities for learning and community development on a global scale.  The team at ReactionGrid is simply the smartest and most driven group of people I’ve ever worked with in my life (and I’ve worked with some very smart people in the past).  I consider it a privilege each day to be part of the ReactionGrid team.

And by working hand in hand with our community of innovative colleagues and pioneering customers, we’re going to build those virtual world platforms of the future.

Together, we’re going to change the world.  I’m confident that we’ll do it.

Do or do not.  There is no “try.”

-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid, Inc.

Posted in Announcements, Education, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Hypergrid Adventurers Club visits OSGrid home of LindaKelllie.com – Jan 19 2012

Today, the Hypergrid Adventurers Club took a trip from jokaydiaGRID to the OSGrid home of Linda Kelllie, a talented content creator who gives away a wide range of excellent items (including OAR files of entire regions) on her website LindaKellie.com.

Read on for a summary, some pics, and instructions on how you can make the journey yourself.

Continue reading

Posted in Announcements, Avatars, Education, Hypergrid Adventurers Club, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Hypergrid Adventurers Club visits Dune-inspired science fiction world – January 10 2012

The Hypergrid Adventurers Club took a trip from jokaydiaGRID to OSGrid, where we visited an amazing Dune-inspired Sci-Fi area created by Lani Global Systems.

Read on for a summary, some pics, and instructions on how you can make the journey yourself.  Be sure to mind the sandworms.

Continue reading

Posted in Announcements, Education, Hypergrid Adventurers Club, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

My Diva Standalone Opensim Grid – Pathlandia

To help with my exploration of the hypergrid, I’ve set up my own hypergrid-enabled Opensim grid running on my home office workstation.

Please feel free to visit and explore.  Pathlandia is primarily for experimentation, so our Hypergrid Adventurers Club meetings will always be held on the region Scooter on jokaydiaGRID.

Continue reading

Posted in Announcements, Avatars, Education, Hypergrid Adventurers Club, OpenSim, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Hypergrid Adventurers Club visits OSGrid – January 5 2012

To celebrate the reboot of the Hypergrid Adventurers Club, we took a trip from jokaydiaGRID to OSGrid.

It was a very successful journey, and I hope everyone had a good time.  Read on for a summary, some pics, and instructions on how you can make the journey yourself.

Continue reading

Posted in Announcements, Hypergrid Adventurers Club, OpenSim, Pioneer Lessons, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

The Hypergrid Adventurers Club RELOADED

I started the Hypergrid Adventurers Club (HGAC) over a year ago to create a venue for folks interested in exploring the Hypergrid together.  While we were working on some major OpenSim upgrades here at ReactionGrid the past few months, I decided to pause our weekly HGAC meetings.

We’re all very excited about rolling out OpenSim 0.7.2 to all our OpenSim clients.  We’re doing this major upgrade on a case by case basis, and one of the great new features of this newer version of Opensim is upgrading to version 1.5 of the Hypergrid.  This version is supported by the majority of OpenSim grids currently online.  Which means we’re dramatically expanding the universe of interconnected OpenSim grids that our clients can explore during their hypergrid explorations.

And thanks to all the hard work of everyone at ReactionGrid, the Hypergrid Adventurers Club’s home base on jokaydiaGRID is now running OpenSim  0.7.2. 

Starting this week, I’ll be resuming weekly meetings of the Hypergrid Adventurers Club.  The first new meeting will be Thursday, January 5th 2012 at 4pm Eastern Time.  We’ll be meeting on the region “Scooter” on jokaydiaGRID.  For more details, please see this event on our calendar.

And be sure to join our Google Group if you’d like information about upcoming meetings.

See you on the Hypergrid!

Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester

Chief Learning Officer
ReactionGrid Inc.

Posted in Announcements, Avatars, Hypergrid Adventurers Club, OpenSim, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Avoiding Virtual Couch Potato Syndrome: How to create a web-embedded video display that interfaces with your Jibe 3d virtual world

With Jibe, you can create your own multiuser 3d virtual world and embed it on any webpage.

This means you can have your Jibe world living on a webpage along with any other web-based content you like.

Today we’ll learn how to create an embedded video display on a webpage that works with a video channel switcher inside your Jibe world.  Continue reading

Posted in Announcements, Avatars, Education, Jibe, Uncategorized, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Interfaces for the New Decade” – Join the ReactionGrid team Online at The Tech Test Zone 2011 Conference (Nov 15th)

The Tech Museum and The Tech Virtual are hosting a conference on “Interfaces for the New Decade,” Tuesday, November 15, 2011 from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM (PT).  This event will bring together interactive technology researchers, developers, and users for a conference and opening of The Tech Museum’s newest gallery.

The conference has a great lineup of speakers presenting about the future of interactive exhibits.  And best of all, if you can’t make it out to San Jose, you can virtually attend the event for free.

All of us at ReactionGrid have signed up to attend the conference online, and during the event we will also be in our Jibe virtual world Expo Demo where we’ll be discussing the presentations.

So sign up to attend the conference for free and visit with us in Jibe during the conference if you’d like to chat with us about virtual world platforms.  Hope to see you there!

ReactionGrid's Expo Demo world in Jibe. Visit it on the web!

-John “Pathfinder” Lester

Posted in Announcements, Avatars, Education, Jibe, Presentations, Unity3D, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I’m presenting at the “Midnight to Noon Conference for Second Life Educators and Researchers” on Oct 27

The folks at EduFinland are hosting a conference on October 27 called the “Midnight to Noon Conference for Second Life Educators and Researchers.”

Although the conference is being held in Second Life, the presentations will discuss a wide range of research across many different virtual world platforms.

I’ll be speaking on a panel at 8am EDT on “The Future of Learning in Virtual Worlds.”

At 10am EDT I’ll be giving a keynote presentation titled “The Significance of Contextual Flow – Exploring Jibe and Critical Affordances of Web-Based Virtual Worlds.”  And you can participate in my keynote by visiting my Jibe world on the web during the presentation.

For more details, check out the conference website.  Here’s a summary of the agenda:

A 12 hour conference in Second Life for educators and researchers on education and virtual worlds with invited speakers from Europe and the US. The conference features presentations, panels, workshops, excursion and many other types of activitities.

Mark the date Thursday October 27, 2011 in your calendar now and join us in EduFinland archipelago on the lecture theatre on EduFinland III from midnight to noon (PDT).

The researchers and educators at EduFinland have been doing outstanding work over the years, and I had the privilege of meeting many of them in my last trip to Finland.  So I’m really looking forward to this conference.

Hope to see you there!

My favorite coffee mug, courtesy of Finland.

Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester

Posted in Announcements, Education, Jibe, Unity3D, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

ReactionGrid invited to present at the U.S. Coast Guard’s “Innovation Expo 2011″ in Tampa, FL

The U.S. Coast Guard holds an Innovation Expo each year, and ReactionGrid has been invited to attend and present at this year’s Innovation Expo 2011 in Tampa, Florida on October 25th.

If you’re attending the Expo, or if you’ll be in the area and would like to meet with us, please drop us a line at create@reactiongrid.com.

The USCG Innovation Expo creates an environment for Coast Guard Innovators to resolve organizational challenges by showcasing their initiatives in a rich collaborative learning environment alongside other innovators throughout DHS and across Government, industry and academia.

One area of interest is 3d simulations and virtual worlds as platforms for immersive learning.   I’ll be giving two presentations on Tuesday, October 25th:

Keynote Speaker #2
11:30am – 12:00pm (Oct 25)
“Learning Through Three Dimensional Simulation and Virtual Worlds”

In this presentation, John will share his experiences using virtual world technology to enhance education and his current work at ReactionGrid to create web and mobile-based virtual word platforms for learning. He will describe best practices for creating effective alternative reality learning scenarios, common pitfalls when exploring immersive learning technologies, and ways to effect cultural change within an organization by using online collaborative environments.

Breakout Session #1
2:00pm – 3:00pm (Oct 25)
“Alternative Reality Learning: The Potential of Virtual World Platforms”

In this breakout session, John will lead a group discussion and hands-on demonstration of the potential of virtual world platforms for immersive learning. Specific examples of virtual learning environments using ReactionGrid’s Jibe platform will be presented, running on both the web and mobile devices, and attendees will be walked through a typical virtual world development workflow using the Unity3d editor and 3d mesh models. Attendees will also learn about the unique affordances of virtual worlds when they are integrated with existing social media (e.g., Facebook) and web-based educational content.

You can learn more about the Expo here and here.

Take care,
-John “Pathfinder” Lester

 

Posted in Announcements, Augmented Reality, Avatars, Education, Jibe, Unity3D, Virtual Worlds | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment