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Ricardo Perez Garrido

With weekly, even daily, news about Second Life, we decided to try it officially and, with the help of Jaime Casado from Telefónica, we decided to have an official meeting with students from the Master of Management in Telecom and Digital Business to discuss the approach to how SL can be used in education. Specifically how it can be used in business education. It is not something that you can decide or envision immediately.

The potential is enormous, but also the current limitations. Starting with how difficult it is to control the different in-world stuff you need to control only to have an avatar and move around. It is difficult at least for those that are not from the playstation generation. That is, most of the customers of executive education for an average business school. Just the same group that is eager to know what is this entire buzz about.

Also the interaction (mainly chat by now, voice is coming slowly), is effective for those used to the tool as their principal way of communication. You really see the difference. I cannot follow the conversations, though I use chat for work, not at that level.

We will have more meetings, and they will probably get better and better. I will leave you notes on how they improve. The first note to remember is that the platform can fail, so you need a plan B. The second is that group control is very important, and though you see the avatars, it is also useful to have some sort of connection with the real world (list of people, with their photo, and the avatar)... probably old-fashioned, but I think we also need links to the world, as in any virtual platform.

Julián de Cabo

Cuentan las crónicas que un mendigo que sólo tenía un mendrugo de pan correoso, llegó al zoco una mañana, y acercándose al puesto de un buñolero, puso su mendrugo sobre la sartén, hasta que el vapor que desprendía ablandó su trozo de pan.

Cuando iba a morderlo, el buñolero le exigió que le pagara, cosa que el mendigo no podía hacer puesto que no tenía dinero. La discusión terminó con ambos hombres delante del califa, que era un hombre justo.

Después de escuchar con atención la historia, el califa pidió a su visir que le trajera una moneda de oro. La tomó en su mano, la dejó caer sobre la mesa de mármol, y cuando se apagó su tintineo, la guardó en el bolsillo de la túnica y mirando a los litigantes les dijo: "estás pagado, buñolero".

Y el caso es que pensaba hablar de la obsesión de algunas empresas por cobrar siempre la música que oímos. Debo tener un día tonto.

Santiago Iniguez, Dean of IE Business School.

You may have read about the historical episode, which happened at the time of the Battle of Waterloo (18th June 1815), that contributed decisively to build up Rothschild Family’s financial empire. Rothschild had offices in different European capitals and acted as lender to important individuals and institutions, including the British Crown in its efforts to beat Napoleon. They had a potent information network, composed of messengers, carrier pigeons and regional offices, which earned them the reputation of being first with the news. When their informers reported "the scoop" of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Rothschild agents in London started to sell stocks, acting as if the French had won. Many other brokers, unaware of the British victory, replicated Rothschild’s initiative, causing the crash of stock prices. Shortly before news about the victory reached London, Rothschild started to buy stocks. As a result, the family amassed a huge fortune.

This episode epitomises the economic value of scoops and being first with the news. In the early 19th century, the elapsed time between the occurrence of events and their reporting could be many hours or even days. Nowadays, it may take just seconds. Perhaps a defining moment in the realisation (at least mine) of the power of blogs took place recently when Engadget (no.1 blog according to Technorati) inaccurately reported an Apple product-release delay causing Apple, in six minutes, to lose 4 billion dollars in stock market capitalisation. As you can see from Apple Inc price chart, (Zoom "1m") it quickly recovered.

Futhermore the web and multiple complementary devices, such as instant text messaging and “Twitter”, (the personal view of the head of Ogilvy PR Interactive Marketing Team) have amplified the sources of information and anyone can virtually report about events as they attend them, even providing live pictures or video (e.g. "London Bombing Pictures Mark New Role for Camera Phones"). In addition, the channels of distribution have become massive, cheap and universally accessible. We live in the age of real time information, conditions that changes the way managers understand business and the time and forms of decision making processes.

For example, how much time do you take to respond to an e-mail or a text message? When ordinary mail was the prevalent channel of business communication it took days or weeks to get answers to letters. Facsimile machines reduced response time to hours. Today, agile managers answer text messages in minutes. Moreover, courtesy demands that light messages are answered on the same day and that messages that require elaborated responses take no more than two days –unless they are urgent. My golden rule is that e-mails should be answered, at most, on the same week. In order to comply with this I regularly dedicate the needed time over weekends to get updated.

In an interesting post published in Harvard Business Online Tammy Erickson explains that the “use of technology is heavily centered in Gen Y today. About half of Y’s surveyed say they sent or received a text message over the phone within the past day, approximately double the proportion of those in Gen X. It’s something that will, however, grow in use and eventually enter the world of business”. I am sure you have heard mentions of the "Blackberry withdrawal", felt by "Crackberries" when they cannot access their email. There is even TwitterBerry,  used to write those previously mentioned Twitter updates on a Blackberry. If you are interested in whats happening in Australia as regards to the changing nature of communication at work you might want to read this PhD study.

I am intrigued about further developments of instant messaging devices. For example, how can mobile telephones, which are truly ubiquitous, (and especially Wifi-enabled ones) be used effectively as an education tool?

Julián de Cabo

Sin que sea yo un gran fan de Joaquín Sabina, me pasa, como a toda una generación de españolitos, que algunas de sus canciones forman parte de mi vida. Supongo que si lo hacen es porque la letra se enganchó en mis neuronas por alguna razón.

A los efectos del comentario de hoy, le tomo prestado algo más que el título de una de las que recuerdo con frecuencia, que es "La del pirata cojo". Dice así

(...)
Y como además sale gratis soñar y no creo en la reencarnación,
con un poco de imaginación partiré de viaje enseguida
a vivir otras vidas, a probarme otros nombres,
a colarme en el traje y la piel de todos los tipos que nunca seré.

Al Caponne en Chicago, legionario en Melilla, pintor en Montparnase,
mercader en Damasco, costalero en Sevilla, negro en Nueva Orleans.
Viejo verde en Sodoma, deportado en Siberia, sultán en un harén,
policía ni en broma, triunfador de la feria, gitanito en Jerez.
Tahur en Montecarlo, cigarrillo en tu boca, taxista en Nueva York,
el más chulo del barrio y tiro porque me toca, suspenso en religión.
Confesor de la reina, banderillero en Cádiz, tabernero en Dublín,
comunista en las Vegas, ahogado en el Titanic, flautista en Hammelin.

Pero si me dan a elegir entre todas las vidas yo escojo
la del pirata cojo con pata de palo, con parche en el ojo, con cara de malo,
el viejo truhán, capitán de un barco que tuviera por bandera
un par de tibias y una calavera.
(...)

Si en vez de Sabina el texto fuera de Julio Verne, tal vez estaríamos imputándole ahora su capacidad de anticiparse a la llegada de "Second Life".

De lo que no cabe duda es de que la necesidad de evasión del ser humano, que siempre ha estado ahí, se ha concretado de formas distintas a medida que evolucionaron nuestras posibilidades. Y que del abuso en cada momento tuvimos caricaturas como los Don Quijotes en los libros, los americanos enloquecidos con los marcianos en la radio de Orson Wells o como aquella Mia Farrow de "La Rosa Púrpura de El Cairo" que entraba en una película de la mano de un protagonista narcisista.

Tal vez lo que haga de esta nueva entrega algo radicalmente distinto es que lo que hasta ahora eran experiencias individuales y por un sólo medio, pasan a ser experiencias multimedia colectivas. Y cuando el pirata cojo estaba solo era más fácil hacerle ver que había un límite entre realidad y ficción. ¿Qué pasará cuando se enrole en una tripulación de cientos de piratas cojos que navegan por un Caribe que nunca existirá?