Last weeks session titled The Next Digital Experience at the World Economic Forum in Davos is recommended viewing. The panel was chaired by Michael Arrington from TechCrunch and made up of Hamid Akhavan from T-Mobile, Eric K. Clemons from Wharton, Chad Hurley from YouTube, Craig Mundie from Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen from Adobe and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook. Discussions cover how mobility, social networks, privacy and platforms are co-evolving in a Meta Age. Runtime is just over one hour.

Eric Schmidt shared his views about the future of business in this 6 part video interview with James Manyika. Part one covers the coming remote control for life, cloud computing and network effects. Part two covers the Power Law and how you need both the “head and tail” in a “yes and” rather than “either or” world. Part three covers the freemium business model and how free is better than cheap.

Part four covers the wisdom of the crowds and how new models of governance are needed to foster open and transparent communications both internally and externally. Part five covers the nature of innovation, simplexity and shared value cultures. Part six covers strategic platforms and the evolution of global standards.

Each of the above are recommended viewing in full – runtime is 18 minutes with lots of food for thought. Great to see Ian Davis and his team at McKinsey starting to make their material more publically accessible. Heres hoping many of his peers and the organisations they advise start to follow suit. After all knowledge is a never ending conversation.

Technology has been a key enabler of our interdependent and interconnected world over the last decade. In September Google and Skype celebrated their 10th and 5th birthdays respectively. Both have played foundational roles in paving the way towards our coming Meta Age. The question many organisational leaders are starting to raise is how do they improve communications in preparation for a Meta Age. Social Computing holds many of the answers. Forward looking companies such as SocialText have been quietly getting on with developing enterprise ready platforms to meet the needs of organisations of all shapes, spaces and sizes. And that is a very good thing. Interesting times indeed.

Google went public with Lively, one of its virtual world projects. The browser based offering joins Meez Nation and a number of other browser based virtual world offerings currently within the marketplace. IBM and Linden Lab announced the launch of their Open Grid Public Beta project. Interoperability within virtual worlds is something both companies have been working on in partnership for sometime.

Each of the above were discussed with analysts looking to understand how the third wave is taking shape. While public listed companies were mere observers of the second wave they are now positioning themselves to be active participants within the third wave. Making this transition from user centric to user driven is one of the great challenges many organisations face as we enter the Meta Age. Interesting times indeed.

Usage of the term meme within mainstream media has increased significantly since we first started tracking it via google alerts over the last 12 months. As with all new terms making their way into the lingua franca of business its interpretation and application varies widely.

Memeticist and author Susan Blackmore recently gave an interesting talk at TED titled Memes and Temes. She defined memes as that which is immitated or information which is copied from person to person.

The first half of Susans talk provides a useful introduction to the concept of memes while the second half provides a conversation starter on memes, genes and temes. Runtime is 20 minutes and recommended viewing in full.

The sixth annual D:All Things Digital Conference was held at the Four Seasons Resort Aviara in Carlsbad, CA this week. Our pick of this years sessions was co-host Kara Swisher interviewing Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook. Part one covers Facebooks past and present. Part two discusses digital identity and what steps Facebook is taking to address privacy issues. Video highlights of all other D6 interviews are available for viewing on the D6 Highlights page.

On the non-profit side we have spoken with representatives from charities about how they might better harness the power of the Web. One of those is Paul Lynch and his committee who organise the annual GOAL charity ball in Paris. This year they are using a wiki to organise the event rather than email. Ronan and Paul have revamped www.goal-ball.org enabling people to pay for tickets online, specify meal choices and pick tables. A group has also been setup on Facebook (GOAL Ball Paris) for attendees to join in the conversation.

Each of the above projects are good illustrations of the transition now taking place in social computing. The beneficial use of second generation Web tools is now moving from early adopters to mainstream users.

Debra Aho Williamson shared Comscore KPI data for each of above looking at unique visitors worldwide, US social network advertising spend and time spent on site. The growth and importance of social network platforms continues apace. With proof-of-concepts now firmly in place all eyes are on next generation platforms soon to come to market.

Some of the hybrids we are tracking from the social network and virtual worlds space show promising early signs. As development continues apace within this space each of these next generation platforms will take digital identity and attention streams to a whole new level. All of which will provide the foundations necessary for the Meta Age to become a reality.

Rivers Run Red CEO Justin Boddington recently remarked that 60% of the queries they have received of late related to internal communication projects. Organisations cannot be something on the outside they are not already on the inside as many early entrants to Second Life have learned. With two of the Metaverse Development Company founders who brought many of the early entrants into Second Life awakening to this fact that is a very good thing.

PA Consulting and The Sunday Times recently teamed up to host a conference titled Getting Real About Business in Second Life. Claus Nehmzow of PA Consulting moderated a panel with Randy Sisks of Cisco, Pascal Spelier of ABN Amro and Dominic Rushe of The Sunday Times. The event was recorded and is viewable in four parts. Runtime for each video is under 10 minutes.

Part one and two provide business presentations from each of the panel on their experiences in Second Life todate. Part three covers the following topics from the Q&A – virtual worlds v video conferencing, partnering through Second Life, communication methods and integrate channels. Part four covers the following topics from the Q&A – entry costs, focus groups, confidential meetings, recruitment and the future of virtual worlds.

Over the next five years most businesses will have a virtual world presence just as they have a website today. As the above example demonstrates some of the more forward looking organisations are already experimenting with early virtual world offerings. While only at the very beginning of the beginning of our transition to a Meta Age virtual worlds represent a unique facilitation role for organisations of all sizes and sectors. Interesting times indeed.

One of our mantras here at Mobil Avenue is that social computing is not about the technology but rather what people actually do with the technology. A great example of this is the Open Architecture Challenge. It was conceived by Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architect for Humanity, and supported by AMD’s 50X15 initative.

Three community partners were selected from 108 applicants across three continents. For-profit non-profit initiatives on sites in Napo Province (Ecuador), Sanfe Bagar, Achham (Nepal) and Nairobi (Kenya) will give their respective communities the opportunity to help themselves.

Entrants to the challenge are not required to hold any formal qualifications and are invited to develop a design for one, two or all three sites. Closing date for entries is Febuary 29th with funds of up to $250k being made available for the chosen designs. All entries will be made available in the public domain at the end of the challenge to share all concept designs for use elsewhere.

One of the entrants is Studio Wikitecture who over the last year have been using virtual world Second Life as a platform to explore the concept of open source architecture. Theory Shaw SL / Ryan Schultz RL and Keystone Bouchard SL / Jon Brouchoud RL are harnessing the collective intelligence of 40+ “architects” from around the world utilising technology developed in collaboration with i3Dnow. Hat tip to Roland Legrand for bringing this wonderful initiative to our attention.