Virtual RendezvousCharles L. Perkins

Founder, Chief Scientist

Early experiences

Virtual, Social, Interactive Worlds:

PLATO (1975-6,79-80), Advent (80)

the Net, Object-Oriented thinking:

ARPAnet (1978-83), Usenet (1980-6)

Smalltalk (1981-83), Xerox PARC (84)

Research background

Academic, corporate labs, alternately:

Harvard Univ. (1979-83, 86-90)

Verbex (1982) ➱ Dragon Systems

U.C.Berkeley (1983-4), MIT (80-3)

Thinking Machines (1985-6)

Early contributions

NeXT, NeXTWORLD (1989-93)

1-800-Wildfire (1990-1)

VRML, α-world, SIMnet (1992-5)

Java, rendezvous.com/java (1993-97)

IMPP (1998-9) ➱ XMPP, IETF (1986-99)

Company relationships

3DO, US West, Time Warner (FSN)

Continental Cablevision ➱ Comcast

firstperson ➱ Java, Firefly, Abuzz

Alexa ➱ “What’s Related” in Netscape

DimensionX ➱ Keen.com, TellMe

Virtual Rendezvous

A Set of Ideas

An Evolving Design

A Set of Prototype Implementations

A Community of Virtual Collaborators

A Foundation for Standards, a Platform

Rendezvous principles

Loosely Coupled, Elegant, Simple

Embrace and Define Open Standards

The Opposite of Not-Invented-Here

Only Social Relationships matter

yet allow people, software symbiosis

Universal standards

Interlocking, but Loosely coupled

Built above existing IETF, Open APIs

Separates Naming from Protocol, API

Defines the Atoms in a Periodic Table of Connections and Relationship Elements

Ubiquitous platform

At all Times, In all Places, Forever

Across all devices, existing and future

Provides useful Molecules, Compounds

Policy-less, but with intelligent Defaults

Allows many forms of Chemistry

Rendezvous concepts

Persona

Context

Activity

Facet

Relationship

Persona definition

Fundamental unit of (Multiple) Identity

Pseudononymous not Anonymous

Embodies Mood, Aspects of Your Self

Everyone has a growing number, 2-12+

One is Special: your True Name

Persona examples

Username, Screenname, OpenID, etc.

Avatar (3D), Icon, Facebook ... URLs

Home, Work, Gaming, Porn-browsing

Home Business, Social Butterfly, Hermit

... / goal / social / seeking / soulmate

Context definition

Fundamental unit of Place, Location

Embodies both Nearness, Where-ness

Has the Set of Persona currently There

Has a default Group (Shared Activity)

Every Persona has a unique Home

Context examples

URL, URI, canonical URN

... / SecondLife / <Region> / X, Y, Z

Spherically close to named Landmark

... / Rendezvous / Virtual / Telephony

Running an Application, Watching Video

Activity definitionGroup (Set) of Personas, engaged in...

Any Shared Activity, Task, Goal, Hope

Has Collaboration, Communication Tech

Embodies both Means and Purpose

Lives in a Context, which rarely changes

Activity examples

Chatroom, IRC channel, IM conversation

E-mail/slashdot-like thread, blog Users

Set of Avatars near one another in 3D

On the telephone, a Physical meeting

Set of Persona browsing a domain, URL

Facet definition

an Aspect of any Persona, Context, Activity (Group), or Relationship

Has a Type (System, Name) and a Value

Blends Data and Behaviour seamlessly

Allows sophisticated Visibility Control

Facet examples

.../address/street/number: Java,int,42

XML schemas, data ⇔ graph of Facets

Radically distributed Native XML DBs

Storage of useful (or personal) Info

the Platform UI is built using Facets

Relationship definition

Explicitly represents Implicit P2Persona:

Family, Spouse, Intimate Friend

Friend, (Business) Acquaintance

Talked-to, Touched, Seen, Near

UML Superset: 1:1, 1:many, Set, Graph

Relationship examples

RDF, OWL, Open Cyc, Ontologies

M-language Concept graph ⇔ XML

Bob <.../eros/unrequited/work> Alice

aContext <1:many, Set> aPersona

aNode <many:many, Ordered> aNode2

Rendezvous naming

Every Entity has a Concept-Unique ID

Every Entity has a Canonical Name

Stored in a Directed Acyclic Graph

Created, Updated via Web graphs

Extendible by Users, Vetted and Not

Entities inherit from multiple Parents

Name examples

You’ve seen several in previous slides

.../service/intangible/virtual/world/sex

M-language dictionary word Senses

.../shop.2/clothes, .../social.3/women

http://name.com/path/.../leaf ➯ .../URL/com/name/-http-/path/.../leaf

Platform concepts

Across all Web, Social, Virtual worlds:

Presence, and One Way to update it

Identity, and One Place to change it

Reputation, Guaranteed Useful

Value (Attention), Asset Movement

Platform goals

Ever-growing Ubiquity, Universality

Always the best way to see/find People

Always the best way to manage Yourself

People/SW Service, Stranger Discovery

People Browser via Web of Relationship

Everything Extensible by Everyone

Platform features

Manages a Web of People not just URLs

Spans all Devices, Fixed and Portable

Blends Real-time, Store & forward

Automatic Web login, service, download

Radically distributed, shared Resources

Manages personal Info, Access, Privacy

Platform status

Research partnerships in place:

MIT, Google, FSF, others (ask)

Open Sources identified, investigated

Prototypes of browser/server in Java

P2P/Jxta, Ruby implementation started

Detailed Design, User Stories, on-going

Future needs

an Executive Director for Business Dev.

Additional Partnerships, Sponsors

Funding, Donations of Money, open SW

The Virtual Rendezvous Foundation

You! ➯ enthusiastic, growing Community

Contact info

http://rendezvous.com

VirtualRendezvous at G-mail

Visit if you’re near Harvard Square

Q & A, during the Cocktail Reception