Gov 2.0 Camp: Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds is a topic that I find popping up more and more. I've always taken it with a grain of salt, though, as most of the time I hear it in relation to talk about how it'll make everything better. I shy away from that kind of talk as I know that silver bullets don't exist.

Further, my only real experience with a virtual world stems from the time that I played World of Warcraft. So, in my mind there's extra baggage attached in that I have a hard time seeing how a virtual world could be more than a game. When I entered this session, I decided to try to leave behind my baggage or, at the very least, dispel some of it.

This session was given by members of the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds. There were four panelists, but I did not, unfortunately, get their names or contacts.

As I entered this session, I had one question in mind: Are virtual worlds useful for more than just playing?

Surprisingly, there are three government agencies which are using virtual worlds in some capacity: NOAA, NASA and the CDC. All three of these agencies use virtual worlds for information delivery and training. NASA may be the least shocking example here, though, as it makes sense for them to create, say, a virtual world of Mars and then use that virtual world to train rover drivers. It's NOAA that has the most fascinating use of virtual worlds.

NOAA Islands (see towards the bottom of the page under the heading "NOAA Virtual World") is a virtual world that runs in Second Life (a very popular virtual world). In NOAA Islands, one is allowed to create their own mini-planet and then strive to create a stable weather pattern on that planet. As you add one effect, though, its repercussions are seen in other parts of the mini-planet. If you add too much rain, well, you'll flood the crops that are growing in a valley or low-lying area. If you make the world too hot, you'll melt the polar ice caps. In this way, NOAA attempts to convey the intricacies of climate to the uninitiated.

Another example of using virtual worlds in unique and non-playful ways was anecdotally related by one of the panelists. He commented on a school of engineering that he knew of that was using virtual worlds in order to prototype the buildings and structures they were designing. Specifically of use was the ability to determine if handicap access was sufficient for a given building.

However, of all the examples given, the most common example given was that of collaboration. The idea was set forth that in today's world of budget cuts and massive organizational structures which can span a country if not the globe money could be saved if, instead of collaborating face-to-face, people could collaborate virtually.

To this, I asked the question of what advantages do a virtual world provide that more traditional forms of telecommunication don't? The response was both intangible and interesting.

Basically, the consensus from the panel was that virtual worlds provide a sort of solidification of knowledge based on their immersiveness. One presenter described it as "informational bandwidth". Virtual worlds, being immersive, allow one to convey large amounts of information faster. Further, this immersiveness adds context to the memories created, making the information conveyed more "solid" or "real". The information has a better chance of sticking due to the immersive nature of a virtual world.

This concept, that the immersiveness of a virtual world added to the quality of the information that was transmitted seemed to find fertile ground in the audience. One audience member stated that "where it is is what it is", meaning that the memory of something can be tied in no small part to the place where the memory was experienced.

However, someone else asked a very probing question: Do virtual worlds limit or enhance productivity?

The answer to this was less than satisfactory, in my mind: The worlds are getting better with productivity software. Currently, many virtual worlds allow for desktop sharing and persistence of environment. But, does "getting better" mean "good enough"? In my mind, no.

So, how did this session shape my opinion on virtual worlds? Are virtual worlds useful for more than just play?

Yes, they are useful for more than just play.

First and foremost, I was highly impressed by NOAA's forward thinking in this space. So many times allowing people to just get out there and attempt something is the best way to convince them of your point. Allowing people to experiment with climate by actually creating it is ingenious and something that NOAA should be commended for.

Further, I can see how virtual worlds will soon play a huge role in training. Being able to attempt a task in a similar environment to the environment in which you will actually be performing the task is of great value. I can see how this could lead to safer working conditions in hazardous work environments, from military applications to industry.

I can also see that the advantage to prototyping is huge. Being able to put yourself into a users shoes (as in the case of testing handicap access in a building which is to be built) is of immeasurable value. If you add realistic physics to that, well, you've simply added even more value to the tool.

However, the one place I remain unconvinced is in what is probably the most important space of all (as far as widespread adoption of virtual worlds is concerned). For virtual worlds to be adopted whole-heartedly across government and industry they must facilitate the work that people do. To hear that the tools for productivity are still developing in my mind means that they are not ready yet for the main-stream.

That's not to say that virtual worlds don't have potential value in this most important space, though. Indeed, I feel that they have great potential. But, until I can see an example of where they make collaboration as easy, or near as easy, as actual collaboration is in real life I don't see that they will be widely adopted for this purpose.

With all that said, I'm going to keep my ears out, and my mind open, to this topic. I think that there is great work that can be done here and I look forward to what the researchers of today will do with this technology.

Ava Lynn Rollins

Ava Lynn Rollins was born on February 28, 2009 at 2:10 AM. Dalynn's water broke around 9 PM. Christi Jones, our doula, met us at our house and we all drove to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital around 10 PM.

Dalynn was amazing during this labor, even though she said it was her hardest by far. Ava was posterior which made the labor all the more difficult. Thankfully, though, Dalynn didn't have any back labor like she did with Cole (who was also posterior).

This being my 3rd child, I felt much more confident in my ability to help Dalynn labor, and Christi and I made a wonderful team, even receiving a compliment from our midwife, Nel. Christi and I were able to coach Dalynn to a delivery in which she did not tear at all.

Now, lest you think I'm taking any credit here, when I say "coached" we told Dalynn what to do, but Dalynn was the one that actually did it, and she did it with such control it was truly amazing. At the end, when she was pushing and Nel would tell her to stop, Dalynn would immediately stop pushing, no matter where she was in her contraction. It's this control that I believe allowed Dalynn to deliver her second child without a tear.

One of the amazing things about this delivery (besides the sheer amazement inherent in birth itself) is that Dalynn progressed from 5 CM to 10 CM in 20 minutes. After 4 hours of hard labor, Dalynn was only 5 CM dilated and was despairing. She told Christi and I that she didn't think she could do it, as she assumed that the labor would be hours more.

Lo and behold, Dalynn had what amounted to a 20 minute contraction that resulted in Dalynn almost fully dilating and Ava crowning. Ava was born shortly thereafter. I guess the Lord does know what we can and can't endure, huh?

In case you haven't picked up on it, I am truly amazed at my wife and am in a little bit of awe of her. She was truly amazing and I felt blessed to be a part of this birth.

So, what's it like being a girl's Dad? She's certainly prettier than my sons, that's for sure! She looks like a feminine version of Cole when Cole was born. I do feel more protective of her than I do my boys, too, though not by much. However, if you stop to put it in perspective, I feel a little more protective of her as she is now, when I've only known her for a few days, whereas I've known one of my boys for over 3 years. I think that says something... It's more important to me that people find her beautiful than it was for either of my boys, too. It's probably a lot of cultural baggage, but it's what I have to work with and I don't regret having it in the first place.

The boys have reacted very differently to her. Cole thinks she is amazing. Last night he sat on the couch, holding her, giving her lots of kisses and telling us how much he loves her. He talks a lot about how he likes being an older brother, too, all of the sudden. Since Ava has arrived, he's begun to act more favorably to Logan, too, and has even become a little more protective of him. It's quite wonderful to watch.

Logan, on the other hand, would probably prefer that we send Ava back to the hospital! He started throwing these massive temper tantrums when she came home. He's never thrown big temper tantrums before. Now, he'll throw himself on the ground wailing or stomp his feet and scream. It's actually quite funny once you get over your horror.

If I'm holding Ava, Logan will give me about 10 minutes and then he starts demanding that I hold him. He's also become much more of a daddy's boy. He's always been pretty partial to me, but now it's soaring to new heights. I find the extra attention from him to be a bit overwhelming!

He's also refusing to go to Dalynn on occasion. When Dalynn and I first got home, he wouldn't go to her at all. Now, he'll get her to hold him for a minute or two, then he wants me to hold him. Bless his heart, but he's having a hard time of it.

We've had almost 3 weeks of family help, and it's been wonderful. However, next week marks the start of when we'll have all 3 all to ourselves. When I'm home, it's not that hard, but I can only imagine how hard it's going to be for Dalynn for a while as she gets used to managing 3, with one nursing. I don't know why, but 3 seems like such a larger number than 2!

I'm sure it's all a matter of perspective.

How Does the Magician Get What He Wants?

As I started developing the core of the "platform" I realized that I had undertaken a huge task, a task I was not sure I could finish in any short amount of time. This caused me some angst but I figured that I would just have to move on, doing my best to develop my way out of an impossible situation. Not a fun position to be in.

Then, sometime around the end of December, a buddy of mine pointed me in the direction of a product called Presto, developed by the company JackBe. I thought that I had stumbled into my own brain on the web!

Keep in mind that the concept I was working on was that the platform would map gadgets together in such a way that we could dynamically generate them with ease, rapidly prototyping processes to see how they worked. In effect, the gadgets would be web services and the thing the platform would create would be a mashup.

As I said, I had envisioned something similar to PopFly, the ability to visually create mashups and then do something meaningful with them in our efforts to prototype processes. Presto is this and so much more.

First and foremost, Presto has a beautiful visual mashup maker called Wires. In Wires, you drag services from a palette onto your canvas and connect them. You can also drag in actions, blocks that allow you to do something with the results of other services. So, in the basic example I worked with, you have two RSS feeds. You can take the data from each feed and "merge" them (where merge is an action block) so that you effectively have one RSS feed from two. Then, you can add a filter (another action) which can take a dynamic input. In this way, you can create very complex mashups from some very basic building blocks.

If the complexity of Wires is not enough for you, however, they have a markup language for creating mashups called EMML. What you do in Wires is distilled down to EMML, but Wires doesn't offer the full capabilities of EMML (which is not to say that Wires is not fully featured, there are just some rather tricky things you can do with EMML that you can't do with Wires as they don't have a visual representation).

What's even cooler, and something that spoke to a need we had, is that each mashup is published as a service itself. So, you can include mashups in other mashups! The modularity is great.

But, you might be asking, how do you get the services in so that you can use them from the palette?

Well, Presto has a "Service Explorer" which allows you to import services from wherever they may be and "publish" them in the Presto server. However, there's a little more to it than that. Presto comes complete with a user authentication system that can be standalone or hook into LDAP or AD. When I import a service, I can assign rights to it, and only those in the appropriate groups can even see the service, or any mashup in which the service exists. You can also assign rights to mashups themselves.

So, that gave us the mashing capability that we've been looking for, but the goodies in this bag didn't end there!

What we have up to this point is a unique view of the data, but no visualization of the data. Enter the mashlet!

A mashlet is a view of the mashup in a portable and embeddable package. It is created in JavaScript. Once you've created a mashup, you can attach a mashlet to it so that others can see what the mashup provides. There are 5 prebuilt mashlet types: RSS; grid; chart; Yahoo Map; and XML. If your data fits into any of these predefined views, creating a mashlet is as simple as selecting the mashup or service, selecting the view, then publishing it. If you need a more complex view of your data you can create a mashlet by hand. The process for creating a mashlet by hand is rather well thought out and not all that hard to grasp.

Once a mashlet is published you can do one of several things with it.

The mashlets are served up from the Presto server in much the same way that any JavaScript object is. Right out of the gate, you can view a mashlet standalone, if you so choose. However, the real fun comes when you realize that you can embed mashlets into any HTML page you wish by simply including a script tag. You can also embed them in a MediaWiki, NetVibes or as a GoogleGadget. You can't ask for more flexibility. From what I understand, there are more embeddable objects coming, including things such as JSR-168 portlets.

So, from our perspective, Presto offers us 3 incredible capabilities: the ability to capture services from across the web; the ability to create mashups in an easy and visual manner; and the capability to add a face to the services and mashups we create, then embed that face wherever we need.

We've committed to Presto as the core of our platform and it puts us months, if not years, ahead of where we were.

Success!

I am pleased to report that Dr. Mahafee successfully implanted a Portacath in Cole today. The surgery was not all smooth sailing but the end result was success, and that is all we can ask. Cole came through it like a champ and we couldn't be prouder of him.

One little note: When I was getting Cole ready to sit down with me while we were in the PACU, as I was bundling Cole into my arms, Cole said, "I'm tired of fighting this freaking battle!" While I don't necessarily want my 3 year old using "freaking", I can totally agree with the sentiment!

Cole's Current Treatment

Here's a note from Dalynn regarding what we're doing in Cole's treatment right now.

Hi everyone! I hope you are all doing well! I know times are tough for so many of you right now, so I appreciate you still taking the time to read this.

Since my last email we have seen GI, surgeon, sleep specialist and our oncology doctors. Our oncologist did agree to a one time try of a steroid taper. Thank you for your prayers regarding this. We did a three day taper and Cole did not have any episodes of waking up gray, zoned and nauseated and vomiting. We monitored his blood sugars and they stayed between 60 to 80. Thank goodness. Now here comes the hard decision, to continue doing the steroid taper or not. According to the oncologist it is not an easy decision. They explained it to us this way. . .to give Cole extra steroids one time during his 3 1/2 year treatment is not a big deal, however to add more steroids every 4 weeks for the next 2 years is a much bigger decision. This is because long term usage of steroids can have side effects.

Which leads me to our next appointment, which was with the GI doctor, Dr. Kobak. Cole has been having tons of abdominal pain and many poop issues. Dr. Kobak thought one of Cole's main issues is reflux and therefore switched his Zantac to Prevacid. He basically said two of Cole's medicines were probably the main cause of this. Steroids are known to cause gastritis, as well as, methotrexate. Dr. Kobak was involved in a case of a little boy who got a methotrexate tablet lodged in his throat and it caused an ulcer. Cole takes 5 tablets of methotrexate every Tuesday night. So needless to say, we need to stay on top of keeping his stomach and intestinal lining coated. Since starting the Prevacid Cole has not been complaining as much of belly pain. Also he told us to stop Lactulose, a laxative, because it is causes gas pain, bloating and cramping. We are to give Cole a more consistant dose of Miralax and our goal is to have "Dairy Queen Soft Serve Poop" once a day. We also had an abdominal ultrasound, which showed Cole was full of poop, so we had to do a "Bowel Cleansing". We were successful and Cole definitely seems to feel better. The ultrasound also revealed Cole has osteopenia, which is bone density loss. This is due to the long term usage of steroids. (Which is why we and the doctors need wisdom regarding the steroid taper because this is just one of the side effects that can come from steroids) We started him on Viactiv twice a day to help with this.

We also met with Dr. Mahaffey, the surgeon, to discuss the possibility of reattempting to insert a permant line, a Port-a-cath, in Cole. The first line was unsucessful due to a blood clot in Cole's heart. After discussing our options with the doctor, we decieded to go for the Port-a-Cath again. It has been almost one year since we tried last time and the blood clot should be reabsorbing and not getting worse. We are scheduled for the procedure this Friday, Feb. 6th. There is no good way to look at the blood clot prior to surgery and we are doing this to prevent Cole from getting stuck 3-4 times every time we go to clinic. Our prayer is the blood clot will be gone and there will be no issue with inserting the port-a-cath!!! PLEASE PRAY!!!

Last, we saw a sleep specialist, Dr. Dubik, yesterday since Cole is not sleeping well. He spent over an hour with us just discussing Cole's case. The doctor is going to try and let all of us rest first for a couple of weeks and then try to tackle the behavior issues. We have started Cole on Ambien, not for long term, but just to get him some rest for a few weeks. We tried it for the first time last night and everyone slept till 5:30 AM. It was Amazing! We are emailing the doctor everyday with updates on how it is going and making adjustments on the time and dosage of the medicine. Please pray for us about this. Because in 4 weeks we will have a new baby, a 17 month old and a child with cancer trying to tackle sleep behavoior issues. Needless to say we need your prayers!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, so to recap on Prayer Request:
1. To do a steroid taper or not
2. Daily Dairy Queen Soft Serve Poop (did you ever think someone would ask you to pray that):)
3. Healing of osteopenia-bone density loss
4. Prevacid controls the reflux
5. Sleep and tackling sleep issues
6. This Friday, port-a-cath sx goes Awesome and there is no more blood clot!!

Thanks for all your continued prayer and support. We don't know how we would endure without you!!

dalynn

Happy New Year (and Some Frustrations)

I hope that everyone had a happy New Year. It was uneventful at our house, which is all we asked for.

A lot of times, I turn to my blog out of frustration and this time is no different. It's a bit like venting, but you all get to read it instead of hear it. Here's what's bothering me this time: Cole still isn't sleeping well!

Neither Dalynn nor I have had a full nights sleep in so long I can't remember the last time I had one. The thing that's killing me is that it seems to be getting worse, not better. For instance, when we started maintenance Cole would have sleep issues for the week of steroids, then they'd calm down and he'd sleep fairly well again. Then, the sleep issues extended to the week after steroids, as well (and we're still having issues there). Now, though, for the last two months, his sleep issues have lasted almost the entire cycle! He's just barely getting into a "normal" sleep pattern again when the next round of steroids hits.

I just don't know how we're going to do it with a new baby on the way. As things stand right now, Dalynn and I alternate nights, so one of us gets some uninterrupted sleep. However, when the baby comes, it's not going to be fair to ask Dalynn to take any nights when she's going to be up with the baby, too. That leaves me to deal with Cole's sleep problems all by myself, night after night. I'd say that the only hope we have is that Ava will sleep through the night as quickly as Logan did.

Things are further frustrated by how conservative Cole's doctors are. Cole is having some real issues with coming off of steroids cold-turkey. The doctors at CHKD don't like to taper, though, so we've thought up to this point that it wasn't an option. However, on obtaining a non-official second (and third) opinion we've found out that other pediatric oncology docs don't have a problem with tapering kids off of steroids. We're going to ask them to taper Cole, and if they won't, we're probably going to go with an outside channel to taper him (using inhalers with steroids).

I'll be honest, I don't want to go outside of Cole's oncologists, but we feel that we're at a sufficient crises point that we have no other option.

Further, they won't prescribe him any kind of serious sleep aid. Now, I don't want to have to put my son on some kind of sleep medicine this young in life, but I don't know that we have much choice. We've pushed and pushed, and they finally agreed to ativan (sp) but it's only effective for 6 hours, which isn't really long enough. We haven't tried it to its fullest yet, but I don't expect huge results from it.

The depressing thing is that I was under the assumption that things would get easier the further into maintenance we got, but just the opposite has happened. It's hard to not get down in the dumps when everything looks bleak.

If I could offer up a few prayer requests, here's what they are:

• That Cole would sleep better.
• That the doctors would really listen to us and work with us in treating Cole's side-effects.
• That Ava would be an awesome baby, that she would have no reflux and that she would sleep through the night quickly.

I thought that you would all love to see the blackmail material we captured on Cole today! I was humming a silly song, and Cole started breaking it down, so we decided to capture it for posterity sake, and I think it speaks for itself!

We had a good Christmas, despite the fact both boys were sick. We thankfully didn't have to spend this Christmas in the hospital (though when Cole started running a fever, we thought we might) and we were blessed to have Gary here to celebrate it with us. Both boys got plenty of toys and goodies, let me tell you. I'm thinking we'll need to do a toy purge after all of this. Cole got a bike, and Logan got a tricycle and the fact that it was 60F on Christmas day made it all the better for bike riding.

I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the latest member of our family, Charlie the Panda. Cole recently gave up Pacy and Hair so we made a big deal about going to pick out a stuffed animal to replace them and took him to the Build-A-Bear Workshop where Charlie was born.

Now, before you ooo and aaaah over Charlie, take a moment and consider the plight of the Panda. Poor Charlie has been thrown up on 4 times already, has been dropped in the mud once and has been washed so many times that the fur covering his nose is almost completely gone. I assure you, if most Pandas are treated as roughly as Charlie is, I can understand why they are endangered.

Despite all of that, however, Charlie is well loved and has become a permanent attachment to our retinue.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas (or a wonderful Christmahanakwanza, as the case may be) and that you all have a happy New Year!