A Conversation with Ron Edwards, CEO of Ambient Performance (part one of three)

ROBERT GLUCK (Virtual Edge Institute):  Please tell our readers a little bit about your background and how you came to be the CEO of Ambient Performance.

RON EDWARDS:  I’m from Seattle and I started my career in corporate training and development 18 years ago in Chicago and have continuously applied my passion for emerging technologies to better support individual and organisational performance. I have been a pioneer in trying new technologies – from being one of the few I knew with a computer in school to being ahead of my colleagues in the corporate world where I soon implemented some of the first online communities used in corporate settings as well as emerging virtual classroom and mobile learning approaches on a global scale. I combined my technology prowess with an applied understanding in adult learning and organisational development theory gained during my Masters in Training and Development at Loyola.. I started exploring virtual worlds for corporate learning in 2003 with There.com, but I was a little ahead of the curve on that one as few corporate laptops would run 3D virtual worlds at that time!  I conducted one of the world’s first mixed reality panels at Techlearn (and pioneered the approach at my own conferences a few years later).  I left Unilever in 2004 when my expat assignment was up in London and founded Ambient Performance to help organisations apply emerging technologies for learning, collaboration and communication.

RG: What is Ambient Performance all about and what is its mission?

RE: The name is derived from my continuous focus on performance, and the belief that performance needs to be everywhere we are – ambient in other words. That focus of delivering performance anywhere anytime drives us to look for best in class technologies and approaches to do so – thus our focus on mobile and virtual worlds.  We apply our expertise and experience in enterprise virtual world applications and mobile performance solutions for the professional market with clients in corporate, government and higher education sectors. 

RG: According to your bio on your website you have over 17 years experience applying emerging technologies, and your "be where the eyeballs are" approach to mobile, virtual world and other emerging consumer technologies are enabling organizations to bring fun and anywhere, anytime engagement to training, collaboration, events and performance support.

Could you please elaborate on your "be where the eyeballs are" approach?

RE: I coined the tagline ‘be where the eyeballs are’ to help people visualize that learning and performance solutions need to be wherever people are spending their time – in terms of locations and devices. While focused on mobile solutions initially, I think it also supports virtual worlds as more and more of us are working in these environments too.

RG: You lead Ambient's Partner programme and are especially proud of the mix of leading edge experts Ambient relies on to supplement its own in-house talent and technologies for client projects. Who are some of these "leading edge experts" and what do they bring to the table?

RE: A few examples include Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a US$10 billion in revenue simulation and services firm who now own the Forterra OLIVE platform which we’ve been distributing and building solutions on in Europe for five years. A more recent example includes NGRAIN, a Canadian company specializing in 3D complex equipment training and visualization software which we’re also building solutions on. What’s great is both platforms are interoperable so we can re-use models for single and multiuser experiences as needed. Masa Group is another good example; we just completed a UK government simulation project with them where they incorporated their leading edge artificial intelligence capabilities with OLIVE to control virtual vehicles.  We choose our technology partners very carefully and they bring their own engineering teams to complement ours to extend what can be done. These relationships tend to be very collaborative. We also work with leading consultants who bring substantial IP to client engagements where we need to supplement ours or to scale our reach, We’re often project leaders but sometimes partners in collaborative R&D projects too. For example, we’re working with body>data>space on their NESTA funded Robots and Avatars project looking at how the youth of today will be working 15 years from now. http://www.robotsandavatars.net/ We’re supplying our knowledge of AI in virtual worlds in the workplace now!

RG:  Your previous employment was with Unilever for 13 years, most recently as the Global Head of eLearning where you successfully led their global efforts to transform how technology supports learning and performance. In terms of virtual events and the virtual world in general, how does your experience in learning/performance affect what you do in these areas?

RE: The insight I gained completing a Master of Science degree back in Chicago and applying simple concepts such as understanding what people need and delivering to that need are especially relevant to providing solutions in virtual worlds and virtual events now. 

Adult learning theory, simplified, is to keep things relevant and useful to each person’s particular role. That helps guide decisions today on ensuring experiences have utility throughout. A good example of what not to do their first time in a virtual event is to focus on manipulating their environment or appearance when all they want and need to begin with is to figure out how to communicate. Other basics of instruction in the real world are applicable to virtual delivery and the lessons learned from online communities and virtual conferencing instructional design and facilitation apply. I’ve done significant amounts of face to face role play based instruction and program design, the principles and models that make this work in the real world can be applied to the virtual if the platform supports it.

Part on of three part series.