Making sense of the metaverse – part 1

Introduction

"Is the metaverse a trend or a fad (if not a scam)? "

A trend is something that gains power over time as a tool and connector that gains momentum as more people commit to engagement.?A fad is an intense enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the thing’s qualities, that only offers momentary joy for a finite period.

In my professional and personal circles, I am hearing two opposing views towards the metaverse.?One camp is extremely excited about the metaverse, and its enthusiasts are not wasting any time in pursuing their dreams in this new virtual reality.?Another camp thinks NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are a total scam or fad, and they even asked me to do a Google Trends search on NFT to prove their points. ?Please note that not everyone in camp 1 is a young person in their 20s.?In fact, I know more young people in their 20s who are in camp 2, including some of the most sophisticated Ivy League graduates who are working in high-tech companies.

I am a student of history. ?The study of history is important for me because it?allows me to make more sense of the current world. ?History?helps me know where we come from, how the past has shaped us, and how we can shape the future. ?By looking at the history and patterns in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, I gained a great deal of wisdom and insight.?I also like to pay close attention to the things which are not changing or slow to change amidst the constant changes.?However, with the pandemic and climate change, our core (nature) is shaken so everything else above that core is changing in this historic time.

Let me rewind back my life in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.?Through deep reflection, I try to make sense of the metaverse through my personal stories so that I can offer my personal view of the metaverse in Web 3.0.?In the simplest form, we can distinguish between Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 through these differences:

1. Web 1.0 – Read
2. Web 2.0 – Read and Write
3. Web 3.0 – Read, Write and Own

Web 1.0

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web in?1989. ?He proposed the concept of the World Wide Web while working at CERN in Switzerland. ?Berners-Lee wrote the three leading technologies that we currently use on the Web: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). ?In late 1990, the first web page was put online and in 1991, Web 1.0 opened to the public. ?The rest is history.

Before the early 90s and Web 1.0, do you know how foreign scholars applied to universities in the US??I personally know many scientists who went through a grueling and lengthy process before arriving in the US for their studies.?First, they would spend months looking for information on schools and programs in their local public libraries.?Once they narrowed down the number of schools, they would send letters to those schools requesting the application forms, but it took months to hear back from the schools.?They then filled out the required info and sent back the application forms to the schools before the deadlines, after which they waited for weeks and months to hear back.?International telephone calls were prohibitively expensive and there were no emails at the time.?One of my relatives had gone through this process for 4 years without any luck.

By the time I applied to schools in the US in the late 90s, it was a night-and-day difference.?All academic information was available on the school’s website and information exchange was done through emails.?Thanks to Web 1.0, I found my first job in the US before I could even speak English.

My first job was to develop a web application using a Java applet and Oracle 7.x for Connecticut hospitals.?I took a 1-credit course called “a sip of Java” in graduate school, so my Java programming language skills were quite elementary.?I decided to learn Java by developing my personal website. ?I didn’t have a computer at the time, so I had to go to the office during weekends to develop my personal website.?I had so much fun building my website and by the time I finished my MVP, my programming skills in Java and Web 1.0 technologies had improved significantly.?I even helped the senior developers resolve many issues.?My boss was puzzled with how I could improve my programming skills so much in such a short period of time, so I shared my secrets with her.?She promoted me that year.

Here is my first personal website written in a Java applet.?Even in Web 1.0, people were craving User Experience.??

I made a fortune in Web 1.0.?In the late 90s, I was one of the first in my circle to find a job, which was a total shock to me and everyone else.?Why would someone pay me to sit in front of a computer just to create virtual objects in that nebulous thing known as the Web??I eventually realized that my work increased patient show rate through reminder-recall services, avoided hospital visits by using eligibility verification services, or shortened patient referral time by checking the online patient referral system.

Web 2.0

In Web 1.0, Java applets didn’t go very far due to browser issues despite Java’s intent to improve user experience.?Netscape, IE, and other browsers at the time simply didn’t support fat clients well and they had many challenges such as plug-in issues, slow performance, and incompatibility.?The industry moved to server-side-based services to lower the burden for users.

Web 2.0 arrived before I knew it.?In 2000, I worked for a startup to build their eCommerce site with a large community.?While I had a lot of fun building a real consumer-based website, I was fascinated with this web thing because there was no limit but my own imagination. ?With a new mathematical formula we developed, we reduced the web reporting time from 3 weeks to 3 hours.?The thrill was real!

No one knew in early 2000 what Web 2.0 could lead us to.?I would for sure have never imagined that I would spend almost my entire professional life on Web 2.0.?Here is what I have witnessed.

I built Web 2.0 applications for the most influential companies globally, such as Adobe’s eStore, AA’s reward system, GM’s production order management system, Disney’s Photopass, FedEx Office’s print-online service, Shell’s retail payment system, and many more.?As more and more large enterprises started to move their customer-facing applications to the web and while fat clients had difficulty gaining attraction on Web 2.0, the application server became a front-runner of Web 2.0 in the early 2000s.

In the beginning, there were many app server players.?Eventually, the industry landed 3 major players: BEA’s WebLogic, IBM’s WebSphere, and Sun’s App Server.?In the end, Oracle took Java and WebLogic.?The App Server battle accelerated the movement of large enterprises to Web 2.0.?It is worth mentioning that before the app server consolidation, there was really no interoperability.?For example, what worked in WebLogic didn’t work in WebSphere and even Sun Microsystems defined a JavaEE reference implementation.? Everyone was busy building their competitive advantages.?

After the App Server battle was settled, Mobile devices became another big wave in Web 2.0.?HTML5 was a big push as the industry hoped it could be used in both web apps and mobile apps. ?As you can see, people were still craving a rich user experience.?High-tech companies were able to leverage the mobile device to create more complex and highly interactive mobile apps.?Social media significantly accelerated the progression of mobile devices and apps. ?In Web 2.0, user expectations are still biased toward having a mobile app versus an HTML5 app.?

The next big thing was the cloud.?I personally feel that the metaverse conversation right now is very similar to the cloud conversation in the mid-2010s.?In some high-tech companies, the executives simply didn’t want to invest in Cloud; some didn’t believe in the cloud while others believed in it but reverted when they didn’t see returns on their first 1 to 2 years’ investment.?Most large companies didn’t believe that the cloud would be secure.?By the time some financial companies realized that the main reason they needed to move to the cloud was because it was more secure and more operationally agile, their on-premises data centers were becoming a non-option for many reasons. ?Some high-tech companies that waited too long lost their market share and it was too late to do anything.?It is worth mentioning that one of the most important elements of the cloud was that it had an economic model from day one (like the metaverse as I will explain later).

Just like in the app server or mobile device battles, today we have landed on three main clouds: AWS, Azure, and GCP.?History tends to repeat itself.

With social media (where the powerless become powerful) and the cloud (pay-by-usage), anyone could build a Web 2.0 company if they had the right ideas and enough determination. ?We started to see the reality that it was not the big fish that ate the small fish, but the fast fish that ate the slow fish.?When more high-tech startup companies began to outcompete traditional businesses, the large enterprises suddenly had a sense of urgency in moving to digital business.

I became a full-time DevOps practitioner in 2015.?While I had no clue what the future held for me, I knew that at the principal level, DevOps was about building software (including web apps) quicker, cheaper, better, and more securely.?I knew DevOps would be the bloodline of any organization that builds digital business.?Although I knew that the possibilities would be endless even back in 2015, I would never imagine that I could have the chance to work on Secure DevOps, Lean Product Management, OKRs, AI-based development, Accessibility, GitHub, InnerSource, and operating models.?But that didn’t matter to me because the principal was always clear in my mind.?

I dedicated 7 to 8 years of my professional life in DevOps, and I was very fortunate to have entered the DevOps world at a relatively early stage.?I remember when I explained DevOps to some of the highly respected distinguished technologists at the time, but they couldn’t understand DevOps so they simply would not invest time in it.?

One huge advantage of early adopters is that you get rare opportunities to define the rules and shapes the future you wish to see.?In my HP days, I was able to lead the end-to-end value stream creation of DevOps that benefited many customers by increasing their economy of flow in their digital businesses.?At Microsoft, I was able to influence the Dojo community and our customers on the importance of culture, lean product management, and operating model.?If I had started much later, I would have missed the opportunity to shape the world I wished to see.?I am grateful to be an early adopter of DevOps in the industry.

First, let’s see what we can learn from Web 2.0 that applies to Web 3.0.?

#1: Technological Availability: Technology accelerates the adoption of new models, which applies to mobile adoption as well as DevOps adoption.?For example, by 2015, DevOps became possible due to the availability of technologies such as application lifecycle management, configuration management, secure code scan automation, dynamic security testing, test automation, infra-as-code, Containers, and Cloud Release Automation that were mature enough for enterprises to adopt. ?Increased adoption of the metaverse would only be possible when the technologies required are available.?We will revisit this topic in the Web 3.0 section.

#2: Economic Model: The cloud is a great success story in terms of the operating model that was designed at its core—the economic model.?I believe that the pay-as-you-go model (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) was a defining attribute of the success of the cloud.?The metaverse is more likely to be successful when it has an inherent economic model. ?We will revisit this topic in the Web 3.0 section.

#3: Community: Online communities were a highly important concept in Web 2.0.?These include the open-source, InnerSource, gaming, customer engagement, and social network communities. ?In Web 3.0, community will become even more important.?The metaverse will create an immersive experience with a self-sustaining and community-driven economy.

#4: Interoperability: As you can see from the battles of app servers, mobile devices, or the cloud, the players would not address interoperability before they dominated the market because they were focused on survival and competition.?Interoperability could only be possible when the battles were settled by a few winners. ?Interoperability will be our major challenge in Web 3.0 as well.

Next, let’s take a closer look at what is missing in Web 2.0.

I would like to use our Dojo master class as an example to show the challenges in Web 2.0.

#1: Immersiveness: Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, we have pivoted to a remote Dojo delivery called immersive learning.?To be immersive, we tried many different ideas to make learning a fun and context-sensitive event.?The ideas include but are not limited to the following:

1. Icebreaker games
2. Shu-Ha-Ri from learning, discussion, and labs
3. Whiteboarding sessions
4. Breakout rooms
5. Team challenges
6. Kahoot quizzes
7. ?Debates
8. Ask anything’s
9. Elevator pitches
10. Gamification and rewards

Believe it or not, #10 generated the most energy and had the most intensive participation and competition among all classes.?Gamification and extrinsic motivation do deliver that magic!

We worked hard to bring an immersive experience to these classes.?However, even though this resulted in our classes having a much higher success rate than traditional remote classes, the class activities were stitched together through various different tools.?We moved from MS Teams to Kahoot to Klaxon/Mural to MS Forms to other tools, so we lost context.?In Web 2.0, it is hard to truly live in an immersive experience.

The technology in Web 2.0 doesn’t provide us with an immersive enough environment. ?We're now entering?Web 3.0, the next inflection point when technology can interconnect people, places, and things in the real and digital worlds.

#2: Identity: In Web 2.0, we spend a great deal of time building our identities in social media such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, or WeChat. ?Our online personalities have become as valuable as our sense of self. When participants join Dojo classes, their sense of digital identity is largely left behind.?On the other hand, when we achieve White Belt, Orange Belt, or Green Belt in our master classes, there is no immediate update to our digital identity that can be carried with us.?Our identity is kept within the environment created by the service providers, so it is hardly transferrable from one platform to another.?For most of our master classes, setting up an identity on our tenant or connecting to a customer’s identity system has been always challenging during the pre-delivery process.

In most Dojo classes, participants keep the camera off until picture time, so it is hard to know if we have everyone’s attention.?Additionally, since we are meeting the participants for the first time, it is very hard to find the relevant context about each person outside of their roles in their company. ?

We are often confused about what our parents/boss want us to value, what we hope we can value, and what we really value.?Therefore, in the physical world, we tend to display either what our parents/boss want us to value or what we hope we can value, but we barely display what we really value.?

#3: Economic Model for Ownership:?Like any InnerSource community, our Dojo was created using a decentralized model.?This means that anyone can work with anyone in the community, a small group of people can create a V-team to develop innovations, or any Dojo class can be run by different people at different times based on availability, regional needs, and customer preference. ?However, we have struggled to scale due to the lack of an established reward system and economic model to propel people to replicate the success of our Dojo.?At the end of the day, we are human and therefore have three levels of motivation:

1)?????Motivation 1.0: Survival

2)?????Motivation 2.0: Reward and punishment

3)?????Motivation 3.0: Purpose, autonomy, and mastering

Dojo focused so much on motivation 3.0 but less on motivations 1.0 and 2.0.?Again, because we are all human, we are motivated at all three levels, but we weigh each level differently.

The lack of an economic model is not a problem for Web 1.0, 2.0, or 3.0, as you can see that the cloud in Web 2.0 has been highly successful due to its native attribute of having an economic model.?In Web 3.0, there is an inherent gaming and playing element, so a play-to-earn or a play-to-own model would surely address 2.0 and 3.0 human motivations.

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 offered intrinsic rewards such as learning something new from a Dojo class, connecting with other people from open-source or InnerSource projects, or experiencing a positive feeling from delivering a successful online class. ?Getting into the metaverse in Web 3.0, and more importantly the metaverse economy, we can see a shift to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.?Therefore, in combination with the feel-good moments of experience, we experience financial gain and rewards in these digital worlds.?

Web 3.0

Now let’s imagine what the Dojo master class would look like in the world of the metaverse in Web 3.0. Before we expand our imagination, let’s see what the technologies in Web 3.0 are and if they are mature enough to lead a broader adoption.?Web 3.0 technologies include blockchain, 5G networks, VR, AR, MR, the cloud, AI, digital twins, cryptocurrency, and edge computing.? Even though Web 3.0 technologies are not being widely used as of today, they are still available and affordable to consumers and service providers.

Let’s imagine how Dojo master class would look like in the metaverse…

You have your identity, data, and digital assets on a decentralized blockchain before joining the Virtual Reality Dojo class.?You also spend time creating your own avatar to represent your style, your values, your likes, and your personality.?Digital avatars can bring some surprising benefits.?Most people I know spend a great deal of time designing their own avatar because they value it in the same way a company values its logo.?Our avatar often reveals a lot about ourselves, our likes, our values, our spirit, our taste, our culture, and our dreams.?

Avatar brings an exciting and fascinating sociological change into our world. Above anything else, an avatar is a visual representation of an identity. Avatars are crucial to the metaverse as they enable us to bring our?identity to the virtual world, interact with others, and take our virtual identity into the real world. The exciting aspect of using an avatar to portray your identity is that you are no longer bound to your physical identity, which opens a world of new opportunities to express yourself. This visual identity will determine who you are in the metaverse, but most likely also how you feel and how you behave.

Avatars allow people to hide behind their physical layers and experiment with their identity in the digital world. ?People will be able to explore their identity a lot more than is possible in the physical world.?When I design my own avatar, I unconsciously use my values to express myself so I can always explain why I did what I did with my avatar.?Can you tell anything about me through my avatars?

You are greeted by a moderator at the front lobby of the Dojo virtual event.?You are asked to review the code of conduct and agree to allow activity data related to class-room participation and effectiveness by the captains to be collected.?You can also grab a few comfort pillars of your favorite color.?You are then notified that your friends have also arrived and at which tables.

The event starts with upbeat music and your two Dojo captains walk onto the main stage.?Both captains are enabled by digital twins, so while they are displayed as avatars, they are moving and expressing themselves just like real humans.?After a short introduction on logistics, captains ask each table to kick off an icebreaker session that involves guessing the attributes of each participant by looking at their avatars.?This mind game is quite fun and intriguing as you must explain your reasoning and pay close attention to details.

Now the first speaker begins with the topic of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results).?The content is streamed through the large screen in the main classroom where you can interact with your table or the speaker.?After the conceptual session, you are asked to take a quiz, your performance is recorded, and your score will later be used for your final rewards.?So far, you are completely immersed in this connected experience.

Now it is time for your table to discuss the real scenarios by using the concepts you just learned.?You use a whiteboard in the virtual room and can go back to the content displayed at your table as needed. ?Each table sends a representative to share their view on the main stage, where you get hearts, likes, and applause.

The last step of each topic is the technical lab.?The lab coach would do a quick walkthrough on the main stage, after which each table begins logging into GitHub through the local big screen to run the tech labs.?Again, you get points depending on how much your team finishes and how interactive your team is.?The real time data are collected for the final rewards.

The first half-day session is complete.?It is a fun time!?There are many games available such as basketball, table tennis, firework shooting, or flower arrangement.?

The captains run the real-time report to understand which table is the most active in discussion, which table gets work done quicker, and which topic is the most welcomed or least interesting.?All this information helps captains to gain retrospectives to be able to improve their coaching the next day.

At the end of each class, there is a competition where each team gives their presentation by using everything they have learned in this class to solve a real problem in DevOps.?All participants and coaches vote, and the winners are declared at the end of the competition.?The winners are then rewarded with Dojo Bitcoins!

The final graduation picture is taken on the main stage, and everyone wears their belt outfit.?Now they have achieved play-to-earn!?They can update their identity information on the blockchain immediately after graduation! The best part is that entire event can be recorded as you go and can be live streamed as well for those who can't attend the virtual event.

The next step is called play-to-own.?When the captains and coaches run enough classes with high performance as voted on by participants, they are qualified to own a Dojo world with all assets and IPs.

As you can see in this new model, immersive learning happens by default as everything is embedded in a virtual world without fragmentation.?One’s identity is linked by a decentralized blockchain, which brings much more context into the virtual room and links rewards back to that identity.?Lastly, owning part of the world is what will motivate people to do more and receive more rewards through gamified and contextual learning.?From a technological perspective, all of this is possible today. ?That is why it is so exciting!

Web 3.0 & DevOps

Now that we’ve talked about bringing DevOps Dojo to the metaverse, how DevOps would speed up the creation of the metaverse worlds??At the end of day, the entire metaverse is mostly software, so how do we apply DevOps in creating metaverse worlds?

In a recent engagement with a customer, they gave us some requirements in one sheet.?We immediately realized that even customers needed to be educated on the metaverse that the metaverse must start from the user journey, which is unlike any other Web 2.0 application where we tend to start from the epic, feature, and user story.?The metaverse in Web 3.0 challenges us to think differently.?It was quite a pleasant experience to start from a storyline and then work on the capabilities needed by the requirements.?After we shared the demo, customers were delighted and asked for an immediate next step to implement more scenarios.?

This example above shows that we started with the user journey and asked many human-centric design questions before we got into capabilities. ?So, one major shift in metaverse development would be in 2D/3D UX design.?We will need a lot more UX designers in the metaverse world because their ability or inability to tell a story in virtual worlds will create winners or losers.

The next shift is how we would do automated testing or how much we can automate testing in the metaverse? ?In metaverse worlds, we will have to test AR/VR/MR compatibility, 2D/3D availability, cloud services integration, data collections, decentralized blockchain integration, real-time digital twin quality, network connection, and simulated avatars in action.?Testing needs to be modernized in metaverse worlds.

Security, privacy, and ethics testing will be another important area to address in the metaverse. ?There is a rich amount of data that can be collected including critical behavior data that accurately links to people’s thoughts.?In this virtual world we are creating, we must seriously think about ethics and human civilization before it is too late to reverse the negative impacts on our humanity.

Why do brands and companies invest in the metaverse? Why do Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Data Officers care about the metaverse? They are all coming after the data and insights. So, AI/MLOps will be more important than ever. At the end of day, we will produce 100X more data in the virtual worlds.

Finally, how do we do safe deployment like we do today with combination of ring structure, and feature flagging?

As you can see, the principles of DevOps don’t change in Web 3.0—build virtual worlds better, quicker, cheaper, and more securely—but how, what, and with what to make it work are to be determined and developed.?That could be your profession in the next 5+ years!

Key Takeaways

#1: The difference between Web 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 in the simplest form

• Web 1.0—Read
• Web 2.0—Read and Write
• Web 3.0—Read, Write, and Own

#2: The core principles of Web 3.0

• Immersion:?People don't just want to consume. ?It's far more engaging to have gamified, contextual, and immersive experiences between real and virtual worlds.
• Identity:?People value their digital personas, assets, and reputations and want to carry them across the digital world and even into the real world.
• Ownership:?People enjoy?ownership and rights over their digital assets.?Digital rights serve as the foundation for a potentially infinite number of creations that lead to a creator economy.

?#3: Early adopters gain an advantage that lasts

• You can create the future you wish to see when you become an early adopter.
• Early adopters get the benefit of the doubt while things are new, which gives them a foot in the door and unchallenged opportunities to build rapport with consumers.
• Late adopters miss out on learnings and opportunities to build competitive products.

What is Next?

Up to this point, I have not really explained what the metaverse is but have tried to make sense of it through my personal experiences riding the waves of Web 1.0, 2.0, and now 3.0 to be able to understand the core principles and needs under the development of the metaverse.?

Throughout my personal experiences with DevOps, my belief in DevOps’s north star—building software better, quicker, cheaper, and more securely—has not changed throughout all these years.?However, how we would build such software and through what paths we would take to get there were totally unknown when I started on DevOps. ?In 2015, I would never in a million years have dreamed that I would work for Microsoft and lead a WW community through InnerSourcing. ?Thus, my message for you is to NOT overly concern about how and what at this point because there will be many how’s and constantly changing what’s. You should really focus on understanding why because it will guide you through solving the real problems in Web 3.0.

In part 2, I will try to answer what the metaverse really is in my view.?I will share my thoughts on the opportunities in the metaverse, especially in the retail and consumer goods industries. ?I will then raise my doubts and worries regarding the metaverse. ?One of these is that the metaverse world is currently mostly developed by gamers (mostly young men).?To create a more inclusive metaverse world, we need more women to step up to be part of defining and creating this new world. ?Just to give you a simple example that is highly relevant to women who worry about personal safety in many situations, just imagine if we could develop a lightweight version of the VRScout system to provide us with 360-degree situational awareness.?We will be able to have many more indicators and warnings before bad things may happen to us.?This inspired and motivated me to participate in the metaverse at an early stage.

Call for action! If you wish to join the Dojo Metaverse Community to make it real, please ping me. We need more ladies to make our future virtual world more inclusive and diverse.

Please continue on part 2 - the opportunities and worries in the metaverse.