From off-line to on-line: Benjamin Ellis at #dellb2b

What is the link between the on and the offline world. It's us. Or "two worlds bound by flesh" as Benjamin Ellis says. The uniqueness of the individual can be a help and a hinderence depending on what you want to achieve.

So we have to start with the question, how does virtual become real?
It could be something that gives us inspiration, moves a conversation online to the pub with friends, 3D printing or physically going somewhere.

And if we flip that, how does the real become virtual? That's done through recording, media capture - blogging, podcasting, pictures, etc.

BUT most companies limit themselves to the idea of input "the keyboard" and output "the printer"

A lot of our offline interactions happen away from the desk. We see that in two ways where we don't end up capturing the content/ideas we're discussing:

• The meeting/ corrider conversation: Valuable corrider conversations end up not being captured and those thoughts and moments are lost. They are great for those who are there but what about the rest of the business. They won't benefit.
• Conference calls/ mobile: you could put them online and do speech to text so they are searchable but most people don't.

What we need to do is bridge this unstructured process. This is where the interesting things happen. You want to make it easy and effective - but these are opposite things. So you need to get it right to make it easier later.

What can we currently do to instantly move from real to virtual:
QR codes: The QR code is one way. Though we may question how many people are using them, 14 million americans in the month of July used a QR code. That's a lot of scanning. But how can it be used beyond marketing on a poster or business card? How about adding them to your meeting documents so you give attendees access to the original source or a wiki where they can add their input. These are jump off points, yes, but can still be creative: http://www.flickr.com/groups/qr-art/pool/show/

AR: Augmented reality is starting to be experimented with. Layar.com layers information over a physical page/add/wall/whatever so when you use the app, you can interact with the page virtually.

AV: Augmented Virtuality is allowing for personalisation in virtual worlds. Arcade Fire has a great example of using video and HTML 5 that creates a personalised experience - music, technology, personalisation - marketing at it's finest. http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com

There is also Blue Mars Lite which is a 3D virtual world platform. See more here: http://www.bluemars.com/bluemarslite/ You could get people into a space, share documents and chat, all online.

A few examples from the crowd:
theSocialCV.com - You can add conferences you go to onto your online CV
lanyrd.com - online vs offline tracks who's there and collects the artifacts - slidedecks, writeups, videos and it helps us reconnect with people who where there.

So to wrap up: Social media can blend on and offline. So much of the valuable information is offline, so we need to get that online to share more and better. Then you can layer on the physical product and use technology to blend those worlds.

I'm looking forward to the future...