If a tree falls in an empty virtual wood, does it make any noise?

Damovo attended a conference this month held by the Institute of Travel and Meetings in Second Life. Second Life is an immersive virtual world developed by Linden Labs and is accessible via the Internet. It enables its users, called residents, to interact with each other through Avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialise, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade virtual property and services.

Can a virtual world be a business tool?
The session explored how these virtual worlds can be used as a business tool and whether they could ever be a replacement for face to face communications or be used as an add-on to our multiple modes of communication. It has long been considered whether these tools, predominantly used by geeks and techies, have a serious place in the business world. The answer is a resounding ‘yes’ if you consider the opinion of people like Steve Prentice of Gartner, where they ultimately see the impact of communities in business as an irreversible and increasing trend that will affect all organisations in all regions and industries.

Attending a virtual conference
The virtual conference was held in an invite only area that was created specifically for this purpose and looked as much like a normal conference hall as the real thing, rows of chairs, with a large screen and stage with lectern. It provided a comfortable metaphor for how people would normally arrange themselves in a conference. It was good to be able to meet with individuals before the presentations started to familiarise with attendees and layout in the same way as you would if attending in person.

The presentations included slides and video media in the same way a normal presentation would but also enabled virtual objects to be created in mid-air as part of the presentation, the content delved into how these tools could be used in the business sense. It also looked at issues of traditional communications such as audio conferencing i.e. where 80% of the people on an audio conference tend to reply to emails so they are not providing their full attention. Also video conferencing was discussed and it was considered that it is sometimes stilted, and not many people want to be on camera or show themselves.

Some of the positive aspects of the conference looked at how organisations are able to access untapped resource, the ability of like minded individuals that collaborate to transfer knowledge and the ability for larger groups to use collective intelligence to solve problems. The view of the presenters is that if you can harness some of the above traits within your organisation through the use of these virtual worlds, organisations and the culture of organisations can be enhanced, creating an ‘ideas’ driven culture, where people share information more freely and easily.

Second Life – is like real life
An interesting aspect of this experience is the etiquette, as the environment looks exactly the same as a conference hall, the same etiquette applies in that everyone is asked to sit down and participants are expected not to speak while individuals are presenting. Although with delegates being remote, they could be distracted by other things, however this environment is more immersive than other technologies leading to a better audience attention span. Second Life offers meetings in very public places or private locations, allowing users to share a space, providing an enhanced awareness of your surroundings and everyone else around you or your Avatar. You remember where you met and in more detail as it is so visually stimulating. The interface easily allows you to talk, type, point, listen, transact and share.

Virtual to real cost savings?
Many organisations are experimenting with this technology as a means of reducing costs, organisations such as Intel and Cisco have held conferences and are advertising that they have saved incredible costs. Many other organisations including Microsoft have demonstrated and used technology that is a part way step towards this technology via 'Virtual exhibitions and tradeshows'. This usually involves a web site that visually represents an exhibition hall with sponsors and exhibitors allowing guests to register and download different types of media to view offline. This allows an organisation to scale up and have large numbers of users access the exhibition with much reduced costs but does not provide the same immersive experience as a virtual world lacking the visual presence of other delegates at the exhibition. These virtual exhibitions do provide a two way interaction for delegates, it is also very easy to track attendance and invariably there is no software download and a very low learning curve, which is why many organisations opt for a virtual exhibition as opposed to a virtual world conference.

The future of the virtual world
Virtual worlds are not about technology, they are primarily about people and how they interact with each other. With increasing computing power, affordable bandwidth and the global Internet community, we have entered an era where interactions can become as nondeterministic as in the real world...and beyond. The main requirements of a virtual world are presence and persistence. We interact with other people / Avatars in real time and they occupy the same space and anything we interact with or change will persist after we leave the environment. Considering the Y-Generation (12 - 31 year olds) how will they want to interact to get the most out of a situation with minimal costs? And in answer to whether this replaces face to face meeting this is unlikely, certainly in the short term, it is to be used as an adjunct to the tools we have already available. It’s part of the mix in an emerging new era and does this mean that the individuals from the Y-Generation will struggle with the etiquette and familiarity of face to face meetings…? Not unless they are excluded from learning these skills - and if this brings a new dynamic to organisations…it can only be for the better. You have to ask yourself...is it only the individuals that speak up in an open forum that have all the good ideas?

 

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Thank you to all of you who have forwarded suggestions for subsequent instalments of Interpreter, these have been duly noted. Please keep up the suggestions and feedback to talktous@damovo.com