Presenter: Steve Prentice
Virtual worlds represent an emerging environment which will be incredibly valuable in the future. There is much more to virtual worlds than second life. Second life is still the primary focus of attention. But what are the alternatives? Rule of thumb: 9 out of 10 Virtual World projects within organisations fail. Why have they failed?
Synthetic environments, not games (no goals or mandatory objectives), online platforms, immersive environments—allowing people to meet, interact etc. Best not to fixate on the technology.
What can virtual worlds be used for? Education…
Non-verbal communication; teaching social skills (medical and training applications); one-to-one, one-to-many, several-to-several, educational courses, political canvassing. Particularly useful for teaching social skills—learning through interaction with peers.
Application for Virtual Worlds: Role-based, scenario-driven training exercises; complex situational simulation; presentation of complex data sets through 3D visualization. When training in real-life can be very expensive, consider virtual worlds—simulating an emergency in a city centre, military simulations.
Avatar-enabled Enterprise Collaboration: keep the scope small and tight, allowing people to get together in an immersive environment.
www.qwaq.com : provides a secure, persistent, interactive virtual workspace.
https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net : Open source toolkit to support the creation of 3D virtual worlds using Project Darkstar, jVoiceBridge, Java 3D and Project Looking Glass.
"If you want to see what business leadership may look like in three to five years, look at what's happening in online games."Byron Reeves, PhD. Professor of Communication.
Generating valuable skills for running global teams.
Social networking: understanding demographics and demands.
Questions:
- What are you trying to achieve?
- How will you define success and what metrics will you use?
- What feature set do you need?
- Can you define your intended audience?
- Why use Virtual Worlds rather than WebEx or other Web-based tools?
- How does this technology relate to your infrastructure now and in 2-3 years time?
We are heading into the trough of disillusionment so exercise extreme caution with new investments and projects (but don't abandon hope).
I came here wondering if there was a virtual world solution to recruitment and admissions processes, but come away thinking that there is not a good application for those technologies right now.
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