Virtual conferencing in Second Life

Interactive, immersive, enjoyable…

 

Using the on-line virtual world Second Life, Conference Island provides a far more enjoyable meeting experience than video conferencing and is without doubt better value for money.

 

And it out-performs telephone hook-ups because it is so visually stimulating.

 

It's about more enjoyable meetings. It's about putting people in the same room at the same time, even though they work in different parts of the world. Think about this: through Second Life you will give them a sense of shared space.

 

Face to face across a table, dangling their feet in a swimming pool or flying on a magic carpet.

 

Second Life and business

Second Life could end up influencing business as heavily as any internet application yet developed. Up there with web browsing and email.

 

The ability of Second Life to host memorable virtual conferences is going to change the nature of business communication.

 

This is a commercial platform. You can sell real goods and real services to real people. People are far more adventurous in their purchase behaviour here. You can use virtual goods as a way of generating awareness and sales of real products.

 

People will take up Second Life in their millions, not as audiences but as residents, swapping the mundane parts of their real lives for their Second Lives, in which they feel gorgeous, sexy and loved.

 

Strengths and Weaknesses

A compelling environment offering low cost conferencing.

 

Once in the environment, people have a first person perspective. They are participating, not watching. This makes Second Life a powerful training tool. On TV you can watch someone parachuting out of a plane. In Second Life you will parachute out yourself.

 

Within Second Life, presenters can use web, video, audio streaming, Powerpoint and VOIP (eg. Skype). People can IM privately as well as publicly on an open chat channel.

 

And weaknesses? Yes: Second Life is not yet stable enough for mission critical meetings in our opinion. And it requires decent computers with high speed internet connections.

 

Costs and Benefits

The benefits of virtual conferencing in Second Life are clear to us; it builds strong interpersonal relationships very quickly and is an excellent team-building tool, particularly where employees are not co-located.

 

Your set-up costs will probably range from zero to the cost of a new graphics card for each delegate. A small fraction of even a low grade videoconference set-up. Hiring videoconferencing venues for 10 people in 10 locations would cost a minimum of $8000 for three hours. Conference Island cost? Around $1500.

 

That fee includes personal tuition for each attendee. It includes your own meeting organiser and audio-visual support before and during the event.