In those strange times when the ash cloud paralyzes our economies with consequences being announced than worse those of 9/11, medias keeps talking about the cancellation of meetings in which leaders of this world, big and small, can not attend, God obliges. The organization of enterprises, from the very small to multinationals, is being undermined: colleagues blocked at the 4 corners of the world, shows and fairs deserted, production cycles blocked, stock auction alerts ... Same as the banking crisis or the virus H1N1, the "Cloud Ashing" is a new small grain of sand that is seizing the modern economic machine.

Yet solutions do exist and more specifically those that we offer under the words of "3D immersive internet" also called "virtual environments or virtual worlds. Little known and often criticized by fear, stereotypes or lack of education, these solutions alleviate the complexity of problems related to these crises and more, outline new collaborative practices both more efficient and more social.

Whether presentations, meetings, conferences or virtual exhibitions, immersive 3D solutions offer many benefits and a real alternative to physical travel, because in addition to allowing verbal exchanges, they offer the sharing of space ( up to 350 simultaneous participants), the sense of self and group work, the spatialization of each other, sharing of documents and medias of all kind, cross-interactions in real time in the virtual world and via the web. And of course, a drastic reduction in transport costs, meeting fees and carbon footprint.

Beyond these collaborative practices, immersive 3D solutions offer a new framework for crisis management but also for knowledge management (training, prototyping, simulations) and social networking companies.

By enriching the user experience thru Immersion, training stop to be another formality more or less sympathic, to become a stimulating shared moment, made from co-creation, observation, practice and experimentation. Motivation is enhanced and results are powerful: around 30% retention of data transmitted via immersion education against 10% in conventional training. Language learning, economic or scientific theories, simulated professional situations, training in real-time 3D worlds are certainly superior in many ways than those of serious games or traditional e-learning.

But it would be defintely unfortunate that the virtualization does not benefit the people themselves. Immersive 3D worlds act as "water cooler" creating a framework for self-expression and facilitating communication with others. Distances disappear literally and figuratively, and it becomes easier to relate and socialize. Finally, the savings that companies make by virtualizing part of their collaborative practices can be partially reinvested in facilities and real benefits that can provide a natural extension to these virtual exchanges and add value to the daily lives of his players.

Helene Zuili is co-founder of Makemyworlds, Linden Lab Gold Solution Provider, a consultancy specialized in European integration of virtual worlds in communication and collaborative practices for companies. You can reach her at helenezuili (at) gmail.com

Related articles in this blog

- Real World Expos in Virtual Spaces at Virtual Keynote
- Will "Immersive Internet' become the next buzz word ?
- How corporates can use Virtual Worlds for professional education & training ?

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• Collaboration & Communication in Virtual Environments - Imagina 2010 (makemyworlds.blogspot.com)

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Image via WikipediaBack from a few days in Rouen, the old capital of Normandy, where I was in charged to train the creative team of a multimedia agency which main signature is something equivalent to "Materialize Virtual". Nothing about 3D but just the plain idea that web is a virtual experience...

Confronting ideas and working on website ergonomy, I suddenly realized the gap which existed between "talking about virtuality" and "living the virtuality".

Maybe, as I developed it in an early post about immersive internet, it is still the use of the word "virtual" that is still frightening people and corporates, maybe it is the close proximity with video games, forcing some to add "serious" to limit the analogy... Maybe also, corporates just do not understand the substantive savings and the qualitative added value they can get from adopting those new collaborative practises.

Actually my deep thought at this point is that there is no difference between real and virtual, virtual is just another side of the reality... or let's say a tool, very practical to be in real time in different places at the same time. What is the problem with that, the oldest dream of mankind, why should it raise so many questions, except those that I would describe as philosophical, and which are the most important : who am I, what is the meaning of my life, what do I want to do with my life....

The famous "Cogito, ergo sum" from our national René Descartes, persists in the dematerialized reality as it in the physical one... I am a thing who thinks, or let's say a thinking reality... And I am tempted to go further here, asserting that without his social attributes, manking gives itself a larger freedom of being, behavioring, and exchange knowledge with more authenticity.

Maybe that can be frightening, and especially in France, my country, where the sacralization of education is also about how you say it and what you wear...

The last conference I gave could have been made totally into a virtual environment. A training of 3 hours a day during a week, at the MakeMyWorlds Training Center would have cost less than half of the price of the budget that was used to invite me there - which was a pleasure nevertheless - But in those times of economic crisis, swine flue & green logic, that is a real point to think about each time you would organise an event.

Just a short calculation to give you an idea :

Budget 1 : 10 000 to 15000 euros (depending on the type of executives)

• 3 days conference
  
• Train, taxis and other transportation
  
• Hotel for 3 nights
• 21 restaurants & various reception fees
  
• Salaries of 6 persons non operationnal during 3 days

Budget 2 : 5000 euros

• 5 x 2.30 hours per days conference at MakeMyWorlds Training Center (including basic pre-training of Second Life, documentation, installation)
• Salaries of 6 persons during 12h30 which is very different since collaborators are just non operationnal a third of the day interrupting another way with the daily flow. The other important thing is that the 5 sessions can be organised twice a week so the pedagogical process is much deeper and efficient.
  

Above the knowledge those people acquired in the training, you must add some special value directly created from the experience in virtual environments. A group of 6 persons meeting in 5 sessions, develops special bonds sharing a learning experience in an unknow territory ... to make it short and create a physical sensation, it is a bit like those team building sessions where you stimulate a selling force by walking bare foot on hot coals ... just less traumatising and dangerous !!

So the budget for this training would have cost to this company , less than 50% of its price in reality, and would surely have brought at least the same effect, and eventually more in a longtime run... since those 6 people would also have developed a special skill to meet in virtual environments ... skill that they could use in the future for internal meetings from home or external meetings out of the city.

Some nice savings that corporates can reinvest into more trainings to allow people to extend and enlarge the field of their knowledge and access to R&D, or redistribute it in better wages, or offer workers cultural and social events, very real, to stimulate creativity and create a real enterprise culture. From a diner-concert or theater, to a ClubMed week end, opportunities are endless... What about creating philosophic coffee shop next to the cafeteria...

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