Was für ein toller Movie, oder? Und doch muss ich mal eine Lanze für das gute alte Radio brechen: Am kommenden Mittwoch, den 2. Juni 2010 läuft im SWR 2 von 22.18 - 23.15 Uhr ein Radiofeature über Second Life mit Namen »Fenster zur Welt« von dem Autor Egon Koch. Ja, ich habe auch erst gestutzt: Kann man Second Life wirklich verstehen, wenn man es nicht sieht, sondern hört ... und dann noch fast eine ganze Stunde lang?

Ja, man kann. Und man tut offensichtlich.

Egon Koch hat es in der Tat fertig gebracht, nur anhand von Stimmen, Geräuschen und Musik eine Atmosphäre zu schaffen, die einen abtauchen lässt in die virtuelle Welt unseres Vertrauens. Er hat dabei als die Figur Sologo Hoxley mit einer ganzen Herde von Avataren inworld gesprochen, Interviews geführt und die Geschichten aufgeschrieben. Dabei ist es zu einer ganzen Reihe von Begegnungen gekommen, die so im realen Leben wohl nie stattgefunden hätten. Und das Ende ist wirklich überraschend.

Also, unbedingt anhören. Das gilt vor allem für diejenigen unter uns, die Second Life immer noch nach dem beurteilen, was sie wissen ... oder an was sie sich zu erinnern glauben. Grundsätzlich ist das natürlich nicht verkehrt, Dinge nach dem zu beurteilen, was man weiss. Allein, es wäre gut, wenn der Wissenstand etwas aktueller wäre – und nicht unbedingt auf das Jahr 2007 basiert. Da war nämlich ohnehin alles anders.

Bei dieser Gelegenheit sei noch erwähnt, dass die Radiosendung auch per Livestream in Second Life übertragen wird. der Autor wird anwesend sein und auch alle Residents, die in dem Feature zu Wort kommen. Wo? In Köln ... virtuell, versteht sich. Einfach hier klicken!

Sei`s drum. Glotze aus am Mittwoch – und Radio an.

Dabei wünscht wie immer viel Spass

Kai-Michael Schmuck

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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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Or should I put it this way : Will the term "Immersive Internet" be the next buzz word to replace that of virtual worlds in the coming months ?

Like the term "2.0" added some glamor to the poor old web of researchers and academics, like the term "serious games" has made video games more politically correct to the anti-players, will "immersive internet" open a new era where real-time 3D surf will become hype and sexy …

An era that sweet and crazy dreamers who inhabit immersive platforms in the shape of all types of avatars will boast of being there first, missing those ancient times when the world sill had the flavor of the garden of Eden ... the time before the "market" ...

At the speed in which new technologies evolve and converge, change is imminent, although professionnals predict it will take two to five years to "cross the chasm", Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm), which separates the adoption of a technology by early adopters to a take-up (early majority).

In the same way that it gets more difficult to imagine ourselves working without internet, it should be the same in the next five years for immersive Internet. Soon, we will study and train ourselves in virtual campuses where immersion and simulation will provide unimaginable benefits for the understanding of situations and familiar or professional applications.We will do some part of our work in 3D environments where we can communicate, collaborate with colleagues all over the world, working to produce prototypes, visualize complex datas, interview and recruit candidates.

Our avatars will become more sophisticated, highly profiled and implemented with rich features enabling us to interact with each other and share informations, datas, social and virtual objects in a way that will become increasingly real. And in the same way that Internet has deeply changed our perceptions of time and location, immersive Internet will change our perception of work and relationships, adding a much more intense emotional engagement until to forget completely that we are separated by a screen - in fact increasingly thin.

So what reasons could push a company to integrate the immersive Internet today in its development strategy and what are the application areas where it can invest in this new technology focusing on a measurable return on investment?

The research firm ThinkBalm has just published a survey that reported on the creation of business value of immersive Internet for companies as diverse as IBM, Microsoft, BP, United Space Alliance, Preferred Family HealthCare, Town of LaSalle (Illinois), Michelin or Kelly Services. This detailed rigorous study puts into perspective the benefits received by those organizations, both by increasing revenues and improving employee productivity.

Reducing costs while increasing the level of engagement is mentionned by those companies as a main result. Uses currently focus on education, training, meetings and conferences. But the most advanced companies already consider the use of immersive internet as a platform for collaboration tools for data visualization, for 3D collaborative design and prototyping, for the rehersal of situations, or human resources management.

This study is extremely well presented in 3D in Second Life, and probably more didactic than the pdf !

The study clearly points out the quality of exchanges in immersive meetings, widely regarded as superior to the techniques of video-conferencing or any other forms of telepresence. These interactive immersion is much closer to face to face interviews.

My own experience and the studies I conducted on this subject (Coaching et nouvelles technologies) are also going in this direction. The issues of non-verbal and paraverbal resonate differently inside a virtual world, resulting in the creation and formalization of a language based on other statements, other codes that the parties learn to decipher. The results are relevant and superior to any other form of exchange at a distance. The difference: interaction in the same virtual space is producing same type of results than a face to face meeting, talking about emotional interaction.

The other advantage I see in the use of this technology is, without doubt, the accession of the company to a sustainable development policy, thus reducing its carbon footprint, but also highly improving the quality of lives of internal and external actors involved in the operation of the company. By reducing the number of trips, automobiles, trains, planes, through virtualization trade (not all of course!), the company takes part of a green economy fighting against climate changes and can boast the creation of quality jobs.


Defining a clear strategy for the next 3 years.

Today, companies can undertake in the immersive world.They must do so with full awareness of the chasm that still separates the early adopters to mass users. They can do so by refraining from over-estimation of the objectives, and any underestimation of costs and barriers. Starting now, armed with a clear vision and strategy in the short and medium term, and accompanied by real professionals, businesses can expect to return on their investment, a unique experience, and quick visible benefits.

Unlikely years 2006/2007, companies should not only use immersive internet to create buzz for a P.R. campain, but clearly define strategies with precise mission to solve a business problem : commercial, marketing, communication, innovation, human resources etc..

Nothing really new for professionnals... but another technology to integrate into the toolbox. The main difference being that immersive internet plunges its roots in video game and virtual worlds, it will require special skills and understanding. Like email, intranet, internet, social media, and other collaborative tools adopted by the company over the past decade, immersive internet will slowly takes its place and profoundly change the way we work and collaborate. But in the end, the "challenge" will sure be rewarding for those who will have succeed in marrying transversality, experience and innovation, and simultaneously accompany changes arising. It should be even more successfull for those who will anticipate and start the adventure before the wave ...

Helene Zuili is co-founder of makemyworlds, a European company specialized in business solutions for virtual worlds. She is a Linden Lab Solution Provider for Second Life. You can email her at helenezuili(at)gmail.com

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All designers and entrepreneurs will tell you, there is often more pleasure in the dream and the mobilization of energy to achieve this dream as the fulfillment of the dream itself.

Second Life is an incredible platform because it offers to all creators and entrepreneurs the opportunity to express freely, to imagine and create with all the existing media, without complexes and without the means that would be required in real life.

And the creators meet the entrepreneurs, and researchers and educators are working to try new teaching models, collaboration, and little by little the world grows beyond its own limits through the synergies that are formed in the community, outside the community, across languages and cultures. Thanks also to the desire of its creators to push the dream to the limits of what technology can offer.

The collaboration between Philip Rosedale, the visionary, and Mark Kingdon, the maitre d'oeuvre, will push Linden Lab far ahead, even further, where even our imagination dares venture. I believe so, at least for a part of the way . What we saw those last days at the Solutions Providers Conference suggest us the second life of Second Life to come soon .

Professionals of virtual worlds bet on a rapid growth over the next 3 years. A new industry is shaping gradually with individuals and companies coming from the convergence of media, computing, web and telecom. The pre-launch these days of Blue in March 2150 by the company Avatar Reality in collaboration with the National Geographic Society, lets us imagine that the competition looks tough. Linden Lab has clearly understood that to go faster and keeps its leadership, it must rely on its community of entrepreneurs and creators and diversify its proposals for allowing everyone to continue to imagine a world where everything is possible. Where dreams meet everyone without the geographic and social distance.

For us, early adopters, the improvement is really tangible. The simple fact to spend 3 days on a collaborative seminar with people from all over the world speak for itself.

Preachers of a virtual-inhumanity can keep on going.... There will be something for everyone ...

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