They are even setting up shop in Second Life!

Here is the first article in the series: Real-Life Teaching in a Virtual World – http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/02/18/real-life-teaching-in-a-virtual-world.aspx

Imagine if you will that you are a new worker in one of these industries. You need to understand the offshore environment in such a way that you know what to do when there is an explosion or other danger. You do not necessarily want this to be firsthand experience in the way you learn about it. Instead, you can learn through your Avatar about what happens in a situation.

This type of simulation is helping people through a training simulator that actually creates the offshore environment within the virtual world. Second Places has also created a higher level of security so that industries can feel safer using them than in other virtual worlds.

The oil industry now understands that they can bring together staff from around the world to work in these simulations and they are able to bring teams together quicker. When a dangerous situation happens in real life it will depend on a team of people to fix it; in the simulation they get used to working together. In this environment they are able to see the dangerous situations from all angles and if something goes wrong, they will be able to see what happened.

In the virtual environment each company can see exactly what they need to do in any situation because it allows them to create every possible scenario. The simulation is so thorough that if something would naturally happen to someone in real life in the dangerous situation, this will happen to the Avatar. This can give them valuable feedback about what went wrong and how to fix it so it doesn’t happen in the real world.

This simulation is a good tool for managers to assess the knowledge of their employees and to judge their reactions in real time. They will know whether employees can keep calm under pressure or whether they need to have training in this area; it will also define other training needs.

Second Places is a Scotland based company and is a partnership between Fusion Unity and Clicks and Links. They have a staff of eight and they work with about 25 clients at this time. They concentrate on creating simulations for clients for training.

ON24 provides four key results from their survey on trends in meeting attendance:

42% expect participation in physical trade shows to be down by as much as 50%
64% expect to have fewer physical sales kick off seminars – or none at all
60% expect training, management and other internal events to be down 20 – 50%
A full 76% said their company has already begun using virtual events (53%) or plans to begin using them (23%) to supplement some of their physical events in 2009

The promising findings in regard to views on virtual meetings were:

While 61% said they would miss seeing people in person, less than half felt they would miss traveling to other locations (34%), enjoying the social activities (36%) or seeing speakers in person (20%). Respondents found several aspects of virtual participation to be particularly appealing:

75% appreciated that there is no travel required
64% liked that they can attend the virtual sessions on their own time schedules
58% found it useful to be able to “forward” to their colleagues virtual sessions that they thought would be of interest to them
More than one third of respondents cited the social networking benefits of virtual events, including the ability to see a list of all attendees in advance (35%); to contact other attendees online throughout the event (40%) and to get information on people (32%) and companies (34%) they meet electronically.

Read the whole story here:
http://www.metaversejournal.com/2009/02/01/growth-predicted-in-virtual-events-for-enterprise/

Employers are seeing the potential – and the cost savings, and are beginning to participate in Second Life or web.alive to host events and job fairs. These virtual job fairs seem to be the wave of the future as long as the economy is in a slump. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one. The Virtualis Convention and Learning Center in Second Life is considering creating a major Job Fair this Summer. If you have any thoughts or inputs, or would like to be a part of this Virtualis Job Fair, contact me @ cpudan@mac.com

What Is a Virtual World?
Technically a virtual world is a place where many people come together through an online interface to do something. It is interactive and is an environment that simulates what you see on the outside world. A variety of Avatars or fantasy figures move around the world as representatives of the people who are interacting.

Types of Virtual Worlds

These worlds are created for a multiple of reasons and there goals can be very similar or totally different. Here are a few of the different types:

Commercial Gaming — these are very popular for people who enjoy the quest in games like Dungeons and Dragons. This allows people to interact with different characters to take part in a specific fantasy or science fiction game. One of the most interesting commercial gaming sites is The World of Warcraft.

Socializing and Online Community — this is an experience that may include games but the emphasis is on building communities of friends. They will use chat rooms that are text based and they can be used to create a personal space like an apartment, a home or a room. These allow people to come in and create special events and then participate in them.

Business Worlds — since the economy has changed so drastically many businesses do not have the cash flow to send their executives to conferences. This has created an opportunity for business programs like Second Life’s Virtualis and Qwaq.

Both of these worlds give business people the opportunity to connect at a conference without ever leaving their office. They can enjoy the full conference experience without the expenses of hotel or meals. Virtualis creates a full conference center where business people can explore the entire conference right from their desks. Some of the activities available would be very costly outside the virtual environment.

Virtual worlds are now part of OUR world, so get out there & explore all the uses!

http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2009/01/virtual_meeting.html

Michon will lead Linden Lab’s core engineering team responsible for the hosted services and virtual world platform that power Second Life. Michon is tasked with scaling Second Life to provide a high-quality user experience, supporting the growth in virtual worlds and evolving the platform to ignite a new wave of product innovation. Wade will advise on Linden Lab’s overall business strategy, including acquisitions and partnerships, and will identify new opportunities to grow the business in key vertical and geographic markets.

Read the rest here: http://tinyurl.com/SLteam