In a previous posting I noted the apparent exodus of some of the early entrants into the virtual world, Second Life, including the winding down of the NETg on-line training centre. I also commented that my own experience of this new environment left me struggling up the learning curve and my fears that the average participant would also find the technology a barrier to learning (and the IT department too).
It was with interest then that this morning, I received word that a virtual worlds conference had been cancelled with just a few weeks to go. The slconference 2007 was due to have taken place in Berlin in September, but clearly hadn't attracted much interest. In their press statement, the organisers reported:
Generally, there was great interest from companies and participants that thought the idea of the conference an excellent one. We were able to acquire a lot of interesting and compelling speakers as well as topics that they would present in their conference sessions and workshops.
Unfortunately, the conference did not offer enough impelling opportunities to companies to support it financially, even though there was a desire to support the conference in other ways and to help to make it happen for which we are very thankful. Nevertheless, the financial risk is still existent. Hence, the slconference 2007 team regrets to announce that the slconference 2007 is cancelled.
I have to admit I'd never heard of the conference prior to today, so maybe their marketing let them down, but there again, maybe it's a further sign of some nervousness in this area. Again speaking personally, I would be less likely myself to attend such an event now.
So why have I titled this posting, "Second Chance". Well, having reflected on my last comments, I remembered that I'd recently come across a company who is making a living from creating private virtual environments, plus another company who has a sound offer in simulations that emulate a real workplace and it occurred to me that some of the problems of Second Life, could be avoided or at least minimised by keeping the virtual world within the firewall.
Protonmedia offers corporates the opportunity to create their own internal virtual world that combines the full range of Web 2.0 tools to create a dynamic on-line environment for collaborate working and learning, ProtoSphere. They base a lot of their ideas around the now popular concept of informal learning and for the technical savvy organisation, I'm sure this would add a new dimension. They talk about "always on" meeting spaces and I like this concept for knowledge sharing, especially in a global company where you could span timezones to find new contacts who could get you out of a sticky situation, with some timely advice.
The other company who I last met at trade show in 2006 is PIXELearning. They specialise in a range of generic "serious games", all of which resemble a virtual world and they are working on developing a range of tools so that a non-programmer could easily compile their own game. I've always found the thought of coming up with a concept and then the functionality of a serious game a quite daunting proposition, so it will be interesting to see how easy they have made it. But what I saw last year, was most impressive and a lot of time and energy, not to say budget, has gone into their work.
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