Dr. Leslie Jarmon presents a customized demonstration of Second Life with a short lecture and an interactive discussion with live guests inworld. Media hype aside, Second Life (SL) is not a game but an inherently social space with extensive human activity that includes the public, private, and non-profit sectors. SL is both a public and private space, and alongside the challenges of exploring this virtual human communication arena is the early identification of potential benefits for users. Research findings suggest that virtual world platforms can impact technology and business stakeholders in several ways:
Encourage innovation through effective external collaborations and discovery
Accelerate learning of individuals and teams (faster assimilation, instant feedback)
Cultivate more inclusive knowledge-sharing communities
Greatly reduce some brick-and-mortar costs for operations
The panel debates successes and trials/errors in virtual world endeavors and how they have or have not enabled transformations in existing organizations, industry structures, business models. What are the implications of virtual worlds for commerce? How will the new forms of collaboration enable new commerce models? The panel tries to develop a clearer view of the road head of virtual world endeavors in the larger business environment.
This panel debates the latest growth trends in attracting new atypical audiences in the video game industry and impact on MMOG on the evolution of the video game industry including ecosystems and business models.
This panel explores innovative applications of virtual worlds in a variety of educational settings. Questions it seeks to answer include: What are the challenges in building innovations and diffusing them? what will next-generation innovations in virtual worlds for education look like?
