RL work in SL

When you buy a SIM you get a nice set of estate tools. You can limit who has access to your SIM by either group or by individual. I also believe there is a way to work with LL to make accounts that are restricted to your land. So essentially private (corporte) sims are possible today.

Contact me in world if you want to know more. DNA Prototype and I are building a local NH town (main street) for a research project at Dartmouth College. I'm working with the school and DNA is on contract.

Satchmo: Sounds very interesting. Hope to find out what town someday.

In general, much of the hesitation will be with perception and image. Nobody wants to be responsible for it if the New York Times runs an article like "Company X Makes Employees Use 3D Sex Game!" Universities have the same concerns, multiplied by their whole in loco parentis deal... "You exposed my little Princess to this filth?!? No donations for you!"

It'll take some bold companies to climb on-board, and greater general acceptance of spaces like SL, before lots of stodgy companies will look past this crap. In the meantime, though, the ones who can/will have a chance to enhance their own reputations as trailblazers...

I wonder if an analogy can be made to the internet, where there are plenty of pornographic websites. Some companies force their employees to use the internet to do their jobs .. are they forcing them to use a pornographic medium?

I think a problem I would probably stress would be the potential interaction with griefers. However, I believe invisible Islands were the solution to that particular problem.

There's a parallel thread about this in the "SL Volunteers and Education" forum.

I have a chat transcript and slideshow up from the last meeting if anyone wants to see all the details:

/203/e2/53290/1.html#post581085

Wow, Iron Perth, you are so right! It was about a month and a half into my SL experience that I realized - and commented to my husband on - that it was making me much less afraid of heights.

When I first got on the game, I went to Angelique's beautiful place, and it was connected by these catwalks high above - something. And there were no rails. It made me REAL nervous. About a month and a half later, I realized I wasn't having that same feeling in high places, and figured that was good for me.

coco

P.S. Regarding the use of skills learned here in the real world, in SL I am learning all kinds of skills that will never apply to my real life or work in any fashion whatsoever.

I'd like to find out more about what uses people have discovered for RL work using SL.

I'm in the qualitative market research field and happen to think SL would be great for conducting consumer research studies. However, I have this constant dilemma of "graphics vs. text" and am wondering if there really is substantially more value bringing these discussions into a graphical environment.

Online focus groups and research studies are incredibly popular with my clients, but they are all text based. I guess I would need to position SL as valuable for a particular type of study (i.e. evaluating product or service concepts, new product ideation, etc...), rather than all studies. Not sure though...

I also happen to work in a remote office setup and am actively trying to get others in the organization in SL for remote collaboration.

Has anyone out there had similar research-related thoughts (or work in a similar field)? I'd be interested to hear what types of business-related collaboration currently (or may soon) exists in SL.

Yes, I especially think if patients are encouraged to build up their own avatar and make social connections in world (and, perhaps, not given the ability to fly) the immersive qualities would be stronger and therefore more effective for treatment.

That being said, I'm not a psychologist and have done no particular research into this so I can not say this absolutely for sure. However, I bet it would be a very interesting area of study.

Thanks for making this information available online. We are planning another presentation for next month. We'll post an announcement here, but we also send announcements to members of our group, "RL Work in SL". If you'd like to join our group, please IM me for an invite.

Pietro

I have some thoughts on a couple market research scenarios that could work in SL. One, use role play to test versions of a sales pitch/promotion, and another, test different options for product displays. Each of these scenarios will harness different features of the SL experience, but both will benefit from the immersive quality of the virtual/3D world.

... looking forward to meeting more of you inworld!
-Katherine

Here's a description of this month's presentation by FlipperPA...

Date: Thursday, August 11, 2005
Time: 10:00AM - 11:00AM (60 minutes)

Event description: Second Life is a great environment for doing many things, but who would have dreamed that a blue collar business would already be using it to enhance their training? The Crompco Corporation in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania (just outside Philadelphia) is using technology in ways very few mid-sized companies do, including Second Life. New field technicians are trained on how gas stations work underground in Second Life, before entering the field. Its probably a good idea, given the fact they will be working with tens of thousands of gallons of gasoline! FlipperPA Peregrine (Tim Allen), Crompco's lead Software Architect, and Crompco Mechanique (Ed Kubinisky), Crompco's Special Projects Manager, will demonstrate how Crompco is using Second Life in new an imaginative ways, as well as providing a background on Crompco's environmental work and technologies.

**Indigo (100,8, contact FlipperPA for a teleport, as we'll be high up in the sky!**

Unfortunately, it is looking like Ed will be unable to join us due to having to travel to conduct an interview. I will handle this one solo, and look forward to showing y'all what we're up to!

Regards,

-Flip

I find this stuff really facinating! I'll try and make it!

Hey gang! I'm glad people are showing some excitement. Everything is set up in Indigo.

If you go to INDIGO at (62,29) and 94 meters high you'll see a sign (blue and white) featuring the Crompco logo and "RL WORK IN SL". Wait here for the elevator (a prim). When it arrives, sit on it and it will take you up to the gas station. When you arrive at the gas station, stand up and you'll be at the presentation location!

Or IM Pietro, Echinacea or myself for a TP.

I look forward to presenting to you all tomorrow!

Regards,

-Flip

Sounds great, I look forward to it.

Hi all! To follow is an invitation I sent around to members of the RL Work in SL group. If you're not a member and would like to be one feel free to IM me (or any of the officers) inWorld.

......

Make plans to attend this RL Work in SL presentation by Kim Anubis!

Work for Hire: A builder's tale of RL contract work in SL

Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Time: 1:00 PM - 1:45 PM (game/SL time) -- 45-minute presentation, followed by discussion
Location: Grindlewald 19, 133

What's it like to work on a professional building project under Real Life contract in Second Life? What vital points should builder and client discuss before work starts? What can go wrong and what do you do about it? Kim Anubis (Kimberly Rufer-Bach) will discuss these questions and others as she describes, and displays examples from, her recent project for University of California Davis Medical Center.

Kim Anubis is a professional builder of Second Life objects and environments, and owns the in-world business l o t u s, designs by Kim Anubis. Kim recently completed a two-month contract building about 70 objects for a University of California Davis Medical Center project which will be used to train state health department staff in deployment of emergency medical clinics. Kim's experience in both text- and graphics-based online communities spans 20 years, including work in a professional capacity at There.com, iUniverse.com, and AOL.

IM Katherine Mullen or Chimera Malaprop for teleport to this presentation. Sponsored by the "RL Work in SL" (Real Life Work in Second Life) group.

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The "RL Work in SL" group is having our October presentation...

The Synthetic Environments for Emergency Response Simulation (SEERS) project aims to provide cost effective mission rehearsal and virtual prototyping tools for the emergency response community. The project, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, is part of the core research program of the Emergency Readiness and Response Research Center (ER3C) at Dartmouth College's Institute for Security Technology Studies. (http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu/projects/seers/)

Satchmo Prototype, a Dartmouth researcher, will give a presentation on the use of Second Life as a platform for creating synthetic environments for Homeland Security. He will discuss the pros and cons of the Second Life platform, present his work creating an environment for community emergency response teams and will lead a brainstorming session on other possible uses.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
10:00 am - 11:00 am (gametime)
Response (10, 140)

For a TP, IM Pietro Maracas, Echinacea Wallaby, or Katherine Mullen.

What business applications exist in-world besides the obvious "collaborate on architecture"?

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It must be possible to paste comma delimited text into a notecard, then have a script generate a three dimensional graph to improve visualization of spreadsheet data.

It should be possible to use prims to make pseudo gantt charts, then have a script turn those back into dates and tasklists.

One can imagine a basic workflow involving a visual assembly line for document (notecard) routing and approval.

I would think that interactive 3d process maps could be built. Auditors and Business process analysts could walk around the process and discuss with clients.

With all the business that's conducted in SL, I'd expect to see timecard systems, sales order tracking systems, customer relationship management systems, etc. Add General Ledger and Manufacturing and you'd have all the functions of an ERP.

Is there some way to produce a quicktime stream of a PC desktop instead of using webex or livemeeting?

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Anyone interested in developing some of these ideas?

I've been dreaming up ways to do Project Management in SL. Gantt Charts, project planning boards, whiteboards, etc. So far, I always resort to external tools.

Maybe I was thinking about things in monochromatic 2d when I should have been thinking in glorious full-colour 3d. (Not outside the box, rather outside the page and into the box.)

Here's one possible way to conduct project management in 3d.

Instead of making a Gantt Chart in 2d, one can imagine two piles of coloured boxes.

The pile on the left represents incomplete work.
The pile on the right represents completed work.
Anything in between is work in progress.
The size of the box represents the work effort required for the task.
The colour or texture on the box represents the responsible party.
Linked boxes represent dependencies.

For milestones and benchmarks, one would have to set up boxes as they ought to appear on a certain date, then take a snapshot and display that on yet another box.

On given dates, the Project manager can look at the two piles of boxes, compare it to the snapshot, and instantly see whether things appear on track or not.

What else is needed in this model?
Perhaps a way to store documents in representative prims.
Should the Risk Management plan be a notecard in a knife-shaped object, or instead a pile of knives representing specific risks?

It would be nice to have better connectors between prims. Something like elastic stereo cables to represent dependencies or processes.

Discuss!

Of course, if a work package is big enough, it might have a series of subtasks.

Those could be little piles of boxes on top of the big box.
(In this case, they'd all be linked and the assignee would have to "edit linked parts" to move subtasks on top of the big box)

Moving boxes around in the SL edit interface isn't actually that much fun compared with say, physically tossing boxes around or using HalfLife2's gravity gun.

Has anyone made a gravity gun in SL? I'd like to use it for project management.

Alternatively, has anyone developed a way to virtually pick up a prim, carry it, then set it down?

Thinking about this a little more.

This model doesn't help visualize "future" work. Work that doesn't need to start yet, but will need to be done in the future.

Any suggestions?
Maybe the transparency attribute would indicate how far away something is.

While not for RL work, SL does help a lot with my other RL hobbies, those being Real-time 3D animation, C/C++, MySQL, and Linux systems administration and integration.

Mostly, I've been developing some home-brew games of my own, trying to learn all the different little nuances of each and working with raw coding when I can. I've adapted a lot of that to SL, making weapons and vehicles. As I progress, I'm looking for ways to improve performance of those items and add more realism to them.

So, in a nutshell, SL is helping me expand my understanding and knowledge outside of SL in the industry I would like to one day get my foot into.

I've talked with the Lindens about starting a sim offering tutoring to minor students similar to RL Silvan Learning Centers. It will exist in Teen World and all adults will have to get background checks and permissions to enter Teen World.

I've had two major concerns about RL business in SL:

1. How griefers that attempt to bring down the grid are handled and
2. What will be done about the absolutely horrible lag and time dilation lately.

The first concern was answered when LL decided to pursue criminal prosecution against those attacking the grid. The second concern I haven't seen addressed adequetly yet.

A third concern is the lack of a good way of importing written content in a dynamic way. Being able to write notecards would go a long way in this respect.

I would *hope* that having your own sim would help with lag! But that knee-jerk reaction doesn't take into account how many tutors and students you'd need in-sim to make the business model work, etc.

Hmm... Could the dynamic content requirements be met by some XMLRPC scripts hooked up to a backend somewhere else on the 'Net? So the interactivity would be in-world where you need it, and it could access external content from that backend. Easy to suggest, harder to build, but perhaps a possibility.

Join us on Wednesday, December 14th at 10:00 am gametime for the December RL Work in SL Presentation, "Virtual Philanthropy: Second Life Relay For Life" with Randal Moss of the American Cancer Society and Second Life resident Jade Lily. Randal & Jade will discuss their past work and the future of the SL Relay For Life and the American Cancer Society's plans to build a stable community presence within Second Life.

Steiger 181, 80 or IM Echinacea Wallaby, Katherine Mullen or Pietro Maracas for TP.