Second Life On Right Track For Virtual Meetings? (And Sony Exploring the Concept)

I was reading an article that was primarily about Sony's foray into turning Playstation Home into a virtual business meeting space.

Of course, one of Second Lilfe's aspirations is to provide a platform for virtual business and academic meetings.

The article is here:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090102-companies-testing-sonys-virtual-home-for-real-meetings.html

The last paragraph of the article was striking to me:

"But there is something unsettling about a huge number of identical stock characters sitting in a PlayStation-branded clubhouse discussing the world's business with a handful of emotes and quick phrases."

If the virtual business meeting place is such a great, innovative idea and the wave of the future, why hasn't Second Life already been capitalizing more effectively upon it? Second Life, it seems to me, has already advanced technologically well beyond what Sony envisions for Playstation Home. Second Life has certainly solved the problem alluded to in the last paragraph of that article.

Is the virtual meeting space really the wave of the future? Is Sony going down a dead end path? Or is Linden Lab and Second Life failing to capitalize on the next great business innovation?

Virtual meetings for Business require two things that Second life has been completely unable to deliver: Reliable, stable access; and the ability for more than 40 people at once to attend the same meeting without in becoming a hopeless lagfest.

I can schedule a meeting on one of the commercial web-based services that Business actually uses, and can have 20,000 people attend the meeting, be able to submit moderated questions from any of those attendees to the meeting's chairperson, switch chairpersons in mid-stream, and have whoever is the Chair share their computer screen or a specific applications' window in real time. Compared to the existing business-level services out there, SL is a kid's tin-can-and-string telephone.

I mentioned at a meeting a few weeks ago to my company that we might want to consider meetings in SL, and it was dismissed out out of hand with a comment to the effect that there was no way that our organisation was going to have any meetings with other companies in a place known to be frequented by paedophiles and the possibility of flying penises interrupting the proceedings. He then asked for SERIOUS suggestions (to cut air travel for meetings).

Throw enough mud, and I guess it will stick.

(This was in Germany, where there has been several negative newspaper and magazine articles on SL).

Rock

I agree...in the corp world not holding a meeting because the grid goes down or you cant get into a sim is NOT going to work.

While there are companies that will use SL for some types of meetings, those are largely relegated to small-scale meetings, like a team of 2 to 10 employees, where the company can control the entire sim the meeting is in or can be certain their chosen site is otherwise secure, and where the timing of the meeting isn't necessarily critical.

I work in RL for a multinational corporation, and we do have some clients that use SL for some non-critical business purposes. But never for a meeting that matters to the Business.

There are security issues as well. I wouldn't want even a casual meeting in SL for any business related purpose. Everything I do has something to do with finance and accounting and for much of that, there are legal security levels required in our state. If someone were to mention a client in conjunction with a privacy information item, it would probably be a violation. Business systems have the capability to invoke fully secure and encrypted data exchanges when necessary, vetted to meet legal requirements and there is no good reason to give that up for SL. Real voice, well worked methods to exchange info in text, voice and file, with full security and encryption available on a reliable (guaranteed 99.99% up time), for what? My SL avatar?

There are just too many other options for remote business meetings. Often, at least once a week, I have a phone conference call with 5 to 15 others that does not involve video-the only web use is for the person who sets it up The program emails the phone number and conference number (in outlook format) to the participants.

Then there are several services that, in addition to the voice, will allow participants to view the screen of a presenter for a Power point presentation or to look at spread sheets, text, etc. The "presenter" can change from one to another during the meeting.

And there are systems in which a camera can be placed in each of several conference rooms, and there are systems that would make use of individual cameras at each PC (problem-I have to fix my hair before the meeting ) (no joke-last month I got on my home computer at 5am for a conference with people in Europe. I am glad the camera was not in use!)

All of these are reliable, are here now (and were a few years ago), and none require dressing your avatar appropriately. Also, no lags or crashes. SL conferences are fine for people who are already on SL. I joined SL more because of fashion interest than anything. While on it I participate in discussions related to my other interests. But I still participate in forums (like this) related to those interests. I have taken CLE (continuing legal education) course on-line, through "traditional" web based media. I like SL, but I would never recommend it for conferences that could be held using other on-line media.

Mary

Network unreliability is obviously a key obstacle to Second Life being a serious business platform of any type. I don't have a lot of technical knowledge, so I'm not sure what prevents Second Life from achieving better stability.

I've worked for small businesses all my life. The idea of a business meeting with 20,000 didn't occur to me. When I think back to situations in which web-based meetings would have been a benefit, I was thinking of meetings with maybe 5-20 participants usually, or sometimes as many as 40-50.

After reading a few of the replies in this thread, I started doing my own little research on what web-based video-conferencing options are available. (I've never been able to convince anyone for whom I've worked to explore video-conferencing to replace some in-person meetings). Most of the sites I saw don't reveal much in the way of pricing information (they want you to talk to the sales person, of course); the little pricing information I found seems to tell me that the web-based video-conferencing services currently available are a bit pricey for small business (even considering savings in travel time).

It's a little bit clearer to me now why educational institutions seem to have taking the lead in trying to use Second Life. One, it's cheap. Second, the content creation possibilities allow for some specialized visual and interactive learning tools customized to the users.

I can see cheapness being an appeal to small businesses. However, probably only very specialized kinds of businesses would need the extra, custom, interactive tools that might not be available with videoconferencing. (With most meetings, one just needs the participants' faces, voices, and perhaps a powerpoint.)

I would think some of the privacy issues (at least as far as keeping out strangers' avatars decked in their new prim penises) are easily solveable in SL now. Encryption is something I don't much about, but I would think that not all users would require extra special encyryption (not protecting trade secrets or any big things like that).

Which brings me back to my initial suspicion that, except for pricing, Second Life has little to offer that available video-conferencing cannot offer. I can see Second Life being well-suited for special cases (if reliability is worked out), that those cases would be more the exception that the rule.

That does leave me to a remaining mystery with the article I read on Sony. Surely the big companies who are partering with Sony to explore Playstation Home for business video-conferencing have done their homework; they know the web-based video-conferencing already exists, they know that Second Life exists. So if the virtual world offers nothing that video-conferencing doesn't have, why are Sony and the big companies putting some money into developing Playstation Home for business meetings?

Let's all go to Barbie's house and have a tupperware meeting, come early to rserve your very own poseball!!

Sims cost $295USD a month + setup of $1,000USD. I doubt video conferencing is more expensive than that in the long run. Also with that $295USD a month you are not guaranteed any thing resembling reliability or lag free environment. Also you have to have a computer for EVERY employee and those computers have to have the hardware to run SL.

Also with that sim you can only have so many people on it. 40 by default but can go up to 100 with private sims. Anything over 40 gets retarded though.

If you are not in person then why do you need a avatar? Whats the point? Why not one cam viewing the entire meeting in each location if video is even needed?

SL platform is not practical and will not be for anytime to come. That is why it is not taking off as a business meeting platform.

There is scope for smaller meetings in SL and I saw a video of a businessman who conducts most of his meetings in-world. Big meetings or conferences, as mentioned earlier are more problematical.

But in the future, when graphics and performance of virtual worlds have improved and more people have grown up with virtual worlds, who knows what the opportunities for business events might be?

I honestly think that virtual meeting spaces are a good idea. A 3D space filled with avatars just makes things click in your brain. It's like turning on the light in a dark room. All of a sudden you can see everyone you were talking to.

I looked at what SL is offering for virtual meetings and it looks rather boring and sterile. Which is perfect for business! I think they should completely hide the fact that it's SL. Maybe sell it under a different company name. Yes... an alt company. That way any business person can push the idea without getting any flack about Second Life.

I think this is what Philip Linden is getting at when he talks about "immersive meeting spaces". The implication that there is something better and more realistic in using an avatar to attend a meeting with other avatars.

That sounds like a *good* idea!

My understanding of M Linden's focus was that business use of SL is one of his priorities. Most of the drawbacks have been alluded to already - the 3 main ones that I see in our situation (education support) are
a) our supplied PCs wouldn't cope with SL - we'd need to improve them next upgrade cycle
b) the learning curve associated with SL - it takes a while to become competent at moving and using the camera. You couldn't just be invited to a meeting later this morning and turn up without preparation
c) the likelihood of those business people being confronted with -ahem- undesirable content during their learning phase

IMO, we are at least 2 years away from a PC upgrade, and I think that by then SL (or its spin-out?) might be in a better position to service business meetings. That would give us time to set up training programs, a community gateway and a meeting area in SL, but in the current economic climate I am doubtful that any proposals along these lines will get funding, unfortunately

I think this may prove prophetic in years to come...

I just don’t see the advantage of a 3-D virtual world like SL for business conferences. The plain old 2-D stuff works well. All of the computing power, both at the user (client) end and at the server, as well as the communications bandwidth, could be better used.

Certainly our own PCs as well as the servers and communications are improving rapidly. However, the software used by the various on-line conference software companies is also improving. While a few years from now SL may be much more capable, so will Webex, Gotomeeting, and all of the others. I recently heard about a system for business that would have pictures (the usual head and shoulders mug shots used in web sites and brochures) of the participants displayed on the screen. As an individual spoke the appropriate picture would be highlighted. Recordings of the discussion and the image shown to the group on the screen can also be saved for review later (If the option is chosen). On existing systems the screen of the presenter is shown to attendees, so anything that can be shown on a computer screen (video of any format, documents of any kind, etc.) can be shown to the group with no worry about compatibility.

Without having to worry about the 3-D modeling and other features, but being able to concentrate only on the things important to conferencing, the companies that specialize in on-line conferencing will always have an advantage.

In addition to the computer I use for SL, I have an old laptop that won’t allow me to run SL. I just get a message that it does not meet system requirements. However, I have no problem using it for any of the on-line conference systems. And it is nice and small for travel.

Of course, face-to-face meetings are the best. However, when groups are widely scattered, the travel and the time required for the travel become a problem. One organization I work with has two face-to-face board meetings (a three day event with the board meeting on the third day) and two on-line meetings per year. Members of the board are from all over North America, Europe, and Asia. All meetings (including face-to-face) are proceeded with a number of online meetings involving committees and groups of staff people to prepare for the meetings. The first two days of the face-to-face meetings allow everyone to get to know each other, have small meetings of committees, etc.

The developments in on-line conferencing technology are continuing. I don’t think that the use of a 3-D avatar will overcome many of the disadvantages of SL or advantages of other existing software for on-line conferences.

Toy has a point. There is a corporate culture that really won't accept werewolves showing up at stockholder meetings. Throw in the security issues, griefers, and grid stablity situation and it looks less and less attractive to many businesses.

However, your idea of inworld Tupperware parties is a d*mn good idea! There is potential here, although tupperware isn't my thing. The business model transfered to SL, might have legs.

I agree that large corporate meetings in sl are a cool idea. but i have experience with these huge meetings across the globe with hundreds of folks participating....there is really no "need" to see the person who is speaking. The biggest advantage i see in SL for meetings is cost....it is hugely cheaper to hold a meeting in SL than to even use the normal conferencing services. There are many locations in SL that are more than willing for folks to hold a meeting...so really no need to purchase an island, pay tier etc. If folks could be assured of stability and have an option to come in world to use a conference area for a small fee for meetings...i think the idea would be a huge success. Low overhead, on demand use, and the fun of seeing everyone.

I have an idea that these kinds of meetings are happening in SL, at least to some extent. At least I occaionally hear from customers that they are buying my clothes for something like that. Presumably if businesses are having activities in private areas there would be no way for the rest of us to know anything about it.

I went to an SL business meeting and was shocked. I had no idea that our customer was a tentacle monster!

We have customers that we regularly discuss at on-site meetings and conference calls with remote offices. With some of these customers, we are contractually forbidden to publicly mention their name - they'll sue the pants off us if we mention their name in public. We have some that even have auditors that sometimes show up and camp in our lobby, watching to see if people show their badges to the person at the desk.

I expect that many businesses, especially high-tech businesses, have their own version of such things. Some are more strict, some less strict.

SL just doesn't have the security yet to be a serious player here. There's an opportunity here for LL to do product around private mini-grids or maybe somebody else (somebody with a real business plan and a reputation and all that) to do something with opensim but the grid we all know and love (when we're not screaming at it) just isn't really an option yet...

I have seen that business get better service over regular consumers. Guaranteed uptime and better support. Of course businesses pay more for it. I wonder if that is how LL is doing it.

One thing that really bugged me about the Rivers Run Red presentation was that it completely ignored the whole virtual world aspect. They left the world in the background and had talking heads (which you don't see in SL) popping up in front of the characters. There was no feeling that the 3d virtual environment had any value or purpose.

I would have gotten rid of the whole "conference room" environment. Hold the meeting in a sandbox, with enough room for people to split up and form side conversations, rez objects and post images on them, do all the things that long-term residents actually do when holding meetings in-world. Use the strengths of the platform.

Edit: They should be able to put together an "SL appliance", a grid-in-a-box, in a 1U rack-mount server. Keep it behind the corporate firewall, let people "teleport" to it from SL only if they're behind that firewall (direct or VPN). Yes, you use the unitary grid, but I think that's necessary to get this market.