The Meetings Community, an industry educational listserv commonly known as MeCo, has announced that it will soon have a home in Second Life, a booming online world where participants move around and chat as avatars.

Dan Parks, a MeCo moderator, is leading the effort to build what he is calling the MeCo Mansion, which will have a theater, lounge areas, even a bar and poker tables for meetings-industry professionals to network and learn more about the potential of Second Life.

Parks, president and creative director of Corporate Planners Unlimited Inc., Dana Point, Calif., is a newbie to this 3-D world—in fact, he had only been exploring for about a week before he was convinced that he wanted to design and fund the MeCo Mansion project. He hopes to have it open in April, and, in the meantime, he’s working on organizing private tours of Second Life for MeCo members.

“The more people from our industry who get involved in this the better,” Parks says. “We have brilliant creative minds who are finding ways for people to interact.” Second Life, he says, is one more tool to consider for networking and training.

In other MeCo news, Parks says the listserv is in the final stages of signing industry lawyer John Foster as its official legal guru. Look for his posts soon.

For more on Second Life, read Virtual Worlds, Real Meetings in Corporate Meetings and Incentives magazine.