The two of us met in a spotless, glass-walled boardroom, video screen at one end, photos of the organization's leaders at the other, and a large table commanding the center of the space. Nothing alarming. Larry Pixel's mop of blond hair, wraparound glasses, and tight black T-shirt seemed a bit casual for the setting, but having arrived at the meeting in jeans myself, I wasn't one to judge.

My first order of business at this sit-down with the CEO of the New Media Consortium was simply making my way to a chair. It was my first time at NMC's new campus, and the last thing I wanted to do was miss the seat and land on the floor. Larry (aka Laurence Johnson, PhD) would forgive a newbie, but I wanted to make a good impression.

I fumbled my way to a spot, and Larry took the seat beside me but quickly thought better of it, jumped up, and flew to the other side of the table so that we could see each other face to face. The meeting was short, maybe 10 minutes. We viewed some slides on the screen; he had a laptop on the table that I looked at; and we tried to examine a book, although I found it a bit blurry and he had a little problem with it falling partway through the table.

Before I knew it, we said goodbye and vanished. My meeting as an avatar — with an avatar — in a virtual boardroom in Second Life, a 3-D virtual world, was over. But my conversation with Johnson, which we had been having by telephone the whole time, continued …

Most people who are familiar with the concept of a multi-user virtual environment are either under 30 or extremely skeptical. And only a fraction of the people aware of online virtual worlds are looking at them in terms of their potential for serious meetings. But the thought leaders are out there — and so are a surprising number of virtual world-based training meetings and events.

For the uninitiated, here are the basics: 3-Donline environments incorporate computer graphics and sound to create an online space that many users can experience at once. Each participant is represented in the virtual world by an avatar — in most cases, a human form — rendered on every other user's computer. As a user's avatar moves through the virtual world, he or she can be seen by any other user viewing that part of the world.

Avatars can communicate with each other, usually via a chat program or instant messaging system, but small groups often converse via conference call. To reach a larger audience, audio can be broadcast to everyone in a specific area (say, a virtual auditorium).

Some virtual worlds are created as role-playing games, where users take on an identity and play toward a goal, such as the relatively well-known World of Warcraft online game. But other worlds exist as a place for residents simply to explore, build, and interact with others, with no specific endgame. These include virtual worlds such as There, Entropia Universe, and, most significantly, Second Life (see the “Look Who's Virtual” box), which celebrated its millionth resident on October 18, 2006, and by press time in January had skyrocketed to more than 2,835,000.

Virtual Blue

Chuck Hamilton, director of IBM's center for advanced learning, is one of that multitude. Hamilton, whose kilt-clad Second Life avatar goes by the name Longg Weeks, is among those at the forefront of IBM's drive into virtual worlds. The company's Second Life land holdings have grown from one island to 12 islands in the past year.

IBM is using Second life to experiment with complex system visualization for clients in insurance, government, and medical fields, but training and meetings are also getting a lot of attention. Hamilton estimates that the company has held hundreds of events in the past year, such as the meetings he routinely holds with his geographically dispersed staff; a handful of “major” meetings (of about 150 people each), which have included events for IBM alumni and a press conference by IBM chairman Sam Palmisano's avatar; and virtual world “onboarding,” where new hires and interns are being brought together for their first taste of the company and lessons in corporate policy, culture, and products.

The last part started as a pilot project in August for a few hundred new employees in India and will be expanded in 2007, including a program called Fresh Blue, which is specifically for interns in China. “We hire hundreds of people a year. You can't bring all those people together easily,” says Hamilton. And while face-to-face meetings might be preferred, introducing people to the company through a 3-D experience is far superior to a conference call, webinar, or other 2-D e-learning event, he says. “All things being equal, people want to work with their friends. Most meetings don't build collaborative friendship.” But with Second Life, Hamilton says, the No. 1 benefit in terms of onboarding is “building friendship circles.” One reason: “You can see me; you know more about me,” says Hamilton, also noting that “there's something about the playfulness [of Second Life]. People are more open and free talking to each other.”

Hamilton also believes that new hires get up to speed faster through an immersive experience. There's no solid science yet, he says, but “memory in 3-D might be better than in 2-D.”

More Human than a Phone Call

In a 2007 New Year's Day post on his blog, IBM's Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president, technical strategy and innovation, predicted that “highly visual interfaces and virtual worlds will become increasingly important for interacting with applications, communicating with people, and engaging in commerce.” He noted that one of the main attractions is that people are able to “communicate in ways that for many feel more ‘human’ than phone calls or instant messaging.

“Clearly, virtual meetings are not a substitute for physical meetings, but that is not the choice we usually face,” wrote Wladawsky-Berger. “In IBM, as in many companies, we spend a lot of our day in conference calls with people all around the world. The choice is not whether to have those meetings in person — but how to make the meetings more effective. As many have been discovering, virtual world meetings might be one of the ways of significantly improving the quality and ‘feeling’ of such meetings involving multiple people in remote locations.”

Georgina Castanon (aka Anita Cassini in SL) couldn't agree more. As director of SOA (service-oriented architecture) and webshare marketing for IBM, based in New York, she works with a team of 23 people from around the globe (including Argentina, the U.K., and Canada) who meet in person once or twice a year, but from week to week communicate by phone. For several months now, Castanon has brought her staff meetings to Second Life. They're still communicating by phone, but they're also “in-world” together. “It's the only way I can get my team to interact on a different basis,” she says.

The Second Life element has built relationships among the group, she says, because people experience each other as personalities, seeing the way that they dress and move through the space. She also finds that they build camaraderie by working together to learn and maneuver the Second Life tools. After a recent in-world meeting in the floating pod above IBM's Almaden Island, she and the rest of her team teleported to the simulation of New York's Rockefeller Center, where they donned skates and glided their avatars around the ice.

She describes the culture of Second Life as “completely friendly and open,” and that, she says, “has helped my team interact. … My team is waiting for the next meeting.”