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Virtual networking: Meet & greet or love me & leave me?

CleverZebra, a company that, “advises its members on the use of virtual worlds technologies within enterprise”, thinks so; its website asks coolly, “Why fly when you can teleport?”, as if reality has become a bit of a bother. Virtual worlds are helpfully exempt from the realities of death and taxes, though probably not the latter for much longer. Fuelling debate at Sepember’s Virtual Policy Network’s Virtual Policy ‘08 in London were talks on taxing revenues generated in virtual worlds. Exciting the regulators is the destructive effect of virtual spaces on distance; users separated by national borders, and laws, at home are jurisdiction free neighbours online. Virtual conferencing embraces this destruction. Meetings can go ahead without a single delegate becoming encased in traffic on their way to take a carbon heavy flight, plus everyone gets to sleep in their own bed at the end of the day, in a coup for both environmental and work/life balances.

There are other benefits. A video conference is cramped at a 4-way split screen; in multi-user virtual world conferences speakers can address scores of attendees (well, about 80), while displaying numerous visual aides (oh joy) before basking in the glory of a rapturous standing avatarvation (sorry). Delegates can break off into discussion groups then bring feedback to the whole, enabling greater participation. A lavish, bespoke surrounding for this love-in is the other main feature on offer, ranging from the exotic to, bizarrely given the possibilities, the mundane.

Experiments in holding online events continue with varying success by another group for whom simulating ‘being there’ is important, musicians. In-world concerts play for one audience with two bodies, the second a swaying self-projection on screen. Conferences could certainly benefit from what virtual spaces like Second Life (the platform used by CleverZebra) do well, when they’re not doing bad; bringing people together around a common interest like music or politics.

Depending on who you ask, however, there are also some negative numbers involved. Iyan Writer in Second Life® is unconvinced by the return on investment of using virtual world spaces for conferencing, pointing to a series of potential real world flaws; “major problems are the unwillingness to invest human resources in SL; the complexity and immaturity of Second Life as a business platform; and the biggest one of all, the difficulty of forging lasting and valuable relationships with Second Life community.” (A zebra and its stripes, 11.04.08) ZDNET blogger Oliver Marks echoes this last point, warning that no virtual venture can forget the very human need for “careful planning and integration into existing personnel and partner hierarchies” (It’s the economy stupid - collaboration ROI, 22.05.08).

Greenness and life-friendliness video conferencing currently achieves without the new investment virtual conferencing demands, and with the benefit of seeing who you are talking to. In a virtual conference colleagues’ confusion/boredom/disgust at what you’ve just said won’t be detectable. Although potentially a bonus if your spine is as sustantive as that of your avatar, these emotional indicators are important components of one of the main aims of conferences, relationship building.

The success of virtual conferencing rests on its capability for enhancing communications by recreating, if not augmenting, the essential reciprocity of a live event, in a way that perhaps staring face on into a webcam at your associates while alone in a grey box meeting room can not. The risks are depersonalised or fragmented relationships and, initially at least, the problem of getting people to actually stay and listen to what you have to say despite the fact that they can teleport and and you are wearing butterfly wings. Funny CleverZebra don’t mention that on their website.