For example, the Cisco Sales Associate Program (CSAP) at Cisco is using Second Life as a meeting place for their globally dispersed team. The CSAP folks get together in this virtual environment regularly to ensure synergy with their program and to talk about the latest in technology such as WAAS and virtualization. The team is also leveraging the virtual environment for team building activities like global team photo days. This leads to a sense of belonging to something greater than ones self, to a sense of being part of something.

Isolation is a killer for the remote worker. It is common for the remote worker to feel out of sync with the office worker. The sense of being left out of desicions because one is not part of the 'water cooler' conversations at the office is palpable for the remote worker. Virtual environments allow for the potentially disenfranchised worker to reengage and realize their contribution potential. There are many folks exploring this subject and I would like to quote directly from Peter Quirk’s excellent post about how virtual worlds address this:

1) by making meetings more engaging than is possible through 2-D web conferencing solutions
2) by creating a sense of a workplace separate from the employee’s home environment, helping to focus the employee on the tasks at hand
3) by creating places for real-time collaboration with other employees
4) by creating a workplace that can be seen from afar, reducing the likelihood that the remote employees will be “out of sight, out of mind”
5) by creating places for remote workers and their office-bound colleagues to hang out with each other over lunch, after work, or after long meetings

I would like to add one to that list:
6) by allowing workers to personalize their appearance in the virtual environment to create a brand for oneself and allow for creative expression

I feel that personal expression and brand is something we all do on a day to day basis, without really thinking about it. Our clothing, hair styles, office accoutrements, etc. say much about who we are, and about our life styles and interests. (Walk past my cube and you can see that I am in to Star Wars, technology and the Muppets. Hmmm, once I apply that idea to my self it makes me wonder whether folks think I am just a big kid?) Participation in a virtual environment can allow remote workers to do much the same thing with their avatar. This enables the remote worker to have a sense of ownership and self when engaging with their peers in a virtual work space.

The consensus is in and the conclusion is that virtual and real world will meld in the work place over the next 5-10 years so intrinsically that we will not think of them as separate. The lines of separation will be blurred to the point of making the separation between virtual and real world not relevant.

I'll toast to that!

What does this mean? It means for all of you who can't join us in Second Life at the Cisco Bandwidth Stage you will be able to come to this blog entry and watch the virtual event streaming live via an embedded web page feed. For those of you who missed this live you can view the archive of the event below now.

Please let us know what you think of this new format by submitting a comment to this blog entry. This new format is a direct result of your feedback to make accessing the events held in virtual environments easier for all interested parties. So you see we really do value your feedback and would appreciate more of it!

While sensor technology such as motion detecting lights have been around for quite some time now, not much has been done to enable your door to tell your light to turn on via a hand on the doorknob. Vasseur’s efforts could be a catalyst to change this, and rapidly so if he gets his wish.

What does he see as an example of the proof of the power of sensor driven networks?
"For example, you could have millions of sensors across any large city that could measure the air quality, pollution, and noise, connected together to improve the quality of life and save energy, and the number of examples involving Sensor Networks is endless (Connected home, Intelligent buildings, Smart Cities, ...)." Vasseur explains.

What does he see as a challenge to achieving this goal?
"Right now, it’s a world of proprietary systems, and that’s one of the reasons it hasn’t taken off," he says. "There are literally dozens of protocols coming from dozens of companies, and if you’re interested in applying sensor technology to a huge network, you’re going to face a number of interoperability challenges. Technology A won’t work with Technology B, and none of the technology will currently run over IP. This is why we truly believe in the use of IP for these networks."

To hear more about the 'Internet of Things' and 'Sensor Networks' come out to the Cisco Second Life Bandwidth Stage next Tuesday, 22 April 2008 at 1200 PDT to hear John Philippe discuss the idea of the Internet of Things and ask your questions of him during a presentation followed by an interactive Q&A.

While there are daily virtual conferences in the various metaversal platforms, there are infrequent 'live' meetings of people in the virtual world business. A top show in this space is the Virtual Worlds conference, arranged by Chris Sherman. I was a speaker at the 2007 event, and they are holding their 2008 New York VW show today and tomorrow at the Javitz center in Manhattan.

Although many have been concerned about the industry after the standard hype/backlash cycle that has been applied to virtual worlds over the last year, the attendance at the show is a record 1200 people (which, although small by Interop or Comdex standards, is actually very large for an emerging technology-centric conference). The audience for this show (as was the case at last year's NYC show) is primarily composed of people from the advertising and entertainment industries, with the Rosie O'Neill, Chief Barbie Officer from Mattel providing this morning's keynote presentation on how the Barbie brand is extending into virtual communities.

And no, I didn't make up that title, that's her real title.

If you are in the New York area, there is one more day (Friday) of conference proceedings and I would suggest stopping by and experiencing the excitement and creative energy of this emerging industry.

Combined, they present an excellent leading-indicator of the future of the virtual workspace. Be sure to check it out.

Here is a rough recap of the conversation....
Puzzled Person: Why Second Life...?
Dannette: Because it is a fluid environment for having very intimate (but not proprietary) conversations and developing deeper relationships.
Puzzled Person: Deep avatar relationships...you must be kidding.
Dannette: Hmmm, no not so much.
Puzzled Person: Seriously!
Dannette: I know sorry, my bad, couldn't resist. Seriously though, think of it this way...in say a Netpro discussion forum you can take part in Cisco to you, you to Cisco and peer to peer interactions but not in real time. In say a Cisco TechTalk webcast you can take part in Cisco to you and you to Cisco interactions real time but no peer to peer interactions are possible. In a virtual environment you can take part in Cisco to you, you to Cisco, and peer to peer interactions and all in real time. So figure out what you are looking to glean and how quickly, then choose your accordingly. Cisco utilizes many communication vehicles, such as the three mentioned here, and will continue doing so as we recognize that people learn and communicate in very different ways. We aren't making anyone drink one flavor of kool aid, you can take your pick ;-)

All kidding aside this is really a question that is best answered by the end users goal...meaning if you want a quick, touch-free communication then Second Life (and virtual environments as a whole more than likely) are not for you. However, if you aren't satisfied with the level of interaction and immersion you get from more traditional communication vehicles then networked virtual environments may be right up your alley.

I guess my thinking is what have you got to loose? A bit of your time yes and some hard drive space for the application. Of course, if you don't like the experience you can always 'uninstall'...

So if you haven't to date, I encourage you to come out next week and test the water. We will hold our monthly TechChat on Learning 2.0 at the Cisco High Bandwidth stage, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/65/35/22/.

Hope to see you out for either a first visit or as a repeat attendee.

If you haven't already heard, "on March 4th, life on the network gets better." http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/uberusers/index.html.
Cisco is dubbing this as a "quantum shift in networking."

Cisco will be hosting a live event in Second Life at a special new build: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/47/33/21/ on March 4th starting at 10:00 am Pacific, with Doug Webster, Director of Service Provider Marketing. It's an interactive event you surely don't want to miss, as Cisco for the first time, will be demonstrating some new virtual experiences and discussing a Quantum Shift in networking. If you can't wait that long, come check out the new build now, or view this Machinima http://randyciscossystems.blip.tv/file/706774/. This build content is being updated until our Quantum Shift event on the 4th, so keep coming back!

Cisco will also be hosting the Quantum Shift Music Day on Saturday, March 1st between 1:00-8:00 p.m. PST at Bandwidth Stage on the Cisco SL campus: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Systems%204/65/35/22/.

Featured for our Live Music event are:

Orangelife Holmer,
Rich Desoto,
Cylindrian Rutabaga,
Groucho March,
Edward Lowell,
Jeff Tully,
Capos Calderwood

DON'T MISS THESE BIG EVENTS!

For those of you who missed the preliminary announcement from our developer partner Millions of Us on Friday, we are excited to announce the launch of the 'Hospital of the Future' in Second Life. Working with Palomar West Hospital, the largest health system provider in Southern California, we have created a healthcare campus to showcase the foresight of PalomarWest and the Cisco Connected Health vision.

The official ribbon cutting ceremony is at 0800 PST today at the PalomarWest Hospital Island! In the event you haven't already registered for Second Life, we've streamlined the process for you by following this link

The formal press release follows the page break. Be sure to come by and check out the future of healthcare!

The first was a continuation of the excellent Metaverse Roadmap work that had started two years ago, which is an attempt to capture and forecast the coming changes in the user interaction model with the Internet. If you haven't read the original MVR, you can find it here.

The second event was (or rather 'is', as it is still underway) the MetaverseU, which is a combination of presentations and open discussion covering various facets of the virtual worlds, augmented reality, and lifelogging, with a particular focus on the human factors and societal impact of an idealized Metaverse.

The event is being streamed live (and freely) into Second Life here, and Henrik Bennetsen has taken a further step of creating a time capsule of where we are in this technology cycle by interviewing all of the participants and attendees with four questions regarding the best and worst things of current technology, and the opportunities and unforseen downsides of the future adoption of same. His interviews will be published on YouTube under the group 'MetaverseU', as well as tags on Flickr and elsewhere tagged 'MetaverseU'

Henrik has also blogged about what he is doing on the MetaverseU blog here. It think this is a good example of forward thinking in being able to tag content distributed around the Internet as a distributed transcript and record of the event. Consider it 'Distributed Lifelogging'. Now, if we could incorporate Twitter and Second Life chat transcripts.....in one portal.........

Be sure to check out the agenda page of speakers to see some of the topics and visionaries that he has put together for the event, and please try to attend if you are in the area for any of the other many virtual world-ish events taking place that week in San Francisco.

Late last year, I pledged to avoid physical travel and instead substitute virtual meeting technologies like videoconferencing, WebEx and virtual world technologies. I was asked by The Nature Conservancy to write up a summary of my experiences which they recently published here, and was 'Digged' here. This has, in turn, resulted in a number of emails and phone calls asking for more best-practices for substituting virtual meetings for physical ones.

One thing I know for sure is that 10 or 100 brains are better than one. What I'd like to propose is that the readership also share their best practices, and we aggregate this into a user-editable wiki of what seasoned virtual attendees/presenters have found to be key elements to making their work a travel-free experience. Lets start out by using the comment field of this blog entry, and I'll furiously set up a Wiki page for us all to use once we have a critical mass of inputs. Sound like a deal?

We hope to see you out for what should prove to be a lively discussion.

So, on January 23rd at 8:30am Pacific please join us in Second Life to hear Jayshree Ullal, SVP, Data Center, talk about Cisco's recent announcement regarding the Application Network Services (ANS) expanding portfolio. Including the business application vendors (such as Microsoft) jointly worked with to validate their applications over the Cisco network infrastructure and the new products added to the ANS portfolio. Cisco recognizes that business applications are critical to an organizations productivity, profit, and operations. ANS transforms your existing branch, data center, and campus networks into a business-enabling platform; ultimately reducing the total cost of ownership and enabling better utilization of resources.

Looking forward to a stimulating discussion. Hope to see you out at the events.