Is there life in Second Life?
Dr. Elling Hamso,
April 9, 2009 1:40 PM
I envy my friend who was able to visit this year’s Lift conference in Geneva in February (www.liftconference.com), a somewhat geeky example of the unconference to come with the Millennial generation. I have marked Marseilles 18 – 20 June in my diary.
Second Life is dead, was one of the main messages, he told me, It didn't change the world as they thought it would and won't do that in the future.
Don't you believe it! Just join me in a simple line of reasoning:
1. The Millennials play 3D interactive games, like World of Warcraft and hundereds of othes, they are at home in this virtual environment, they play and interact across the globe
2. Simulation and gaming is a growing trend for learning, it is extremely effective
3. The Millennials (gamers) are born after 1985, they were young teenagers when the internet became ubiquitous, 3D interactive gaming came later as they depended on widespread broadband.
4. So the 3D gamers are hardly in their 20's yet, they are in no position to introduce or use seriously the 3D virtual environment in work situations (except geeky companies with a young and internet savvy workforce)
5. Business application of 3D virtual environment (like second life) will become part of daily work life when the gaming generation comes of age.
I don’t know if Second Life will continue to develop as a business platform, and this is not the point, online 3D communities is the point. I know Second Life took a dip when gaming was banned and I recently heard someone say that it has become too seedy (apparently our avatars don’t have the usual sexual inhibitions), but this is also beside the point.
I just read that in January this year, residents spent 41.5 million hours in Second Life compared with 28.3 million in January, 2008 and the number of active users has risen 25% since September, 2008, now more than 15 mill., doesn’t seem like dying.
Elling
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Dr. E. Hamso
Managing Partner
European Event ROI Institute
E-mail: Elling.Hamso@eventroi.org
Telephone: +47 90 12 24 18
Website: www.eventroi.org
Blog: www.elling.no/blog
"Making Meetings and Events more profitable"
Check out 25 one-day ROI courses in Europe and Middle East: www.eventroi.org
Comments on articles
I am a strong believer in Roger Kellerman's Law. "The greater the number of virtual meetings, the greater the number of people who want to meet in the physical space". Reading Goleman's 'Emotional Intelligence' made this even more clear to me, an Avatar doesn't get anywhere near the richness of physical interaction, in particular the facial expressions and other body language. The virtual meeting places will be in addition to, not instead of the physical meeting. But the physical meeting will have to change significantly, from a primary focus on one way communication (expert presentations) to personal interaction between peers.
I think Second Life (SL) was a big hype, also due to the fact that it was and still is, pioneer work, which was more or less usable for the masses. Now, after the hype is over, the mass moves on (to where?), leaving those behind, who just like SL, making it a niche product.
The great thing about SL is that it opened up a gate to new applications that are going to develop strongly in the next couple of years and going to influence our industry as well, like you obeserved - 3D simulation, online meetings and another new way of communicating.
I am really wondering, where this is going to go, what will the office, better the conference of the future look like in the age of high band data streaming and 3D simulation? Are we ready yet to face the consequences?
Hi Elling, since last August I am a resident in second life. My name is "kopi". Last summer due to our focus on Web 2.0 I did "teleport" to convention centres (Birmingham NEC Group), hotels and clubs. Wherever I got: the place was empty! I even registered for a Spanish class and was the only pupil... Where do all my 14,999,999 SL-neighbors go? Is anyone from the meetings industry out there?
I can imagine that in the future with generation X and Y (am I generation W?) growing up online that there will be more "blended" conferences that combine the information given the web before, during and after the event - empowered by user generated content - with the experience face-2-face. The question for me is: will this generate more or less meetings? I remember one of Corbin Ball's first presentations at ICCA. It was impressing to learn about all these 24/7.tools that connect us all over the world, but when it came to meeting your peers he admitted: There is no virtual beer!