Second Life received a lot of press in the Fall of 2006 and the following Spring. There were stories about fortunes being made, political candidates offering speeches, real world vendors setting up islands to sell their products, large companies like IBM making major investments, television shows like CSI NY using Second Life as an extension of their shows, and so on.
But the publicity often cut both ways. There were stories about a lurid sex trade, pedophilia, and infidelity. Following he 'get rich quick' stories there were 'get poor quick' stories about falling land prices and vendors pulling out.
The upshot is that Second Life has a major image problem from a business perspective. And marketing a product as a Second Life capability would be a real uphill battle. So, this capability to hold meetings in Second Life could not be marketed as such. In fact there should be no mention of Second Life what so ever.
Second Life meetings would conjure up images of griefer attacks, naked avatars parading around, people sneaking off to meet with escorts, and all manner of antisocial behavior. People wishing to hold business meetings would not find this an attractive prospect at all.
Instead it should be marketed simply as "Virtual Meetings". The benefits of Virtual Meetings should be emphasized which include cost savings, functionality and ease of use. People don't have to drive and park, or sit in airports and hotel rooms. Instead of loosing three days for an out of town meetings, only one day is lost.
Unfortunately, Second Life today is like a pristine wilderness inhabited sparsely by eco-friendly artists. It has potential, but in order to exploit that potential, some of the pristine quality of the wilderness must be loss. It is a 'hand in the cookie jar' problem. If you do not exploit the technology nobody will ever appreciate it. If you do exploit it, it will loose a lot of its original appeal.
Perhaps another analogy might be to say it is like having a priceless painting locked in a closet. Putting the painting on display could damage it. Restoration could alter it. And yet, leaving it in the closet is not an option because its value is derived from viewing.
The exploitation of Second Life will alter it forever. However,not exploiting it will leave it unappreciated forever. Personally, I would go with the exploitation and see where it takes us.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Second, Functionality
Last week I discussed performance issues and placed them first because no matter how great the functionality is that Second Life provides for meetings, if users log in and are bogged down by lag, they will not want to return. So, this week I am going to discuss some of the functionality required.This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Instead, it is examples of the kind of customizations that would make the SL environment conducive to business meetings.
First, there needs to be some sort of an external meeting planner. This planner could invite people to meetings and remind them when meetings are approaching. When they log in, the meeting planner could give them the option of being teleported directly to their meeting. If they are on already and a meeting time approaches they could be notified and given a tp option.
Second there need to be default accounts set up for people holding meetings so that a person can attend a meeting using a default account. Some people may wish to attend a meeting and may not wish to have a Second Life account and all that entails. So, default accounts will allow greater accessibility.
Third, there needs to be greater support for the display and distribution of media. As it currently stands, you can get a PowerPoint presentation into Second Life and display it, but it is a royal pain. There should be an object in Second Life that will take a Power Point presentation from your hard drive, convert it, up load it and display it in Second Life. Further, there should be an easy way to distribute the presentation to others at the meeting and place the presentation in some sort of archive for people who missed the meeting. Similar capabilities should be available for the display and distribution of documents and other media.
Fourth, protocols need to be developed to prescribe proper meeting behavior. How does one ask a question? How do you take turns? Do virtual meetings follow the protocols of real world meetings or are there some differences.
These are major areas in which capabilities need to be developed if Second Life is going to be used successfully for meeting. Next are some minor 'nice but not necessary' features.
When an avatar shows up at a meeting they should have some clothing options to choose from. This may include a range of business attire or a collection of outfits that would be appropriate to the theme of the meeting. Avatars should be able to select an outfit with a click, and have it placed automatically on their avatar. If they don't like it, they should be restored to the original with another click. This business of paying nothing for a box, dragging it to the ground, etc, has got to go.
There should be a collection of meeting gestures readily available to the meeting attendees. For example, an avatar should be able to raise its hand while sitting to ask a question. Text gestures like "Joe Smith has a question" or "Bill Brown nods off" should be available and possibly even accessible through a HUD.
There should be some audience management capabilities so a speaker or a person running a meeting can queue up questions and get to them in turn. And finally, there should be an easily accessible meeting aid so that people who are attending a meeting can easily contact a person whose primary responsibility is to help people with questions about the environment.
As I said at the beginning, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of functionality. It is intended to be examples. These are features that would be useful for meetings and not much else. Currently, Second Life focuses on generic functionality which makes it good for a lot of things while not particularly good for any specific thing. If it is going to catch on for business applications, that is going to have to change.
First, there needs to be some sort of an external meeting planner. This planner could invite people to meetings and remind them when meetings are approaching. When they log in, the meeting planner could give them the option of being teleported directly to their meeting. If they are on already and a meeting time approaches they could be notified and given a tp option.
Second there need to be default accounts set up for people holding meetings so that a person can attend a meeting using a default account. Some people may wish to attend a meeting and may not wish to have a Second Life account and all that entails. So, default accounts will allow greater accessibility.
Third, there needs to be greater support for the display and distribution of media. As it currently stands, you can get a PowerPoint presentation into Second Life and display it, but it is a royal pain. There should be an object in Second Life that will take a Power Point presentation from your hard drive, convert it, up load it and display it in Second Life. Further, there should be an easy way to distribute the presentation to others at the meeting and place the presentation in some sort of archive for people who missed the meeting. Similar capabilities should be available for the display and distribution of documents and other media.
Fourth, protocols need to be developed to prescribe proper meeting behavior. How does one ask a question? How do you take turns? Do virtual meetings follow the protocols of real world meetings or are there some differences.
These are major areas in which capabilities need to be developed if Second Life is going to be used successfully for meeting. Next are some minor 'nice but not necessary' features.
When an avatar shows up at a meeting they should have some clothing options to choose from. This may include a range of business attire or a collection of outfits that would be appropriate to the theme of the meeting. Avatars should be able to select an outfit with a click, and have it placed automatically on their avatar. If they don't like it, they should be restored to the original with another click. This business of paying nothing for a box, dragging it to the ground, etc, has got to go.
There should be a collection of meeting gestures readily available to the meeting attendees. For example, an avatar should be able to raise its hand while sitting to ask a question. Text gestures like "Joe Smith has a question" or "Bill Brown nods off" should be available and possibly even accessible through a HUD.
There should be some audience management capabilities so a speaker or a person running a meeting can queue up questions and get to them in turn. And finally, there should be an easily accessible meeting aid so that people who are attending a meeting can easily contact a person whose primary responsibility is to help people with questions about the environment.
As I said at the beginning, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of functionality. It is intended to be examples. These are features that would be useful for meetings and not much else. Currently, Second Life focuses on generic functionality which makes it good for a lot of things while not particularly good for any specific thing. If it is going to catch on for business applications, that is going to have to change.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
First, Performance Issues
Second Life is a dynamic environment. If you have the right permissions, you can change the environment on the fly. You can create new objects, change the location and shape of objects. Or apply new textures to objects to give them a new look. In Second Life parlance this is referred to as 'building'. It is the act of creating the 3D environment. You can also change the behavior of objects. If a river is flowing east to west, you can change it to flow west to east. If a door opens on the right, you can change it to open on the left. In Second Life parlance this is referred to as 'scripting'. Both building and scripting make make the Second Life environment extremely dynamic which is why I said earlier that you can think of it as an extension of the imagination. However, there is a cost to all this dynamism. And that cost is performance.
When a simulator is slow to produce the 3D environment or when objects in the 3D environment do not perform their actions quickly enough it is referred to, again in Second Life parlance, as 'lag'. Here are some examples of lag. You might show up at a location and not see the location for a few minutes. You might appear in a crowd of people and not see the people for a few minutes. You might be walking across a room and your avatar looks like it is walking through molasses. You may raise your hand to ask a question and yet your hand does not go up. Or you may type a question into chat but not see the question until several lines later.
Lag is caused by a number of factors including the number of prims to be rezzed, the number of scripts running, and, yes, the number of avatars on the sim. This places a limit on the number of avatars that can be at one location. That number varies depending on how much lag you are willing to accept. However, a ball park figure for a maximum number of avatars in one location is 30. This creates problems if you want to have a meeting or a class or a conference with more than 30 people in attendance. When I teach my class in Second Life, I tell students not to follow me immediately to each location as having that many avatars show up at one location may crash the sim.
The solution here is to trade dynamism for performance. Unless you are having a meeting in which you are demonstrating or teaching building or scripting, you don't need that level of dynamism. Once the Second Life environment is created, it should be compiled down to a static environment and optimized for performance. Not only is it costly to have a sim for each 30 people, it is extremely inconvenience. Further, individual applications, such as meetings, can be optimized for different kinds of performance. For example, meetings should be optimized for gestures and chat, possibly also for displaying images such as PowerPoint slides or other media. A different application, say an amusement park, may be optimized for avatar movement and script performance.
The dynamic quality of the Second Life environment is wonderful for stimulating the imagination. And with imagination you can do almost anything. Unfortunately, with such a dynamic environment you cannot do anything particularly well.
When a simulator is slow to produce the 3D environment or when objects in the 3D environment do not perform their actions quickly enough it is referred to, again in Second Life parlance, as 'lag'. Here are some examples of lag. You might show up at a location and not see the location for a few minutes. You might appear in a crowd of people and not see the people for a few minutes. You might be walking across a room and your avatar looks like it is walking through molasses. You may raise your hand to ask a question and yet your hand does not go up. Or you may type a question into chat but not see the question until several lines later.
Lag is caused by a number of factors including the number of prims to be rezzed, the number of scripts running, and, yes, the number of avatars on the sim. This places a limit on the number of avatars that can be at one location. That number varies depending on how much lag you are willing to accept. However, a ball park figure for a maximum number of avatars in one location is 30. This creates problems if you want to have a meeting or a class or a conference with more than 30 people in attendance. When I teach my class in Second Life, I tell students not to follow me immediately to each location as having that many avatars show up at one location may crash the sim.
The solution here is to trade dynamism for performance. Unless you are having a meeting in which you are demonstrating or teaching building or scripting, you don't need that level of dynamism. Once the Second Life environment is created, it should be compiled down to a static environment and optimized for performance. Not only is it costly to have a sim for each 30 people, it is extremely inconvenience. Further, individual applications, such as meetings, can be optimized for different kinds of performance. For example, meetings should be optimized for gestures and chat, possibly also for displaying images such as PowerPoint slides or other media. A different application, say an amusement park, may be optimized for avatar movement and script performance.
The dynamic quality of the Second Life environment is wonderful for stimulating the imagination. And with imagination you can do almost anything. Unfortunately, with such a dynamic environment you cannot do anything particularly well.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Advantages of Meeting in Second Life
Before elaborating on the functional requirements of meeting support software in Second Life, it is useful to articulate the advantages of meeting in Second Life. With the advantages in mind, it is easier to define the capabilities necessary to support those advantages.
First, and foremost, the advantage of meeting is Second Life is logistical. Getting people to show up for a meeting in a conference room half a hallway away from their office can be a challenge. If people work on different floors, in different buildings, in different cities or different parts of the globe, this challenge becomes even greater. So, just the fact that you don't have to get up from your desk, whether at home or at your office, is an enormous benefit of meeting in Second Life.
The second advantage, convenience, is related to the first but distinct. When attending a meeting in Second Life you don't have to worry about transportation, parking, lodging or any of the usual hassles associated with traveling to a meeting. Further, you don't even have to get out of your pajamas. You don't have to shave or fix your hair. You don't even have to bathe. You can dress your avatar as you see fit and what you actually look like is irrelevant.
Third is the ability to multi-task. Normally, it would be considered to be rude to bring work into a meeting and then work on it while the meeting was going on. And yet, we all know how deadly boring meetings can be. However, while your avatar is respectfully sitting there appearing to pay attention, you can be working on something more interesting keeping an ear tuned to whatever might come up in the meeting. In addition, you can have side conversations with other people in IM, another feature that would be awkward in a typical meeting. Your confederate can even alert you if the topic of discussion turns to something you care about.
And, fourth, is the ability to record the meeting. Nobody likes to take minutes so meetings are often convened and dismissed with nary a note taken. Open chat and IM are easy to log. However, you could also record the meeting as a Quicktime movie for anyone who missed it or for later reference. If somebody does actually take minutes they can be used later to search for comments on a specific topic.
At the same time, there are three drawbacks of having meetings in Second Life. First, is the learning curve. Second is lag and the limitation on the number of avatars in a sim. And third is observation that in Second Life you don't get to see the faces of the people in the meeting. However, none of these drawbacks are hard to fix. And the benefits so far outweigh them that even if they couldn't be fixed they wouldn't be major detriments.
Next time I will address these drawbacks and begin talking about the functionality required to make Second Life meetings successful.
First, and foremost, the advantage of meeting is Second Life is logistical. Getting people to show up for a meeting in a conference room half a hallway away from their office can be a challenge. If people work on different floors, in different buildings, in different cities or different parts of the globe, this challenge becomes even greater. So, just the fact that you don't have to get up from your desk, whether at home or at your office, is an enormous benefit of meeting in Second Life.
The second advantage, convenience, is related to the first but distinct. When attending a meeting in Second Life you don't have to worry about transportation, parking, lodging or any of the usual hassles associated with traveling to a meeting. Further, you don't even have to get out of your pajamas. You don't have to shave or fix your hair. You don't even have to bathe. You can dress your avatar as you see fit and what you actually look like is irrelevant.
Third is the ability to multi-task. Normally, it would be considered to be rude to bring work into a meeting and then work on it while the meeting was going on. And yet, we all know how deadly boring meetings can be. However, while your avatar is respectfully sitting there appearing to pay attention, you can be working on something more interesting keeping an ear tuned to whatever might come up in the meeting. In addition, you can have side conversations with other people in IM, another feature that would be awkward in a typical meeting. Your confederate can even alert you if the topic of discussion turns to something you care about.
And, fourth, is the ability to record the meeting. Nobody likes to take minutes so meetings are often convened and dismissed with nary a note taken. Open chat and IM are easy to log. However, you could also record the meeting as a Quicktime movie for anyone who missed it or for later reference. If somebody does actually take minutes they can be used later to search for comments on a specific topic.
At the same time, there are three drawbacks of having meetings in Second Life. First, is the learning curve. Second is lag and the limitation on the number of avatars in a sim. And third is observation that in Second Life you don't get to see the faces of the people in the meeting. However, none of these drawbacks are hard to fix. And the benefits so far outweigh them that even if they couldn't be fixed they wouldn't be major detriments.
Next time I will address these drawbacks and begin talking about the functionality required to make Second Life meetings successful.
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