Virtual Worlds and the Context of Context (Post on Request)

 

Author: Christopher R. Keesey

Project Manager Ohio University Without Boundaries

Many educators and training professionals today stand fully footed at the crest of Web 2.0 and have begun preparing to take the step into the still somewhat unknown abyss of what will be Web 3.0.  It’s an exciting step but still very ill defined. It is first important to remember that these are only marketing buzz phrases and can mean different things to different people depending on the context within which that person utilizes the Web.  For educators, one feature of the next generation of Internet will be a fully realized model of how context in a learning experience is generated and subsequently changed and augmented by both instructors and learners. 

One contextual creation tool that is now in the toolbox of many educators is virtual social world applications. Amongst these virtual worlds, Second Life has become the most widely utilized and recognized.  For those who might have somehow missed the abundant press, presentations and water cooler talk on virtual worlds and specifically Second Life here is a quick definition:  Second Life is a 3-dimensional, user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, LEARN, do business, and otherwise communicate and collaborate.  Ohio University Without Boundaries has been dedicated to exploring Virtual Worlds and specifically Second Life in the context of creating better learning experiences and subsequently better learning since 2006.

So, what is context? On the surface, it seems like a simple question. At the same time, it is a question that will begin to tie your head in a knot as you subsequently, in defining the word, must define the context within which you will be giving the definition.  Here is the static dictionary definition of the word:

(n) context, linguistic context, context of use (discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps to determine its interpretation)

(n) context, circumstance, setting (the set of facts or circumstances that surround a situation or event) “the historical context”

A static definition does us little good for the purposes of this discussion.  In such, for this discussion the context for defining the word context is learning. Here is a more applicable and palatable definition of the word context in the framework of learning from Robby Robson (2008) at reusablelearning.org:

Learning makes use of language, relies on culture, requires prior knowledge and experience and depends on the situation in which it takes place. If the dream of technology-assisted learning is to get just the right stuff to the right person at the right time in the right way (Hodgins, 2002), then context is what determines the value of a learning resource.

Further, J.C. Herz (2005) expands on context as follows:

There is a construction of context that, to some degree, is the purpose of higher learning: you don’t simply memorize the facts, you learn how to learn; you learn how to construct new context with the information you receive. That is the hallmark of a broadly educated person.(p. 32)

Umair Haque (2008) in his paper “User Generated Context” makes an interesting observation on context.  He sees most web users and contributors today as context creators as opposed to content creators. Those of us heavily involved in everyday Web publishing are actually creating context around a smaller number of main informational nodes and Web 2.0 technologies allow for a more fluid individualized context.  Next generation technologies will build on this ability and add the richness and immersive qualities of 3-D to a learner’s ability to construct context around these main informational nodes. 

Now that we have placed context as a term in its proper context, it is as important that we put Virtual Worlds, specifically, Second Life in its proper context as a teaching/training/learning environment.  First, Second Life is one of many virtual worlds.  Of these worlds, some are targeting adult populations and many more are targeting youth.  According to an August 22, 2008 Virtual Worlds Management report, 150 Youth-Oriented Worlds are currently live or in development. There are also other direct competitors to Second Life that target more of the adult audience.  Those include Entropia Universe, IMVU, There, Active Worlds, Google Lively, Open Life Grid and Kaneva amongst others.  The exploding bevy of different platforms has sparked a vigorous discussion on interoperability amongst platforms. That however is a very large topic for another paper.

If we put virtual worlds and specifically Second Life into proper historical context it might best be compared to the very early days of the Internet.  Changes in the virtual world landscape and subsequently the capabilities afforded an instructor or student within these worlds and how they mash with other existing sources of information and context are changing rapidly; so rapidly in fact that it becomes difficult to write on features, opportunities and limitations of any particular virtual world as this information is very likely to quickly become obsolete by feature enhancements or new players in the market.

The aforementioned numbers of virtual world platforms demonstrate notable market trends.  A market trend however is not a basis for widespread adoption of any tool for learning. It is important to ask, why are virtual worlds an effective learning environment?  There are many real and compelling reasons why learning in a virtual world can be valuable.  Dr. Tony O’Driscoll (2007) of IBM has come up with perhaps the most focused list of how virtual social worlds can provide us with a new “freedom in learning.”  This list is as follows:

Flow – Balancing challenge and boredom.

Repetition – Allowing learners to try and try again.

Experimentation – Allowing avatars to experience anything they want to experience.

Engagement

Doing – Truly work-based learning.

Observing – What you can’t do, you can observe.

Motivation – Through all aforementioned points multiple teachable moments can be engineered.

Having now put the term context into its proper context and virtual worlds into context, as a tool and historically, it is important to also address content and specifically to address content by putting it in its proper modern framework and relationship to learning.  Content and context are intimately intertwined in a carefully crafted dance that must occur to facilitate optimal transfer of knowledge.  We often hear tired consultant buzz phrases around the meanings and relationships of the two words such as the following: “If content is king then context is the kingdom.”  It’s not that the phrase isn’t necessarily accurate; it just falls short of explaining why context is so important.   

Rick Nigol (2007) of eLearning Campus says it very well:

…We must move past the presentation of content to the creation of context wherein learners can apply and reflect upon the new knowledge they encounter. It is a matter of moving beyond “knowing” something to being able to do something with this new knowledge…(Nigol, 2007)

The sheer volume of content that is available through multiple sources on the Internet and other electronic sources can’t be overstated. Google is now to the human brain what an external hard drive is to a computer with limited hard drive space. As long as there is proper qualification and filtering of these vast stores of information, such wealth in content provides educators with the opportunity to concentrate more efforts on creating better context. It is better context that drives better just-in-time inquiry of our wealth of content resources.

Mass quantities of existing content and acceptance of the importance of context to a learning experience are fairly self-evident.  The freedom in learning defined by Tony O’Driscoll is compelling.   Can we however utilize “context” as a justification in utilization of virtual worlds for more effective learning experiences?  We first need to answer the following:  Which context were we talking about?

Tessmer & Richey (1997) define three contextual types: Orienting Context, Instructional Context and Transfer or “payoff” context. 

The orienting context is that which takes place before an actual learning event.  This orienting context can have a great deal of bearing on subsequent context in determining the motivation that learning brings into the instructional context.

The instructional context is that which is directly involved in the delivery, delivery format, delivery platforms and other immediate and more clear-cut factors outside of the learner around delivery of a learning experience.  Finally the transfer context is the environment in which the learning will be applied. 

According to Tessmer & Richey (1997), on-the-job-training can blur the lines between instructional and transfer context and make the borders of the transfer context harder to discern. Similarly it can be stated that a blurring of the lines between instructional context and transfer context would occur in simulation style learning environments such as those that can be developed and delivered in virtual world applications.

The richer presentation and collaboration opportunities provided by a virtual world can recreate surprisingly realistic experiences on multiple levels from social, cultural, physical and physiological.  Accurate recreations of real life frames of reference in a virtual world can allow for a greater connection to concepts as they relate to lives, work and ultimately the payoff context.  However, it is worth cautioning that over-contextualization was studied in case-base and action-based learning and was found to sometimes negatively affect flexible transfer to new situations. (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000) It would be the instructor’s responsibility to ensure that over contextualization was not preventing effective transfer through building additional cases or exercises with a slightly different instructional context.  An instructor might also engage in additional problem solving exercises where learners are presented with a series of “but what it this had happened” situations.  Finally, cases or problems could be generalized to a degree that any solution created would not apply to simply one context. (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000)

Overall, Virtual Worlds are a very powerful tool that should be a part of an educator’s toolkit. These 3-D applications provide an immersive means for instructors, trainers and learners to create dynamic and individualized context that can enhance motivation and engagement and just-in-time inquiry of massive stores of content that are now available to learners.  The availability of mass quantities of content now enables instructors to concentrate more on creating better context for their learning experiences.  Advances in the ability to structure very powerful context through virtual social worlds should not however be relied upon as a magic pill for effective learning. The onus is still on the instructor/trainer to properly frame problems and cases and provide reflection opportunities to ensure that over contextualization does not affect flexible transfer of knowledge.

Works Cited

1.Bransford, J. D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R., Eds.(2000). How People Learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC, National Academy Press.

2.Haque, U. (2008). User Generated Context, London, Havas Media Lab.

3.Herz, J. C. (2005). The Space Between: Creating a context for learning. Educause Review, 40 (3), 30-39.

4.Hoadley, C. (2002). Creating context: Design-based research in creating and understanding CSCL. Proceedings for Computer Support for Cooperative Learning, Boulder Colorado.

5.Hobbs, M., Brown, E., & Gordon, M. (2006). Using a virtual world for transferable skills in gaming education. The Higher Education Academy, ITALICS, 5 (3).

6.Hodgins, H. W. (2000). The future of learning objects. In D. A. Wiley (Ed.), The Instructional Use of Learning Objects. (pp. 281-298). Bloomington, Indiana. Agency for Instructional Technology/Association for Educational Communications & Technology.

7.Nigol, R. (2007). Context is King!. Retrieved October 2, 2008, from http://breakthroughelearning.com/2007/10/context-is-king.html.

8.O’Driscoll, T. (2007). Virtual social worlds and the future of learning. Retrieved October 1, 2008 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v+)@jY4UkPbAc.

9.Robson, R. (n.d.). Context & Pedagogy. Retrieved October 1, 2008 from http://www.reusablelearning.org/reuse/context.html.

10.Tessmer, M. & Richey, R. C. (1997). The role of context in learning and instructional design. Educational Technology Research and Development 45 (2) 85-115.

11.Williams, T. (2008). 150+ Youth oriented virtual worlds now live or developing. Retrieved October 1, 2008 from http://www.virtualworldsmanagement.com/2008/youthworlds0808.html.

Why Second Life is less popular than Facebook/Orkut in India?

 

 Author: Business Beyond Reality

Please Click Here to Zoom In Image

Recruitment/Talent Hunt in Second Life – Initial Considerations for Organizations

Author: David D’Angelo

 

About Author:

David has worked in Human Resources for seven years primarily as an analyst.  He is a member of the International Association for Human Resources Information Management.  David’s Blog “Recruiting in Second Life” can be read on the ere.net blog network and was referenced by Governing online in their September 2008, article “The Reality of Virtual Reality” which appeared in “The Managing Technology Letter”.  His article “Try Second Life Beyond the IT Department” appeared in September 19, 2008, online issue of ere.net.

The technology has very much arrived for virtual worlds to impact real world business and they will only improve in time.  Many of the early adopters have reaped the benefits of these technologies and improved their brand globally. 

Many organizations are now recruiting in Second Life.  Universities recruit students, police departments recruit cyber savvy officers, IT organizations look for talent and evidence of it in Second Life, and the list goes on.  You may also have an interest in doing the same.  Where would you start?  This post will discuss some of the discussions and due diligence you will want to perform as you frame your case for recruiting in Second Life.

 

The first step to take to recruit in Second Life is to assess if you have the talent in house or would need to outsource the work.  One caveat to consider even if you have talent in your organization that could conceivably perform the work is that it may be well worth the additional cost to have a professional design firm set up your first virtual presence.  You want to be on a competitive level and project a professional image to recruit professional talent. There are many design firms with competitive prices that will tailor a package for your needs.  Interview several before making a decision. Once you have an established presence in Second Life, your onsite technical staff may be more than adequate for modifications and maintenance.  You may even want to have them shadow the design firm when your site is created so they can perform the routine maintenance. 

 

Your next step should be to define how your goal to recruit in Second Life would benefit your business both directly and indirectly.  You will need a project plan of what you would want to achieve in Second Life along with costs and benefits.  Also, note other stakeholders in your organization who could benefit from your presence.  The obvious benefactor is your marketing and branding team.  They can assist in announcing your presence in Second Life along with leveraging their branding focus.  It is also important to discuss your recruiting strategy with marketing.  They may be able to provide some demographics of your customer base that will give you some indication of how many people you may potentially have an opportunity to recruit. 

 

Be sure to reach out to other areas in your organization that engage in training or travel frequently.  There may be an opportunity to develop virtual training in Second Life and virtual meetings for those that travel or video conference often.

 

It is a good idea to have a discussion with your legal department on your specific plans for recruiting in Second Life.  They will be reassured if you stick to initial recruiting and keep the paperwork, secondary screening, and paperwork outside of Second Life.  You may even be surprised and find an interest in recruiting an intellectual property attorney in Second Life.  There is probably no other target so rich with intellectual property use and abuse as Second Life is.

 

The last step in your consideration is your budget.  In consideration of the difficult economic environment we are in this could be a deal breaker for some.  List the costs of development and having an island in SL along with anticipated benefits.  Some of these such as branding will be intangible.  I would suggest one of the best cases you can make for recruiting in Second Life is to participate in a job fair for minimal costs with avatars that display your logo. There are organizations that might do very well with representation at job fairs periodically.  Those committed to recruiting in Second Life will want to move forward with developing an Island to build on your success in the job fairs.

 

I am certain there are other considerations but I am hoping this will provide you with a starting point on how to frame your analysis if you plan to recruit in Second Life.  One final suggestion is to make your presentation to management in Second Life to give them an ideal how virtual business can work for your organization.

Riel Life Productions – A Real “Second Life” Virtuography

Author: Ecocandle Riel
(Brian Meeks in Real Life | CEO & Owner at Riel Life Productions)

Birth of Ecocandle Riel in Second Life (April 25, 2006)

In early April of 2006, the Washington Post ran an article about this obscure virtual world, where people hang out, chat, dance and even shop.  Several weeks later, on April 25, I decided to give it a try, and so I went to www.secondlife.com and got my first avatar.  I remember that the sign up screen indicated that there were 187,000+ people who had come before me.  That seemed like a pretty big number at the time.  The process was simple; I selected a last name, Riel, from a list and then checked out the first name to see if “Ecocandle” was taken.  It wasn’t, it never is.  Some years before signing up,  I had run a candle manufacturing plant that made candles from soybean oil.   My moniker was Ecocandle back then and it sort of grew on me.  After a couple of more questions, I choose the free option, and Ecocandle Riel was born.

A Bond Builds With Second Life

Many people have tried SL and only about 10% of the people which create an avatar, are active after a month.  This isn’t a good statistic, but the realities are that the world is so massive, that to fully enjoy all which is offered, one must spend a little time learning the ins and outs.  The common thread among the older avatars, is that we all knew someone very early in our experience that would help us get accustomed to the new frontier.  Linden Labs, the company behind SL, provides Introduction Islands, as do companies like Cranial Tap and The Electric Sheep Company, which are designed to explain different aspects of using your new avatar.  These are helpful, but it is the connection which one makes that determines if they will remain.  Within 2 hours I met Lupo Drake, and after 15 minutes of chatting, he introduced me to Gracie Gable and Cavalier Goodnight.  Lupo and Gracie were there for me that first month, answering questions, helping me find out how to build fun things, and teaching me how to wear the cool new hair I had bought.  Today, Lupo and Gracie, are valued team members on my projects.  It is because of them that I stayed and it changed the direction of my life.

I Start Earning in Second Life

There are many ways that people make a living in virtual worlds.  I have a good friend who designs women’s clothing.  He isn’t the top designer but he has made very good money.  There are those who sell furniture, pre-fab houses and buildings, animations, custom textures, skins for avatars, art.  If you can imagine it, it is likely being done in Second Life.  My company is involved in the building of spaces, called sims, in SL, for corporate clients.  I have 7 contract workers who live all over the world, in the U.S., U.K., Belgium, Canada,  and France.  When a project begins we gather, layout the plans and everyone is given their tasks.  Then they start working, according to their schedule.  Because all of them are brilliant designers and hard workers, I don’t worry about the time of day they are working, because I know they will get it done.  This means that the time zone differences (eight of them) don’t get in our way.  It does make for some odd days for me, managing all of it, but I so love what we do, that I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It was 9 months after I discovered SL, that I left my real life job as an auto insurance analyst, to start my company.    With my first big contract in hand, I assembled my team, and we began building a 2 sim space for a major Seattle real estate firm.  They had 2 building, one that was complete, and one that wasn’t started, which they wanted reproduced in SL.  The project was never opened to the public, but merely an R & D project.  They wanted to understand what was possible.  So we created their buildings, the second building, based upon the scale model that they had produced.  The Condominium contained two of the floor plans, completely furnished, and allowed one to tour the space and get a feel for what the real world unit would look like.  They wanted to know if this could be used to give tours to potential buyers.  We included features like click through counters.  If you didn’t like the counter, just click on it, and the surface would change to the next choice.   The CEO and staff declared the experiment a success and maintained the island, for their staff, for a year.

I Expand the Base

            This project led other builds and to an entirely different service.  The first client also wanted to know what it would take to create a video of the project.  I devoted countless hours to learning about something called Machinima, the art of creating film with your computer in virtual worlds or games.   It is different than the more common CGI, which is creating film by rendering scenes, one frame at a time, using a computer.   In Machinima, one actually films, real time, the subject in the virtual world.   Perhaps one of my most enjoyable projects was the “movie trailer” we created for an author in Quebec.  In October of 2007, she was releasing her new children’s book, Terra Incognita.  It is a story about children stranded on an island which has an active volcano.   We created the island in SL, built a volcano, and hired actors to play the parts of the children.   The client gave us the story board and we created the film.  I purchased some royalty free music online and finished the project, which was a huge success and her publisher was thrilled with the response.

                Projects in SL can range in cost, based upon the amount of work required to fill the clients request.  It is typical to see a one sim build cost between $20,000 – $50,000, though incredibly complex builds can be as much as $250,000.  Machinima and custom scripting projects vary greatly, but simple projects can be as little as $500.  There are many ways to approach a project.  Does the client need to have products duplicated in great detail?  Do they need space for events?  Do they want to gather marketing information?  All of this information factors into the cost.  There are some unforeseen benefits to virtual worlds.  Rivers Run Red built a space for Adidas in SL, which they used to promote their brand for a year.  Their goal was to get exposure, but was pleasantly surprised when the build generated over $8000.00 in virtual shoe sales. I have a pair, they are great.

 When I Look Back Now

                When I first started there were roughly 18,000 regular users in SL, today 1.3 million have logged in the last 60 days.   It is remarkable how much it has grown.  My company still creates builds, does custom scripts, and produces films, and I look forward to what every day will bring.  Mitch Kapoor, the founder of Lotus Notes, spoke at the 2006 Second Life Community Convention, and said that he believes that 3D Virtual Worlds are the natural evolution of the internet. 

After 31 months, I am more convinced than ever.

A Simple Business Meeting Room For A Second Life Newbie – Second Life (Post on Request)

Author: Business Beyond Reality

I’m writing this post on a special request from one of my acquaintances who wanted to know about the best meeting practices in Second Life and basic raw materials required to build an efficient meeting room in this graphic world.

The two images below show examples of simple yet effective meeting spaces in Second Life.

Simple Meeting Room

Simple Meeting Room: The above sample image consists of a centre table (Made from a single prim) and a couple of chairs (Seemingly 4-5 prims each). It also consists of a presentation board which again is made up of a single prim. The walls are of smoked glass and there’s a stoned floor with a grayish look. We’ll see ahead what it takes to build such a simple meeting room.

Enhanced Meeting Room

Enhanced Meeting Room: The above sample image consists of a slightly complicated centre table with designer chairs and a more sophisticated finish.

Some basic terms to be aware of:

1. Prim: These are Primitives which are simple shapes like cuboid, cylinder, pyramid etc, available in Second Life to construct a complicated object. The size, shape and rotation of these prims can be altered through a Graphical User Interface.

Prim Example

2. Texture: It is an image which can be pasted on the face of a prim. For example: The brown table that  is there in the Simple Meeting Room image has a brown texture on it.

Basic Facilities Needed for a Meeting:

1. Text Chat: Supported by Second Life.
2. Voice Chat: Supported by Second Life through VoIP.
3. Meeting Room: Can be easily built with the help of Prims.
4. Presentation: We’ll cover this in detail below.
5. White Board: We’ll cover this in detail below.
6. Video Streaming: Video is played on your land in SL using a URL (web address) which you set up in your About Land options. You can hook up to an existing stream on the web, or create your own if you have the resources.It’s very simple. A texture can be defined and a media file can be attached to it. Whichever object loads that texture can play the media.
   

   Adding Media

    

7. Audio Streaming: The same steps as in Video Streaming are to be followed to sream an audio.
8. Web Streaming: The same steps as in Video Streaming are to be followed to sream an audio. It is important to point out that the web page is loaded as a texture on the prim and can’t be clicked to navigate ahead.

Presentation: Second Life doesn’t support uploading office documents like doc,ppt,xls,txt etc. Any document that has to be presented to the audience is to be converted into images and uploaded into Second Life. This can be easily done in PowerPoint by doing SaveAs in JPG format. These images can be added to the texture list of the prim (A cuboid to look like a presentation board. Can be made from a cuboid prim by keeping the height and width high and the depth as less.) and a simple LSL Scripting can be done to change the image (Which actually is a texture) on clicking the object with the mouse. A lot of such scripts are available on the net for free which can be downloaded and used in the meeting room.

White Board/Message Board: An interesting technique to build a White Board/Message Board is to make a prim look like a presentation board and attach a listener to it. The user enters text on a prescribed channel which is shown on the White Board.

The conclusion is that creating real life scenario is pretty simple. It just needs some effort, a bit of creativity and a little bit of exploration !

 

 

Virtual World Lively’s Plug Is Pulled By Google – Breaking News

 Author: Ecocandle Riel

(Brian Meeks in Real Life \ CEO at Riel Life Productions | Owner at Riel Life Productions)

At 9:04 pm Easter Standard time, one of the most promising ventures into Virtual Worlds, announced that they would be shutting down.  Lively, the Google experiment in virtual worlds, has decided that December 31, 2008 would be the end of the line for their attempt at creating a virtual world.  In their blog post, entitled “Lively No More”, “In July we launched Lively in Google Labs because we wanted users to be able to interact with their friends and express themselves online in new ways. Google has always been supportive of this kind of experimentation because we believe it’s the best way to create groundbreaking products that make a difference to people’s lives. But we’ve also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off.”

What does this mean for virtual worlds.  I spent a fair amount of time studying Lively.  In fact, I taught myself 3ds Max in order to be able to create content for them.  It is surely a disappointment, but I don’t feel that it will have a major impact on the growth of virtual worlds.  Second Life, has continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace.  There are several other Virtual Worlds which are still in beta, and IBM is aggressively pursuing their vision.  I feel like the worst part of this news, is that it dashes the hope that someone with very deep pockets, and certainly Google would fit into that category, would dump tons of money into their virtual world, learn from the mistakes of Linden Labs, and create something vastly superior to anything now available.

In the second paragraph they indicate that they are going to focus on their core businesses.  With the global economy on shaky grounds, one can’t fault them for taking such a prudent step.  I guess that, even in a world where only our imagination limits what can be done, the realities of real world economics must still be considered.

Thanks Lively, we enjoyed our brief time together.

 

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/lively-no-more.html

India Talking “Virtual Worlds” – Consolidated Report

Author: Business Beyond Reality

Are Indians talking to ‘Second Life’, the popular online virtual world?

Apparently so…

Of the 50,000 registered Second Life users in India, Siddharth Banerjee (Founder Indusgeeks Solutions Pvt. Ltd) estimates an active base of 1,500-2,000. 

(Source: http://www.livemint.com/2008/09/29214006/Creating-a-real-life-learning.html)

The Economic Times ferreted out some Indian’s also living a virtual life, including a group called VR1 which intends to explore Second Life’s business propositions. Rahul Dutta, one of the founders of VR1, said that they are planning an educational network hub, solutions for MNCs, assistance with island acquisition, world modelling, scripting, animation and graphic design services for Second Life.

Child Rights and You (CRY) opened a virtual action centre in Second Life. Indusgeeks partnered with CRY to conceptualise, design and create this presence as a part of an overall initiative to raise awareness about CRY online. This made CRY the first Indian NGO to open a space in Second Life. The CRY office consists of an auditorium to display movies and hold events etc, a CRY shop (Expressions of Childhood), outdoor café, gallery showcasing child rights posters and materials. It has donation boxes which direct users to the website or pay in Lindens.

CRY - Second Life

Wipro launched its offshore development centre in SecondLife a year back and now they have launched a SOA solutions lab – which gives customers an opportunity to explore the impact of SOA in transforming their organizations to be more agile and enable business transformation.

Wipro Office - Second Life

Amul (An Indian Dairy), which established its presence in Second Life by setting up its virtual parlour, is now working to expand its presence in the virtual world. Trimensions, a Gurgaon based company, is helping Amul to develop its existence on Second Life. Rahul Dutta, chairman and managing director, Trimensions, says, “Amul is planning to buy eight-10 islands, equal to 160 acres of virtual land, in Second Life to set up a simulation of its production and distribution facility. The objective behind launching a virtual setup is to demonstrate its functioning to the consumers, and experiment with any change in the production or distribution system virtually before executing it in the real world.”

Amul Dairy - Second Life

Software major IBM announced that it was expanding its business centre for India in ‘Second Life’, by adding sales representatives based in the country. The business centre in Second Life would allow customers to visit IBM virtually and see products and solutions in 3D. it also offers a platform for IBM sales people, clients and partners to meet, learn, collaborate and conduct business together virtually without the time and cost of travel.

Zensar Technologies, a leading software services and business process outsourcing organisation has announced its second life. Kiran Karnik, former President of NASSCOM at his recent visit to Zensar launched the virtual estate of Zensar on SecondLife and said, “I really enjoyed my visit to Zensar on SecondLife and will keep my Avatar alive there and will visit the Zensar facilities from time to time. It has been a great effort by the team.”

Text 100 opened its Second Life office in August, 2006. To introduce SL to employees in the company’s 30 global offices, Text100 held a worldwide meeting to celebrate the company’s 25th anniversary. The meeting included a presentation by our CEO, accompanied by a slideshow, a video featuring an interview with the company founders and a Q&A for employees with the CEO.

Indusgeeks has built a platform on Second Life that enables students in distance-learning programmes to plug into a simulated environment replicating and enhancing real life learning processes. By assuming an avatar (a virtual identity), each student can attend classes, go on field trips (to say, ancient Rome) and perform experiments in labs, all in the virtual domain created by Indusgeeks. Indusgeeks has also started Bollywood Masala, a forum on Indian films and music on Second Life.

Filmmaker use Second Life for making films for first life thus saving on a lot of effort, time and cost especially in special effect and background rendering. Here is one short film, a Mash up of Second Life and Real Actors:

http://www.filmaka.in/watchvideo.asp?id=63974562-8C76-4715-A35A-2B1EEA501FFC

Mumbai may be India’s financial capital but it is New Delhi which rules virtual reality finance. “More than 90 per cent of the active users, mostly from the National Capital Region, are also investing in the currency exchange,” revealed Daniel Dias, director, Research Lab, IBM India, one of the companies with a massive presence on the system.

“We have been informed that the ratio of active residents to registered users is one of the highest in India and China,” said Joe Miller, vice-president, platform and technology, Linden Labs. 

Miles to go India…

A Simulation of “Physical Ability” for the Physically Disabled (Crippled) using Virtual Reality

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

Virtual Reality as a field has been around for several decades. Even though it began as an initiative in the entertainment industry, today it has found an application in fields such as military, automotive industry, social networking, businesses and medicine. Of late VR applications to aid physically challenged have been gaining ground.

More and more NGOs and sponsors are coming forward to help the Physically Challenged people and are taking care of not just their physiological needs but are also training them for jobs, guaranteeing them economic stability and a good living.

What perhaps is left unnoticed is the “Psychological Feel Good Factor” of these disabled people. These people have to accept that their life would never ever be normal and they would never be able to move again. This is where Virtual Reality can be used to bridge the gap between “disability” and “ability”. Virtual Reality can act as a platform to simulate a life of “physical ability” for the physically disabled. Besides social networking, it would also let them do acts like walking, running etc which otherwise they can’t do in their real life because of their disabilities. Imagine a physically disabled person scheduling a walk with his physically able friend on the Miami Beach on a weekend.

Proposed Approach for this endeavor:

1.To identify an NGO (Or home for disabled), that provides accommodation to the disabled people. It should have considerable funds to be able to provide the minimum hardware required for the installation.
2. A Virtual Environment to be created which has the same look and feel as the place where the disabled are living. This would help them feel more closely attached to the simulated environment.
3. Creating additional spaces like Café, Garden, and Beaches etc which might be of interest to them.
4. Deployment of server at their location and connecting clients though a Local Area Network.
5. Creating log-in accounts for the people.
6. A workshop to train the people with the features of this environment.
7. Their feedback in terms of an Objective/Subjective Questionnaire.

I conducted a survey of about 50 people, of different age groups and from different educational background to know their opinion on how they perceive the Virtual Worlds for an application like this.

The exact statistics and graphs can be viewed at:http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/9/26/2116444/VRDisabled.pdf

Conclusion:

Approximately 90% of the participants found the concept of using Virtual Worlds for the people suffering from Physical Disabilities to be appealing while the rest were not convinced with this concept. As much as 80% of the participants said that they would advice Virtual Worlds for people suffering with physical disabilities. They believed that imparting a few moments of happiness to the physically challenged giving them a feeling of being a normal human being, like all others in this world, to make their life lively, is where the technology should be used. Approximately 16% of the participants thought that such an imaginary environment sounded nice but in the long run, would expose them to a virtual self, make them do things otherwise impossible to do which might affect them psychologically.

Supervised exposure to the Virtual Environment could prove to be beneficial for the physically challenged and if that happens, would be an apt use of the technology.

Please click on the link: http://xrl.us/virtual to view a presentation followed by a short objective Questionnaire.

Driving Businesses – Recruitment through Virtual Worlds

Author: Business Beyond Reality

 

Vikram Bhardwaj, CEO of Redileon, a Mumbai based HR Firm, gets a hiring contract from a global BPO which wanted to hire a general manager to run its private hotel in Hyderabad. His agency puts a recruitment hoarding on top of a hotel for less than $1. The neon sign ad flashed: “Want to earn $125,000 per annum. We are hiring a GM to run a hotel in Hyderabad.” Within 24 hours, four candidates from Ireland, Philippines, Czech Republic and Dubai are shortlisted and the applicant from Dubai joins next month.

Does it sounds like any other recruitment process and doesn’t get your attention? Well not exactly! The hotel and the neon sign ad existed not in the real world, but in Second Life, a Virtual Environment. The job however was real.

Rahul Dutta, a Virtual Property Dealer, and the CEO of VR1World has tied up with DepoConsulting to hire people across worlds through the Virtual Environment.

Wipro Technologies is bringing new capabilities to corporate recruitment via its Innovation Isle Island in Second Life. To begin with, the prospective candidates will be able to submit their resume at Wipro’s virtual campus and the initiative will be later become an integral part of Wipro’s recruitment drive.

The IBM Recruitment Center offers diverse topics. Such as: career opportunities both in the development, as well as in areas such as consulting and sales, internship offers, Dual studies at the Vocational Academy, advancement opportunities and much more. This makes it an ideal platform for students, graduates and professionals who are interested in career and development opportunities at IBM.

In Indian Scenario, a lot of MNCs are already using Web 2.0 for Talent Hunt. Jayantika Dave, Director (HR) Agilent Technologies, recently sought out a professional networking site in her never-ending search for knowledge workers. LinkedIn, a professional networking site, allows us to commercially utilise the services,” says theVice President (Strategic Resourcing) at Wipro Technologies. “The traditional channels need to be augmented with some innovation. Social networking sites provide access to profiles that often consultants fail to get hold of.” says Tanuj Kapilashrami, the India head of HR at HSBC. 

A Virtual Environment such as Second Life is a fairly newly discovered jungle to do a talent hunt. Since 2003 the online system has more than six million registered users, of whom around the clock an average of 15,000 to 38,000 actively uses the system (Source: Wikipedia). 

I had an opportunity to talk to Ashima Misri, Ops & Business Development, Indusgeeks Solutions Pvt. Ltd. She mentioned that there are approximately 2500 active Second Life Users in India. When compared to more than 30 million active internet users in India (Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/indias-internet-users-reach-30-million-637/), the number of active users of Second Life is insignificant.

The possible causes are:

1. The concept of 3D Internet and Virtual Worlds still hasn’t become popular among the common people. Because not many people are regular on Second Life for Social Networking, people resort to build social network on Facebook etc.

2. Mediocre Graphics Card PCs/Laptops. For a lot of people, such a Virtual Environment won’t even be supported on their machine!

3. For Personal Use, people generally take Dial up Internet or up to 256 Kbps   Broadband. It doesn’t give the performance required to immerse people in Second Life. 

During my meeting with David D’Angelo (HR Analyst at Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland) who has expertise in Talent Acquisition Systems and Recruiting in Second Life & Virtual Worlds, I was told that in US, there will be large number of retirements and the competition for talent is leading to recruitment in social networks and Second Life. He mentioned that for organizations, Second Life is a great place for screening of Applicants especially over a large geographic area. This is followed by a real world interview on the phone or in person. There are confidentiality issues and legal issues about doing all the work in SL right now. 

There are primarily two models in Second Life for the talent hunt - Islands and Job Fairs which give candidates a few choices. Companies like IBM have their own islands in Second Life where candidates can pass on their resume. Example of a job fair in Second Life includes the food service firm, Sodexho, which was covered by MSNBC in the September 10, 2007, article, “How your fantasy life can get you a real job”. The article details how a job candidate rather new to SL prepared to participate in a Sodexho job fair at the suggestion of a Sodexho recruiter he sent his resume to. His efforts at learning the nuances of SL paid off and led to a job as a chef in the senior services division of Sodexho.

During an interview, what the interviewee says is not the only important thing but how he handles the situation is equally important. Many interviewers want to see how the interviewee acts under stress. If the candidate looks confused like a fish out of water then the chances of his getting the job reduce. This measure is not possible in Virtual Environments like Second Life, which fail to observe the non-verbal communication/facial expressions of the candidate being interviewed.

A Live video streaming of the face and capturing gestures through sensors/vision could compensate for non verbal communication to some extent. The technology is still evolving!