Stagnation in the enterprise virtual worlds space

It seems in the recent site upgrade I borked the captcha's, my apologies for that! Here's a couple of comments from folks kind enough to send them to me in email...

Amilie Anatine writes...

Welcome back Nick! Thanks for the report, although your headlines are depressing. As if the economy news wasn't depressing enough.
I think in order to get some spring back into the step of enterprise, they need to fire all of their "web2.0 media consultants" and hire IT people who have been living in SL all this time. Here in rl, i have observed several consultants trying to pass for experts, when they have only discovered facebook like 3 months ago and are calling themselves experts at virtual worlds. LOL unfortunately the corps are listening to them, and giving them gigs to consult. I have observed, those in mainstream that do know what SL is all about are simply too busy with their own projects or rl or the next big thing..to share any knowledge. I conclude that, there are few mainstream consultants out there who can really give the enterprise a clear picture of what they can use Second Life for. Then, when the corporations come into Second Life, they order a development for themselves (via solutions providers) but don't have a proper plan on how to integrate with SL society because they think the society is going to come to them, and it doesn't. Once inside SL, they dont know where to look for customers, or have a metric for how sucessful they are and daily random tp's in are 1 or none. I dont have space here to discuss the threshold of learning and getting through performance issues. My experience is that corporations run out of steam after 2 months (development is just getting finished), stop paying the SL bill and never get to realize the new world they could have opened up.
stagnant yes, but not the virtual world's fault

Bonnie from Virtual Mind Hive writes...

Glad to know I'm not the only one feeling like there's a bit of a lag going on in the enterprise space. As you point out, there are up-teen numbers of nifty gadgets that attract the tech gurus to no end and make people like us drool at the bit to write about, but when all's said and done if these features do not add up to less time and less frustration (= less money), then businesses will not find their solutions in the virtual space. No matter how I might try to justify the plethora of positives that surround enterprise worlds, it remains easier to simply conference call around a table than it does to log in to a world, get everyone up and running who has no experience in a virtual space, and conduct business.
I am keenly awaiting the next big thing that will transform this area of the indusry, but it can only come with a significantly reduced learning curve and a growing, savvy population of virtual world users.

just my $0.02.

I agree with both Amilie and Bonnie. I am in the eLearning world and a year and a half ago, SL was all the rage (thanks to the media love affair as well). And a many great number of eLearning gurus tout the benefits of virtual worlds. And I do know that there are many incredible and effective educational ventures taking place. Great mashups like Sloodle point to how well virtual worlds can work.

But . . . many pontiffs for elearning have precious little experience in virtual worlds and it becomes clear when I talk with them. And I think they can give a bad name to it. There is a learning curve, there are corporate challenges (firewalls at my work don't allow access to SL), and hearing the "hype" leads to expectations that simply can not be met.

However, I have a vested interest in seeing things like SL succeed (I have 17 sims) and try to step back and realistically frame how a virtual world like Second Life can be used effectively. For my focus with eLearning, I use it as an inexpensive film studio in order to add video to eLearning. That way I don't worry about the user having to create an account, log in, and learn how to use it. They get a tiny bit of the richness in seeing video from SL and it makes the eLearning a bit more engaging.

Familiarity, in my opinion, is a great first step for many people to accept virtual worlds. They can step back from the hype and the technical aspects and just experience it safely. Fifteen years ago, people really found email to be intrusive and impersonal. But it is hard to imagine not having email now. The same will occur for virtual worlds. They are here to stay, and for many, they are very new and novel.

Thanks for the great report. :)

PS - lol, the eLearning Guild has called me a guru isl, well I have seen many incredibly talented people do amazing things isl, I would just say that I am passionate about it (guru is a bit heady, and flattering, but anyone spending 20-30 hours a week in it would be the same) and I see it as yet another communication tool. And that is pretty cool in my books.

Video is indeed a great tool in virtual worlds. I've been wondering if streamed video from events would open up participation to a greater degree for something like the vBusiness Expo -- I'm pretty certain it would..

And yes, things need to change before this stuff can move much farther forward.

Thanks for the great comments Amilie, Bonnie and David!

we are still trying to figure out the virtual worlds platforms in what looks like a chaotic 2009/2010. But we are concerned about Linden and where they are going. They still seem pretty self-absorbed and impudent vs the swarming competition. It was amazing to see LL CEO turn over the podium during his keynote address to let someone make a product pitch...I never saw such a thing at even the lowest level conferences. Anyway, my notes from the conference here if you are interested -- http://rezzable.com/blog/rightasrain-rimbaud/virtual-worlds-game-over

It was a little strange, but I don't really buy the "playing favorites" arguments. LL have just chosen to work with what they've got, and right now that's RRR with their work product.

I'm not sure how a market can stagnate if it has yet to exist.

I think Second Life has always been about inverted hierarchy - bottom up vs. top down, where users create their own spaces experiences, squarely rejecting developer controlled experiences. Maybe enterprise usage is following the same pattern?

No matter how badly we want to sell it, perhaps enterprise adoption of virtual worlds doesn't need any fancy 'solutions' and can get along just fine without paying a developer way too much money to build way too much stuff, on way too much land. Besides, most of the 'solutions' I see so far just keep trying to bring the 2D web into 3D. The web already does 2D pretty well, we can do so much more with 3D...

I think early enterprise adopters will continue using Second Life for business and collaboration, just like they already are now - building their own impromptu, informal and experimental spaces. Unfortunately, it might be a while before they become a blip on the big-dollar developer radar.

That doesn't make this space any less exciting to me, quite the opposite.

How soon might those billion users appear in the virtual worlds?Speaking to the future explosive growth Nick supplies the great reminder that the key to adoption is simplicity.
chiropractors