Seattle Social Media Club: What do rocket scientists and yaks have in common?

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They obviously don’t have the same
IQ…so it must have something to do with the fact that they both represent
possible business uses of virtual worlds!

We had a
good turnout and lively discussion at last night’s Seattle Social Media Club
meeting, where Jeff Barr of Amazon, Rob Lanphier and Greg Tomko-Pavia of Linden
Lab, and Brian White of HP gave us great insight into the past, present and future
of businesses in virtual worlds.

While I
could go on and on about last night, I’d like to cover some of the highlights
that really seemed to stand out to attendees. First, an explanation of the yaks
and rocket scientists. As an example of how non-profits can benefit from
virtual world participation, Brian told us about Save the Children, a
non-profit that sold
virtual yaks in Second Life and used 100 percent of the proceeds to
help children around the world. Brian also told us about NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Lab and its initiative to figure out how
astronauts could connect with family and friends while they are
literally tens of millions of miles from home.

Overall,
the panelists seemed to agree that 2008 is THE year for businesses to discover
the ROI that can be found within virtual worlds. The novelty factor has lost its
shine and now it’s time to figure out to what’s worked and what hasn’t. Jeff’s
Web Services group has seen a lot of success in holding regular developer chats
on the Amazon Developer Islands in Second Life. Because they want to work with
developers who are creative and can think outside the box, they naturally find
these people involved in virtual worlds. Jeff has already hired two developers
based in Europe by attending a virtual job fair. Two new global employees
without spending any money of airfare, hotel, etc!

We also
talked a lot about the immersion factor. Sitting on a conference call trying to
figure out who’s speaking, or watching WebEx click through PowerPoint slides
just isn’t the same as participating in a meeting in-world. Virtual worlds make
meetings more interactive for both the speaker who can see his virtual
audience, as well as attendees who receive visual and auditory cues, helping
them focus more on the presentation.

We asked
Greg and Rob “What’s next?” from a Linden Lab perspective, and they both agreed
that upcoming focuses include interoperability, improved collaboration features
and optimization. Rob also discussed his mandate as “open source busybody,”
helping to liaise between Linden Lab other developers who want to work with the
code
that was released last year.

We look
forward to staying in touch with our local virtual worlders…maybe next time
it will be my avatar Madelynne who does the talking!

-Katie
Hoyne, Seattle