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After the introductions, the first speaker is Robert Edmonds of

SRIC BI currently have a remit to investigate virtual worlds – company is based in California with about 70 employees. Robert introduced his talk with a quote from William Gibson about virtual worlds – 'like a cross between being in some surburban shopping mall on the outskirts of Edmonton in the middle of winter and the worst day you ever spent in high school' - apparently this ties in with what most people think virtual worlds are like!

Beyond the Secret Club…
Robert talked about virtual worlds generally perceived as a ‘secret club’ to the rest of the world’s population and there needs to be more integration between the web and different generations. There’s a lot of activity around virtual worlds these days that suggests virtual worlds are gaining in popularity, but there needs to be improvements in the way virtual worlds are accessed - presently they’re difficult to use and not very user friendly – people are put off because they’re too technical. Virtual worlds uptake as an emerging technology is like the web in the early 90s: difficult to use, small pockets of people doing stuff but not really interacting with each other right now. Though the direction that virtual worlds are presently developing in means that they may be different to what we use now and develop in many different ways.

Business opportunities and key trends:
* Second life is the market leader and defacto standard at the moment
* Most are using second life
* Lots are using open source – OpenSim – Project Wonderland
* There are many platforms – but not direct equivalents
* There are patterns emerging – showing where each platform may go
* Open source platforms – open source software seems to be better at infrastructure and not such good interfaces.
* Open source is low cost and therefore more attractive, especially for the tech-savvy
* Most of the focus on web based work is concentrating on consumerism
* Progress towards standards is slow and demand for standardization is uncertain
* Connectivity with the web and other applications may matter more than connectivity between worlds

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Ren Reynolds – Crossing the policy boundary

Ren is founder of the - a think tank was created as a reaction to a lot of issues coming up in virtual worlds. He said when mainstream media started taking notice, the politicians started taking notice, and so people started to worry about possible outcomes. The ‘policy makers’ have done some studies into virtual worlds, but it’s very difficult to engage the users of virtual worlds in the context of policy issues. There are government workshops coming up on virtual worlds policy all over the place, so it’s time to start to take things seriously!

Real vs. Virtual - we are already virtual in our everyday pursuits online, via email, Facebook, IM, Twitter and other online ways of portraying ourselves, our personalities and creating online social realities. We use bank accounts and make transactions – recreating what’s in the physical world. We have a concept of democracy online. Real issues in virtual worlds: what occurs in a virtual world is real and what matter is not its ontology but its impact:

Virtual Worlds mean many things to people:
* Fun
* Emotion
* Communication
* Learning

Virtual economies are big business in virtual worlds and gaming – World of Warcraft, EVE-Online and Second Life are examples. In term of gambling, Linden Lab took steps to ban it. With virtual economies comes the question of tax: WOW Gold, L$, PED - Swedish bank have said that VW economy is taxable!

What’s happening in terms of virtual policy outside the West? In China in the Shanghai Pudong New District People’s court they overturned The9’s decision to ban a ‘gold farmer’as the exploit was part of the code. In Vietnam, Thailand, there are time limits on MMO play and Australia does not rule out taxation of virtual worlds transactions

There are also indirect policy impacts in terms of IP, copyright and other controls, also voting and polls in new virtual public spaces.Ìý

Gender, identity and identification is a big consideration. Personal representation: ‘breasts and scars’ – you don’t get flat chested women characters in virtual worlds and games, while men look all brawny and battle scared – at the ‘Women in Games’ conference last week, women said they wanted the opportunity to make themselves look more tough and fit, rather than big breasted and beautiful. There are huge policy impacts, especially where children are concerned and are seen to be at risk from identification – this is hard to control.

Sony SingStar karaoke game: you can upload your own videos – there are very little instances of videos been taken down? Self-law on behaviour – how is this changing the way we do stuff online? Kids are socially isolated due to the paranoia of kids not being safe on the streets – the wider context of this is that Virtual Worlds are becoming public space more frequently. There are loads of issues around identity and location.
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Unintended consequences and summary questions:
* Policy makers like simple models
* What is a virtual world?
* Do laws for WOW work for Habbbo and OLIVE?
* What do we want?
* What do we fear?

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Peeling backs the interoperability onion – John Burwell, Vice President, Business Development

Talking about interoperability, what is needed and why should we really care?
* Building virtual worlds is a big job – providing the necessary functionality is an endless task and requires an eco-system
* Growth of the medium and the power of technophobia – you’re never going to get certain people to adopt technology – so you need to be able to fit in and stand out
* Lock-out – the dangers of single source solutions – when you’re implementing tech, you need t o integrate it with existing applications, platforms and hardware - what if you go out of business – can cost you more to get out than get in – you never know what’s going to happen!
* Investment protection and reuse
* Long term support – relates to lock-out – if you invest in a small company that goes under you are in trouble – interoperability addresses some of the issues
What’s been done to date?
* Growing awareness
* The Big Gathering and subsequent posturing – a lot of people thought they knew how things should work – an avatar with client side ability so you can take it round various virtual worlds. This might be unlikely as it needs to be written by commercial companies and virtual worlds are not developed enough for this to happen yet. Big Gathering is now defunct due to differences of opinion.
* Necessity is the mother of invention – mash-ups and native integration – delays in implementations
* Delay in pilots and implementations

Example decision to use OpenGL in Silicon Graphics – you have to create an architectural review board to take it from internal to external standard.

Beyond an Interoperable client
* Simple content
* Terrain
* Non-player characters
* Learning Management Systems and SCORM
* Avatars, logins & physiology modellingÌý

Content interoperability
* Use of industry standard modelling systems - 3DStudio Max, Maya, Sketchup
* Support for interchange formats eg Collada
* Scripting and animations
* Legal issues and intellectual property
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Summary and conclusions
* Interoperability is critical for the growth of virtual worlds – it’s a hard problem to solve
* There are more to interoperability than a wire standards for clientsÌý
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Jim Purbrick of - The Interoperable Second Life

‘A little interoperability goes a long way’ there’s been a lot of interest in web browser and web client access to virtual worlds. There’s been a lot of interoperability in Second Life for quite a while.
* You can do a lot with images – overlaying images and avatars to create virtual mash-ups – lighting information into images to get around using Second Life.
* Audio – uploading audio formats
* Animations – motion capture formats – can record performances such as ballet
* Streaming video – mixed reality conferencing, can link worlds in a meaningful way, allowing people to have serendipitous experiences.
* Streaming audio – described Suzanne Vega as the mother of streaming audio – being able to stream audio you get a lot of benefit, interoperability with standard formats
* Web – you can see the web working in SL and read screens such as Java coding screen. What you want in a VR is a web browser in a virtual world you can zoom in and see web content – easier to see web browser in virtual world than the other way round
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At , Jim created – a mash-up with Second Life and Amee, using Django Python and web services to track carbon emissions. He built objects in Second Life then associated them with online data to visualise carbon emissions – for example when you turn a kettle on you can see carbon coming out – it’s a serious augmented virtual reality application.
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Economics: Second Life has its own economy - there’s a lot of stuff you can use to build your world – if you were having a conference you wouldn’t build a chair yourself – you’d go in and find someone who makes chairs and buy them with Linden dollars – ie you were creating an environment you don’t need to have your own designers to build things from scratch.
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The Future? They’ve been working with IBM to talk about interoperability, such as the possibility of universities allowing them to teleport and exchange things such as avatars. OpenSim built by non-communists (poke at Forterra guy) these interoperated. It’s not for the feint hearted – you would only start developing this sort of interoperability if you knew what you were getting into. OpenSim and open source view means you don’t get stuck – because you always have the opportunity to download the source code to change the source code, not like the locked in model of cough Forterra. If you need to do some stuff like stereoscopic stuff that is now being developed in American universities – you can get the source code. There is no walled garden in SL – its always been interoperable – you’ve always been able to interact with other software. Interaoperability is about loads of stuff, economy, IP, kids, more than a view in a browser. It’s not a propreitry technology that won’t talk to other technologies.

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Twinity: when virtual Worlds become real – Norbert Meinike

is a virtual world which prides itself on real looking avatars and cities that mirror real life. They analysed two trends on the internet: the wish to interact with friends and for 3D entertainment. It’s a Virtual World that focuses on real life. It mashes up 3D worlds and social networking and they feel this gives Twinity the best of both worlds.

Key features of Twinity
* Real cities –it has virtual cities which mirror real life ones with precise mapping of buildings, etc. So far they have Berlin, but London is next and Singapore will follow.
* Real people – realistic looking avatars that you can create with photos, you can use your real name and there are various ways of communication. You can make your online flat look like your own home.
* Vibrant culture – you can party and hang out, go shopping, etc. They have built a realistic replica of the Cinestar Cubix in Berlin and also the Lumas Gallery
* Real economy – shops, property and currency – you Yan buy and sell virtual items, create a commercial shop etc. Drykorn is a real shop, that exists in berlin, you can try on dresses from real life collections too and get feedback from the sales staff!

Unfortunately for me, so far Twinity only runs on Windows XP and Vista - so I can't join in the fun on my Linux or Mac machines. It would be good to hear if they're going to rectify this any time soon as I'd really like to have a look around for myself!

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Case Study: How health insurer CIGNA uses a virtual world health community - Claus Nehmzow

Many employees have acute or latent healthcare issues - the 'old way' focussed on people already being ill – behavior is the largest single determinant of health status. A virtual world might help – a real time environment and a shared experience with anonymous vs. anonymous elements & simple vs. complex media.
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Cigna /vielife health training seminars - video here:

People arrive at an island in Second Life and are guided to where to go by greeters, people can sit and listen to the presenter and also chat on IM. The speaker uses 3D props and presentations. Giant props such as hamburgers illustrate a talk about fat consumption which includes real time voting. There follows nutritional information, illustrations show for example how much fibre you need to eat – people retain more information by showing props in this way. Animated slides show things like blood sugar level information. After the lecture they are offered interactive methods of exploring more information, eg games. These are used to reinforce the message.Ìý

An interactive fridge contains various foods where you can click on food labels to find out nutritional information. Also a diner with an interactive menu and the user can ask questions. At the end the user gets a tab about how they use food and results from their choices – a reality check. There are also games such as Whack-a-food where you hit the food that is healthier. The experience reflects a serious business problem to educate and improve peoples eating behavior. It is a pilot at the moment, you can sign up directly or find via Second Life. Privacy isn’t a big deal right now, as they don’t collect personal data, but the age verification issue is interesting.

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Ronan Freeman –

OpenSimulator is a BSD licenced, open source project. It’s is a virtual worlds server used for building 3D virtual environments written in C# and is cross platform. They have 24 employees, it’s platform independent, they love Second Life and have 8 full time developers working on large-scale events in virtual worlds.
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Overview
*ÌýÌýÌý Open source – anyone interested can contribute
*ÌýÌý Public domain – openSim licence is very short – basically says don’t sue us if it screws up your machine and credit us if you use it!
*ÌýÌý Global team – teams all over the world
*ÌýÌýÌý Flexible designÌý - primary objective is to create an architecture that is modular
*ÌýÌýÌý Established standards
*ÌýÌý Total control – you can integrate it with any applications that you want
*ÌýÌý Free!
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Today
*ÌýÌý Grid or stand alone
*ÌýÌýÌý Second Life compatible
*ÌýÌýÌý Management tools
*ÌýÌýÌý Application integration
*ÌýÌýÌý Mesh import - integrating full mesh objects Skeleton structure – not constrained
*ÌýÌý Skeleton import
*ÌýÌýÌý Low cost -free!
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Tomorrow
*ÌýÌýÌý Open viewer
*ÌýÌýÌý Multi-grid rights management
*ÌýÌýÌý Avatar management
*ÌýÌýÌý Grid management
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What’s the point of interoperability? Integration between virtual worlds would be good in an adhoc case by case base. What’s good about OpenSim is that you host it and you can make choices – ie you can give people a set of clothes to chose from so they’re not running around naked!
You can run it online or locally on your laptop – content creators find this useful because they create stuff offline. You can download it and either run it on a cheap connection or you can set it up on high spec server – eg Amazon Electric Cloud.Ìý
Management tools will allow you to manage multiple grids and web services and can give robots complex tasks to do – such as integrations with Facebook, etc.

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Sun Microsystems - Bernard Horan

When Sun Microsystems realized that only 50% of workers were in the office at any given time, they decided to do some research, this revealed an impact on motivation of their remote staff:

* with remote working you get a lack of social interaction, ie building up relationships, trust & loyalty and people get motivation from other people.
* there were management issues – it was difficult to establish what employees were doing
* difficulty brainstorming – apparently we only do this face to face

They concluded that current technology lacks social bandwidth. Sun started looking online at Second Life and World of Warcraft and how their communities and technology work together. Although it’s been a bit slow in the past, improvements in broadband, bandwidth and latency allow you to have a better shared experience.

A fascinating fact was revealed that in 2006 1 billion dollars were spent alone on acquiring objects in/for World of Warcraft.

The upshot of this was the Second Life MPK20 experiment – Sun built a campus in Second Life and exciting things started to happen, such as a guy who had his first serendipitous encounter with another person in 7 years of home working!

But there were a few drawbacks: in Second Life you can't use your own name, you have to chose from a list of preset names, so no-one knew who was who! In the end they got round this by having a wiki page so people could find out. It turned out that social experiences in Second Life were okay in their Sun campus, but they couldn't do any real work.

Wonderland is a virtual worlds toolkit and its goals are:
* to be emotionally salient
* have social presence
* encourage spontaneous, unplanned actions and socialising before and after events
* enhance communication between coworkers

Differentiators:
* live approach sharing
* integration with business servers
* internal external scalability
* 100% java
* opensource
* audio as core feature
* free
* extensive telephony integration

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