Lilly Hanscom, communications manager at collaboration platform Podio, for instance, got in touch with an audio recording of a thought-provoking SXSW panel discussion called ‘Decentralized Organizations: Do They Work?‘ She thought it was a cool unpacking of the underlying philosophy that animates her company, but it also fits right in with the preoccupations of WebWorkerDaily.

In it, Thomas Malone, director of MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence and author of the seminal 2004 book The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life, lays out how cheap, ubiquitous communication (i.e., the Internet) is empowering more workers to make decisions for themselves. Like a faint echo of the argument that new communication tools have been bad news for dictators around the world the last few years, Malone explains that getting more information to more people at work is also bad for office autocrats and good for knowledge-worker freedom and productivity (it’s a long excerpt but worth it):

It’s now possible for the first time in human history to have the economic benefits of very large organizations, things like economies of scale, and at the same time to have the human benefits of very small organizations, things like freedom, flexibility, motivation and creativity. And the reason that’s possible is because a new generation of technologies – email, the World Wide Web, the internet in general – are reducing the cost of communication to such a low level that it’s now possible for huge numbers of people even in very large organizations to have enough information that they can make sensible decisions for themselves instead of just following orders from someone above them in a hierarchy who supposedly knows more than they do.

It’s the technology, by reducing the cost of communication, that’s making this possible. But just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it will necessarily happen. What I think will actually drive the change in this case are the business benefits of people making more decisions for themselves. When people are making their own decisions, for instance, they’re often more highly motivated – they’ll work harder if it’s their own thing rather than just what somebody tells them to do. When people are doing their own thing, they’re often more creative. They’re willing to be more inventive, try more things, just be more innovative. They’re able to be more flexible if they can decide what to do in their own situation instead of just following rigid rules. Finally, people who are making their own decisions often just plain like it better.

Now, those benefits of decentralized decision making aren’t important everywhere in business. In some places, like making certain kinds of semiconductor chips, the most important thing is economies of scale. And in those cases, cheap communication may lead to even more centralized decision-making, but, and here’s the key point, in our increasingly knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy, the critical factors in business success are often exactly the same things as the benefits of decentralized decision making: flexibility, motivation, creativity, innovation. That’s why I think that even though it won’t happen everywhere, we’ll see  in more and more parts of our economy, more and more decentralized decision making, more and more human freedom.

Other members of the panel went on to offer examples of what this movement toward office democracy could look like in practice. Kat Steinmetz, human resources manager of Burning Man, for instance, explained that the annual gathering has six founders, but no CEO, and decisions are made by consensus. That takes longer on the front-end and can be frustrating, explained Steinmetz, but results in faster implementation as all parties really buy in to a decision once it had been made.

Or, if Burning Man seems a bit far out of the corporate sphere to be really relevant, Zach Ware, campus community development director at Zappos, offered examples of how decentralization is affecting his firm, starting with space design. Their offices, he said, have no walls, to be a literally, as well as metaphorically, flat organization, and their new Las Vegas headquarters offers both internal and external coworking spaces to nurture community.

Finally, Second Life founder Philip Rosedale shared a radical but doable example of workplace democracy in action. At Linden Lab, bonuses were crowdsourced, meaning that the 300 employees were given an equal share of the bonus pot and asked to give away the money to their colleagues in any way they saw fit. The result was a rational allocation of bonus money and a very empowered workforce, according to Rosedale.

And how about Podio? How are they experiencing this tech-driven trend away from command and control at the office? Hanscom explained in an email that, “Podio was born out of the belief that the people who do the work of companies should have the power to choose how they do that work and that software (or any work tool) has an inherent value. If you force tools and processes on them that they have not had a hand in deciding upon, you are dehumanizing, disempowering them.” Their office is also open plan, they’re flexible in terms of remote working, and “we eat lunch together every day,” says Hanscom.

Is technology bringing more democracy to your work life?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Dplanet.

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As virtual worlds become as prevalent in business as they are in games and socialization, we need to learn how to present ourselves as effectively as possible in this medium. Since first impressions count in virtual teams just as much as they do in face-to-face teams, we need to take our virtual appearance more seriously. In the case of these immersive environments, appearance is based on our avatars.

How do we create avatars that are more than just placeholders? Which avatar features contribute most to the quality and richness of the conversation?

Eye gaze

While 3-D avatars can generate motion and activity, it doesn’t seem to be enough. Just because an avatar looks and moves like a person, it doesn’t mean that the quality of communication mimics face-to-face interactions. Avatars still can’t use subtle body language in the way humans do. But adding even something as mundane as head and eye motion, combined as “gaze”, can make a huge difference.

This was demonstrated in a study conducted in University College London. The research compared an avatar whose gaze was based on the conversation’s turn-taking (informed-gaze) and an avatar whose animations were unrelated to the conversation (random-gaze). They also compared these two types of avatars to other media, such as live video and audio-only conversations.

According to the study, even the inclusion of a relevant, expressive gaze created a significant improvement in the perceived quality of the conversation. When comparing to the participants’ sense of involvement, informed-gaze avatars barely had a significant difference from communicating via video.

What’s even more surprising is that the random-gaze avatar had no significant improvement over pure audio. This implies that a mere 3-D presence doesn’t automatically mean that the communication quality and richness improves. To be truly useful and engaging, avatars must exhibit behaviors that are relevant to the conversation — even if it’s something as simple as eye gaze.

Gesture and manners

Taking a step beyond eye gaze, it appears that other non-verbal manners, and our responses to them, persist in virtual worlds.

In a study from Stanford University, researchers observed how interacting avatars used interpersonal distance and eye gaze in Second Life. Based on their observations, non-verbal norms were still present, even if controlling them meant moving a mouse and keyboard rather than our own eyes and legs. The study, which focused on gender norms, showed that male-male pairs, like their face-to-face counterparts, maintained less eye contact and were further apart than female-female pairs. Also, when the “physical” distance between avatars was decreased, the avatars compensated by avoiding eye contact — just like people would in the offline world.

But it’s not just gender norms that persist in virtual environments. Cultural norms are still exhibited, even when the technology allows us interaction with people from different cultures. An experiment from Augsburg University in Germany showed that cultural speech nuances such as timing and pauses affected a viewer’s preference for an avatar. Their results showed that people preferred avatars that exhibited the nuances from their own culture. Perhaps this means that even if we are meeting other people in a virtual environment, we should still take cultural factors into account when we’re communicating.

How important are these cues? Quoting from a paper on the use of avatars in collaboration (PDF):

The ability or inability to maintain an “appropriate” interpersonal distance or the ability or inability to control one’s viewpoint so other avatars may be seen, among other things, will affect the feeling of being there together. [...] Being in an environment where people feel connected is more likely to enhance development of trust and reduction of conflict, which in turn lead to more effective collaboration.

(Source: “Avatars, Text, and Miscommunication: The Impact of Communication Richness on Global Virtual Team Collaboration”, Columbia University)

Looking back at all the research, it’s a lot to take in. Doesn’t it seem cumbersome to have avatars that allow you to control all of these tiny factors? After all, in real life we barely even think about these non-verbal cues.

The answer is simple: it should be automated in our avatars’ programming, just as it is in our own minds and bodies. The more these virtual environments have an intuitive interface, and the more these communication nuances are automated, the more natural it will be for most people to successfully use their virtual world avatars for collaboration.

How do you create and control avatars?

Photo courtesy Flickr user cloud2013

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The breakdown of virtual activities outlined in the survey include training (42 percent); customer engagement (36 percent); internal collaboration (34 percent); lead generation (29 percent); and networking (8 percent). Nearly half of the respondents predict an increase in “hybrid” corporate events within two years.

Marketing and customer outreach aside, how can organizations with remote teams looking for more effective ways to train new team members and collaborate make use of virtual environments? I’ve previously outlined how my virtual team collaborates, including the use of the virtual world Second Life for both meetings and socializing. Yes, Second Life is still in use, only now without the hype. Some virtual work-related activities that take place in Second Life include:

1. Team meetings. Many organizations take advantage of the sense of “presence” in virtual worlds to conduct effective virtual team meetings. Examples include a vibrant nonprofit community run by TechSoup (Nonprofit Commons); corporate meeting places for executive teams and shareholders, such as the Air France-KLM space; and small virtual teams bringing together global team members for “face-to-face” exchanges, such as Conversify’s quarterly meetings which are held in Second Life. Communications can take place easily with Second Life’s audio and IM chat features  as well as the ability to display multimedia presentation materials. You can explore tools to import Google Docs and other applications as well as live streaming by visiting the I-Zone Virtual Collaboration Environment (VCE) in Second Life. Don’t have a Second Life meeting space built yet? There are many available ready-built options including the Ginny Business Center and the Alpine Executive Center (where you can also ski virtually when your meeting is done).
2. Collaboration sessions. Whether you interact with your team in existing collaborative virtual spaces such as those created by Orange22 Design Lab LLC or you start from scratch and provide your team with the tools to create and build an environment together, virtual worlds can boost those “a-ha!” moments by providing the ability to push past the limitations of the real world. Providing a sandbox in a virtual world can deliver truly “out-of-the-box” thinking by your team.
3. Training and learning events. Learning in a virtual environment can take the form of formal classes in classroom or auditorium settings or even simulation environments such as SuperBuy, an mock retail store environment that provides new employee orientation training by letting them engage in immersive role-playing activities related to their job. Virtual university campuses abound, including University of Texas and San Diego State University. Companies such as Bevill Edge provide virtual training services via SpotOn3D‘s Biz Grid (you can view a video about their services).
4. Hybrid virtual and “real world” events. Many major conferences have added virtual components to real world events, including the women’s bloggers conference BlogHer. The online versions of these events usually consist of panel discussions and keynotes streaming into Second Life from the real world event, or concurrent live events taking place solely in Second Life, or both. Companies such as Virtualis offer ready-to-go conference and convention environments for virtual events.

Second Life isn’t the only virtual environment, of course. There is also OpenSimulator, an open source multi-platform, multi-user 3D application server, and SpotOn3D. Or you can explore the specialized virtual meeting and events platforms offered by companies such as Unisfair, VenueGen and newer player Kitely. While the upsides to holding virtual meetings, trainings and events include lower travel costs, there can also be challenges such as connectivity issues and lack of attention. Respondents in the Unisfair survey cited the ability to multitask as a plus to attending virtual events (58 percent) so you do run the risk of inattention from attendees. But in our current world of overly accessible social networks on mobile devices, even real world interactions face that challenge.

How are you integrating virtual worlds and platforms into your business, particularly interactions with your virtual team?

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I rebranded my virtual consultancy with my long-time friend Monique Elwell to create Conversify. We shared the goal of creating a business that was entirely virtual and that would allow everyone who joined us the flexibility, mobility and better work/life balance we wanted. She and I were based thousands of miles apart when we joined forces, in Denver and Alaska respectively. More recently, we brought on a third business partner, Steven Jackson from Boston, and have built a team that spans the U.S., with a U.K. presence as well.

Here’s what I learned from the members of our virtual team. Note that most of our agency’s team members came from more traditional work environments.

1. Develop clear communications processes. Social media strategist Nik Hewitt emphasizes that one thing that helps our team work well together is that we spent a lot of time developing clear and detailed work processes so we could be consistent and efficient. “We share ideas and discuss them, and a nominated person writes down the salient points based on the knowledge of the team,” Hewitt explains. “Then this information is collated and edited by one team member then passed to another team member for comprehensive expansion.” At each stage of our communications process, we notify each person when it is their turn to participate and give clear deadlines along with scheduled reminders so everyone knows what is expected from whom and when. Attention to a detailed process leads to more consistency and accountability.
2. Shared calendaring is key. According to Haley Kilgour, senior account manager, virtual team members have to be more efficient with their time because of the need to schedule specific meetings with one another to discuss issues or make decisions. Even a quick 15 minute chat requires coordinating schedules across time zones to ensure you can “meet” with someone else. We use Google Apps and heavily rely on Google Calendar; we can see the availability of all team members at all times. Plus we can specify our individual work hours that are based on a core set of hours when we are all available at the same time. Those critical mutual time slots are the sweet spot for getting the whole team together for real-time collaboration.
3. Make use of time zones. “When we have something that is due on Monday, I feel like I have two Mondays in which to do it,” says Karen Woodward, social media manager, referring to the fact that Hewitt, who is based in the U.K., can begin working on something on a Monday during his work hours and then Woodward and social media specialist Shelli Martineau can pick up where he left off during their workday in Pacific Time. This elongates the team’s productivity and can be a bonus during critical communications periods, providing our clients with 24/7 social media monitoring and management.
4. Instant messaging can trump email. Email can be a big challenge for virtual teams especially when team members begin to over-rely on it and everyone can gets buried in emails. Email can also be ineffective if you fail to specify in each email sent to multiple team members exactly who needs to take action, says Elwell, Conversify’s CEO. “If you send an email to five people and say ‘check this out,’ everyone will assume at least one of the others will, and no one will check it out.” Sometimes, instant messaging can be far more targeted and effective. Woodward says that IM has has become her virtual version of “popping my head over the cubicle wall.” But IM can also present a more immediate messaging overload, especially since we usually have both GTalk and Skype running. Sometimes you just have to turn them off to get work done.
5. Don’t knock virtual worlds. With several Second Life enthusiasts on our team from the beginning, we decided to bring the rest of our team members “inworld” for both a weekly “watercooler” social as well as quarterly “state of the company” meetings. Kilgour admits that at first she was opposed to meeting in Second Life, but eventually she came to enjoy it. “There’s something to be said for having a visual representation of a meeting that makes me feel more connected,” she says, adding that the format appeals to her visual nature.

Hewitt says that virtual team members need to make an effort to get to know one another. “We take time to just chat, one-to-one and in teams. We just chew the fat sometimes on Skype as though we’re (sitting) next to each other. I pretty much talk to to everyone personally once a week just to catch-up.”

The team also holds meetings for joint creativity such as their “Production Playtime” where they exchange ideas. Martineau, in particular, appreciates “Production Playtime” noting that it’s an opportunity for the team to jointly explore new tools and networks that may be beneficial to clients. “This is how we all got hooked on Get Glue and what reinvigorated our interest in Tumblr,” she adds.

Says Kilgour, getting together in person a couple times of year, if possible, is important, “Human energy can still be missing in virtual settings.” Another caveat for working virtually is to acknowledge that working from home isn’t for everyone and requires self-discipline, the ability to stay focused and being able to avoid distractions.

What does your virtual team use — and do — to work well together?

Top image: Photo by Mike Kilgour, Second Life screenshot by Nik Hewitt

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The book is divided into sections on blogging; Twitter and microblogging; social networking; media sharing; social news and bookmarking; ratings and reviews; forums; and virtual worlds. In each section, Zarrella provides very short descriptions of leading web sites in the particular category, together with quick discussions of how they work, and how businesses could benefit from using them.

The book’s author dedicates it to his grandparents, which is appropriate, since this is the sort of book that I’d give to someone older and less computer-savvy. It sometimes gets a little technical for this audience, but the writing style is clear and friendly.

The book feels like a bit of a departure for O’Reilly Media (who kindly provided the book to me). I tend to think of O’Reilly as publishers of dense software and programming manuals. I was amused to note that the book is listed in O’Reilly’s catalog as “First Edition.” The book will need updating frequently if it’s to stay relevant — some of the screenshots are already out of date.

“The Social Media Marketing Book” is a little book. At 239 8″ x 6″ pages (in paperback or as an e-book), with lots of illustrations and white space, the content is frankly limited. But it’s well-organized, easy to understand, inviting to flip through,and approachable. I doubt that many WWD readers will learn anything new from this book, but it might be useful for lending to clients, family and friends.

How do you explain social media to clients?

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According to the new GigaOM Pro report “Virtual Worlds for the Enterprise Market” by Kris Tuttle and Steve Waite of Research 2.0 (subscription required), business use of virtual worlds is a growing market — one that we shouldn’t ignore. Some of the main takeaways from the report that matter to those of us working on the web include:

• Develop a plan. Companies should develop a plan for use of enterprise, private 3-D virtual world environments for both internal and external use.
• Technology continues to evolve. The “in world” experiences of these new virtual environments will be leaps and bounds ahead of that currently offered by Second Life.
• Don’t underestimate the market. The market for enterprise 3-D worlds may seem small today, but according to the report, it’s doubling year over year, with estimated annual revenues of $8-10 billion in 2015.

So how can you make sure that you’re prepared for the virtual worlds of the future? Here are nine skills we can all learn from regular engagement in Second Life that can be applied to any business use of 3-D virtual world environments.

1. Maneuvering. On your first day in a virtual world, you may feel like a stranger in a strange land. Unless you are well-versed with video games, chances are moving your avatar around will be frustrating and inefficient. Using Second Life on a regular basis for an extended period of time can help you get your “virtual world legs.”
2. Interacting. When you encounter others in a virtual world, even knowing when and how to approach them and address them can be awkward and downright intimidating. Participating in Second Life social events can help you learn the how to interact with both strangers and colleagues using your virtual self.
3. Communicating. Because Second Life supports both text and voice communications, you have more than one way to communicate with others. Knowing how to communicate clearly and thoroughly in both ways gives you an advantage. Plus knowing how to use gestures to your advantage can make a big difference in how others respond to you.
4. Presenting. By making presentations in Second Life, you learn how to add a new dimension to your presentations. You may currently know how to give a virtual presentation with a software such as GoToMeeting or DimDim, however, what do you do if you also have an avatar — a 3-D virtual representation of yourself — in the mix? And what about the ability to create “larger than life” presentation environments where your audience can walk through to get a richer experience? Presenting in Second Life helps you master these additional features to help make a more interactive and immersive presentation. From basic team or board meetings to more involved presentations, 3-D environments gives a whole new meaning to “being there.”
5. Teaching. Universities around the world make extensive use of Second Life, offering classes and even campus social events and interactions, taking full advantage of the 3-D environment to augment their “real world” offerings. Businesses and professionals can take advantage of this environment to offer seminars, workshops, panel discussions and full conferences — either standalone, or as an extension of a “real world” event.
6. Collaborating. Any enterprise or virtual team can benefit from the collaborative environments one can create in 3-D worlds. In Second Life, companies don’t only have meetings but also participate in team-building exercises, go on virtual retreats and hold social events to create stronger bonds between team members.
7. Branding. Companies can build their brands in 3-D environments such as Second Life — knowing how to do it well is a useful skill. Individuals can also build their brands via their 3-D avatars. Even in Second Life, you can purchase your own name (as long as it isn’t already taken) and use the environment as another social network in your social media toolkit. See my post “Second Life is Social Media.”
8. Promoting. Learning to market in a 3-D space is a challenge but enhances your marketing skills in exciting new ways.Finding ways to actually reach people in meaningful and engaging ways in a virtual world can help foster fresh ideas.
9. Building. Because every resident has the ability to build, even a non-artist or non-architect can gain skills to make objects, create art and construct buildings, spaces and environments that push the envelope of what is possible in the “real world.” This kind of creativity — especially in the hands of more linear thinkers — is a great source of inspiration and innovation. And another aspect of “building” in Second Life and other 3-D environments that should not be overlooked is the art of building community and organizing people.

How are you using 3-D virtual world environments for business?

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To be clear, Second Life is social media. If you break down the key features of social media, you will see that Second Life stacks up very well against other popular tools. Here are some of the reasons why you’d be remiss to leave Second Life off a well-rounded, integrated social media marketing plan.

1. Conversation. We all talk about social media being about the conversation. In most social networks, that conversation comes in the form of forums, email or IM. Second Life includes an IM feature, but it also has voice chat, rendering it far more of a conversation enabler than Facebook or MySpace.

2. Community. Second Life contains a deeply connected and immersive community. Instead of your community existing as flat avatars or icons next to your name on a threaded message board, your Second Life community exists within 3-D spaces where your avatar can move about, gather with other avatars, even shake hands with them. You can attend and organize events. You can build gathering places and spaces from a treehouse, to an auditorium in the clouds, to an underwater conference room. Your avatar — and by extension, you — can actually be somewhere when interacting with your online community.

3. Groups. Facebook has groups, MySpace has groups. These are really just glorified forums or message boards where people congregate and converse by leaving messages. You might be able to broadcast a message to the group. You can promote things to the group, if appropriate. Second Life also has groups where you can broadcast notices, send IMs to group members who are online at the same time you are, and you can even hold voting for issues.

4. Events. Facebook Events are just listings of real-life events. Sure you can have web-based online events — via something like GoToMeeting or Calliflower or BlogTalk Radio — and use text or audio or images or a combination. But regular social networks can produce nothing like the events taking place in Second Life. Whether you attend a concert or a fundraiser, a comedy show or an educational workshop, a panel or a movie screening, an event in Second Life is the epitome of interactivity with images, sound, voice, movement, actions and reactions. If you can’t really be there in the real world, you can participate in an event and practically “be there” by accessing it via Second Life.

5. Advertising. There are many advertising methods available in Second Life as well as the ability to give away or sell goods and services. Advertising can be as simple and static as a billboard (although you can make billboards clickable, so that they give out notecards or lead to a web site). You can sponsor events and have signage on display like you would at a real-world event. You can purchase a booth at an expo within Second Life. You can even purchase ads on Second Life television networks such as Treet.tv.

The downsides of Second Life are few, although they can be substantial, including:

1. Accessibility. Not everyone can access Second Life for reasons ranging from computer capabilities to bandwidth issues. It is not for the weak tech setup.

2. Learning curve. Second Life is also not for the faint of heart. You have to love staring into a computer screen, have an uncanny facility with your keyboard, mouse and/or track pad, and be willing to put in time to learn how to stop bumping into walls.

3. Crashing. The technology is still evolving. While I still believe Second Life is the best virtual world out there with the most flexibility, freedom and possibilities out of all those I’ve tried to date, I also feel the pain of crashing mid-event or being unable to access an event I’m managing because of a technical failure on the server side.

4. Ownership. Linden Lab owns Second Life. If Linden Lab goes under, we lose everything we’ve created. We will be shut out of “our” Second Life.

Despite the downsides,  many marketers are making a mistake by not at least experimenting with Second Life. Even pure experimentation in Second Life sets you up with a new skillset — moving, building, marketing and selling in a 3-D space — that will come in handy as technologies continue to evolve. In the same way that it is shortsighted not to at least try Twitter in order to understand this “newfangled” communications tool that has influenced new styles of communications, it is shortsighted not to get an avatar, download the Second Life software, and explore.

And if you need a friendly tour guide, look up my avatar: Cybergrrl Oh. She is always happy to help!

What are your thoughts on Second Life as social media?

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Here he talks about why he uses Paint.net and Plurk.

What’s Your Favorite Web App, Wagner James Au? from WebWorkerDaily on Vimeo.

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Yesterday, a couple of new tools were announced that made me stop and reconsider how much of that potential is actually being capitalized upon, how soon the virtual world’s appeal might broaden, and what that might mean for working on the web. The services in question are a Virtual Conference Centre and Real Time Research, joint venture projects by Second Life development vets Rivers Run Red and consulting group Futuresource.

Virtual conferencing and meetings are gaining popularity as companies look for ways to cut costs, and travel budgets are a prime target for cutting excess. I’m fine with conference calls, and they’re a necessary part of internet commuting, but I’ve yet to try a virtual world-based meeting. For me, the 3D character avatar still belongs to the province of video games, so I’m resistant to the idea of bringing business into the equation.

Perhaps that’s the point, though, when we’re talking about a virtual convention centre. Part of the appeal of attending conventions is the appeal of the socializing that goes on outside of business. And as an independent contractor, I don’t often find my travel expenses comped, so I could definitely see myself agreeing to be a guest speaker or a panel member at a Second Life convention that I would not attend in the real world. It would allow you to build your personal brand in places and to audiences you wouldn’t otherwise reach, which is always a good thing.

Real Time Research, the second service to be launched, presents a more interesting and innovative use of the Second Life world. It is intended to provide a way for companies to test and receive feedback on new products and design in real time. Second Life is a great environment for this sort of thing because it allows a wide (or selective) audience quick, easy, and reliable access to 3D product models.

This sort of real-time feedback environment could allow small firms and even independent designers to get the benefit of focus groups without the cost, which is generally prohibitive for those of us working on this end of the spectrum. The problem might be attracting users from useful demographics to give you feedback, or to take the activity seriously at all. In-world incentives could help to remedy that problem, as could services that allow Second Life users to sign up to become part of an active testing pool.

The tools may not in and of themselves necessarily represent firsts for virtual world applications, but the fact that they’re being sold to enterprise users through a third-party vendor is. It means that at least some companies are beginning to market Second Life collaboration SaaS solutions the same way many others did when Web 2.0 started really taking off.

It’s definitely an option I’ll float to clients looking for these types of tools, especially if they’re open to innovative or non-traditional approaches. My only worry is that users unfamiliar with Second Life might require a separate orientation for both the virtual world, and the tool itself, and might find the environment distracting to the task.

Would you recommend/use this kind of service for your or your client’s business? Do you currently use Second Life for web work, or can you see yourself doing so in the future? From a developer’s standpoint, what do you think about the viability of Second Life as market to sell these kinds of applications? Is there enough interest to justify the effort?

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So how do you host simultaneous online/virtual events? Very carefully, of course, but here are a few tips to help you straddle both worlds and pull off both events without a hitch.

1. Get Virtual Help

Before you delve into virtual world event planning, make sure you have established a talented team who are active in the virtual world, but also who you know and trust. I work mostly with people who I have met not only virtually but also in the real world, because there is an added accountability aspect to contacts you’ve met face to face. That said, I also have worked extensively with folks who I only know through the virtual world – in this case, Second Life. I don’t even know their real names and pay them either with Linden (Second Life’s currency) or on PayPal. My virtual world team includes designer Liadona Rau (whom I met in person after we had met in Second Life), multimedia developer KrisBott Gears (who used to work for me at Cybergrrl, Inc. in real life back in the 90s), and designer Chepooka Laval (whom I work with in real life in Alaska and whom I encouraged to get “inworld”).

2. Know the Lay of the Land

Not only am I personally familiar with the ins and outs of Second Life, just from rolling up my sleeves and trying things out, but I also co-own a virtual island so have a sandbox in which to develop things. This also means that I have a location to hold events when clients don’t have their own land. Because I’m so familiar with the potential of Second Life, the minute I’m approached to do a virtual event to complement a live event, I immediately know at least a dozen things that we can and should do for the Second Life version.

3. Think 3-D and Interactive

While it is a given that there should be branded and information-oriented posters at your virtual world event, you can easily go beyond the flat billboard-style signage. For my virtual events, some of the posters are also “notecard givers”,  meaning that avatars can obtain a notecard with background information about the company, organization or event, just by clicking on them. Other posters immediately launch a browser window, which opens on the web site of the party host. Notecard givers can also be set up to automatically email you the name of each avatar clicking on your object to receive items.

4. Think Promo Items (Freebies)

Nothing makes an avatar happier than receiving free gifts. I learned early on how to make t-shirts in Second Life and have a side virtual business making branded, promotional t-shirts for events, companies and organizations. For a recent event I held on Athena Island (the one I co-own) for Quaker Oatmeal, I turned to a virtual friend, MincedMedia Clip, to make an enormous virtual steaming bowl of oatmeal, complete with a spoon. To top it off, if an avatar clicked on the big bowl, they received an individual, small bowl of oatmeal with a virtual spoon that had an “eat” animation in it to animate the avatar scooping out oatmeal and eating it.

5. Show the Virtual Event in Real Life

At the Quaker Oatmeal live event, we had several laptops logged into Second Life, and some of us participated both in the real world and the virtual event at the same time. We were able to let others who were not familiar with Second Life look over our shoulders to demonstrate what was happening. At a previous event for Rasmuson Foundation in Anchorage, Alaska, the simultaneous Second Life event was projected onto a big screen in a performing arts center theatre. Having the virtual world component during a real-world event can build excitement and leave a lasting impression on the attendees.

6. Stay on Message Virtually

Because the Second Life aspect of a real world event can easily become the “main attraction,” make sure what you do virtually is in line with what is happening in the real world. Make sure the messaging is clear, the branding consistent, and the discussion relevant. It is too easy to get sidetracked in a virtual world, however, having “hosts” at events can keep the conversations running smoothly and key messages communicated frequently.

7. Hire Security

While your real world event probably doesn’t need a security detail, in Second Life, for example, security at events is smart. It is so easy to build and create objects in Second Life, and it is just as easy for a troublemaker – or “griefer” – to do the same at your event. There are folks in Second Life who make good Linden as security guards. Give them the permissions they need to boot out (eject) any pesky griefers and to remove obnoxious objects from your land. Before I started hiring security, I had several great events disrupted by griefers,  but now that I have them, not a single event has been attacked.

8. Spread the Virtual Word

Holding an event in Second Life doesn’t only enhance the real world event itself, but it also enhances the promotions and buzz factor of your event. There is an entire strata of Second Life bloggers, Second Life Facebookers, Second Lifers on MySpace, Twitter, Plurk, and more. Almost everyone who blogs their Second Life does so exclusively, so they will only write about things they experience or hear about inworld. When you provide interesting events in Second Life that add value to the world and provide value to the avatar, chances are you’ll get a good deal of extra ink and mentions in the social mediasphere because of your Second Life initiatives.

Overall, holding a virtual event at the same time as a real world event takes careful coordination and strategic attention to detail. Don’t skimp on your Second Life event or treat it as an afterthought. Virtual world events are valuable to, and attended by, people from  all over the world. You can expand your reach quickly and exponentially when you hold a virtual world event.

Have you organized real world/virtual world events? What has worked for you? What hasn’t?

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