Could virtual reality events mean the end of business travel as we know it? Jenny Southan reports on the brave new world
Technophobes beware – the future is upon us. It’s time to bring to life that alter-ego you always sensed lurking in the depths of your imagination, create your virtual business card and perfect your keyboard skills, because the next conference you are invited to may well be in cyberspace.
Since the emergence in 2003 of Linden Lab’s Second Life – a 3D parallel realm that has its own currency with a real-world value and is populated with the more attractive equivalents of its real-world human counterparts – numerous other virtual platforms have popped up. These include Teleplace, Protonmedia’s Protosphere, Activeworlds and SAIC’s Olive (Online Interactive Virtual Environment).
And while Second Life was initially a playground for computer geeks and gamers, the technology is now becoming more accessible, particularly since its application to enable business and communication.
In April 2008, Second Life unveiled a virtual-world convention and learning centre called Virtualis, which features a grand ballroom, exhibition hall, meeting rooms and event space for everything from virtual teambuilding to seminars, complete with technology to stream real multimedia presentations. The behind-the-scenes team of animators and designers can tailor experiences to suit your purposes – right down to breakout sessions that entail being teleported to the roof of a building for some hang-gliding. (If you find this hard to comprehend, search for “Trend Micro meeting” on You Tube.)
Dan Parks, founder of Virtualis Centre and president and creative director of meetings organiser Corporate Planners Unlimited, says: “Second Life is the Kobe beef of virtual worlds – it’s the most robust, the most sophisticated, and the most high-end. At Virtualis we specialise in ‘wow’ experiences. There are so many things that you have to see with your own eyes – anything your mind can imagine, I can create very quickly and inexpensively.”
To take part in a 3D virtual event you need to have an avatar – the Virtualis events team can do this for you so all you need to do is log in at the scheduled time. Parks says: “Usually your speakers, your CEOs and top management will opt to have a more customised avatar, but for the rest of the employees, we just base it on their real-life hair style and colour, ethnicity and whether they are male or female.”
If, for example, you don’t have much hair in the physical world, there is always the option of going for a more aesthetically pleasing version of yourself. “The wonderful thing about Second Life is that everyone is beautiful,” says Parks, who happily admits that while his avatar is six-foot five with a six-pack and the hair of Rod Stewart in his prime, in the real world he is five-foot six with a receding hairline and “a very healthy one-pack”.
If all this smacks more of playing games than doing serious work, an alternative might be simpler 2D platforms such as Unisfair, Inxpo and On24, which don’t rely on virtual doppelgangers. Joerg Rathenberg, vice-president of marketing at Unisfair, says: “We provide you with an illusion of a space by providing beautiful pictures of surroundings that are 3D-looking, but you cannot navigate through the body of an avatar.
“All you do is click on a button when you want to go somewhere and then a door will open and you will be in a different room. The only representation of yourself is your virtual business card, which has your picture, phone number and interests on if you choose to publish them.
“Attached to that is your virtual briefcase, inside which you can load everything you find while exploring – for example, all the contacts that you make, Powerpoints of sessions that you saw, data sheets that you download and videos that you watch.”
Businesses can also customise their virtual environments. Rathenberg says: “We have one client with a Star Wars theme, while another – a huge high-tech company in Silicon Valley – did an internal sales kick-off with a beach theme, so there were waves in the background, little palapa huts as meeting rooms and all the speakers dressed in Hawaiian shirts. But most of our companies choose the business setting, which you can do very easily – just take a snapshot out of the window of your headquarters and make that your background.”
All of this might sound rather unnerving, especially since a recent businesstraveller.com poll revealed that only about 8 per cent of respondents had ever taken part in a virtual reality trade fair or event, while close to 37 per cent said they didn’t even know what one was. But if a report published last year by Market Research Media (marketresearchmedia.com) is anything to go by – it stated that the virtual conference market was anticipated to generate US$18.6 billion by 2015 – this is an area that will be increasingly hard to ignore.
Well-known brands that have hosted anything from roadshows, seminars and training sessions to presentations, conferences and trade fairs in the virtual realm include the likes of IBM, Cisco, Novartis, Dell, the Wall Street Journal, BP, Sears, Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, Yahoo, Pepsico, Motorola and Intel. And thanks to interest from firms such as these, San Francisco-based On24 says demand on its site has gone up to 20,000 webcasts and 400 virtual events, while industry analysts claim overall demand has increased 100 per cent over the last two years.
A primary reason why virtual reality is becoming more widespread has probably been the recession, which forced companies to slash travel budgets and look at ways to save money. Denise Persson, On24’s chief marketing officer and vice-president of marketing and business development, says: “The cost of a virtual event compared with a physical one is close to 90 per cent less.”
Another reason is that the technology has become more user-friendly and, as a result, has become a viable way to extend the reach of a company, especially in a global economy, where companies have offices all over the world. “Looking at all the events we have hosted, I would say you roughly double the amount of people you get physically,” Rathenberg says. But, reassuringly for the business traveller, experts say virtual events will never take over from real-life ones – instead, they are being used to complement them. “You can do a hybrid event so, instead of inviting 5,000 people to New York, you can have a 500-person session in North Dakota where you live, then maybe reach out to another 10,000 people via the internet,” he explains.
Bear in mind that large-scale virtual get-togethers are possible only on the simpler 2D web-based platforms, which don’t require downloads or feature avatars or complex 3D environments. Rathenberg says: “We have had events with 20,000 people but Second Life can’t do that.” Parks adds: “Virtualis is best-suited to groups of ten to 220, maximum.”
While 2D platforms might be considered Second Life’s “boring” cousin, what users will generally be guaranteed is the ability to interact with speakers and fellow attendees via means such as chat boxes, Skype, video-conferencing, real-time polls, questionnaires and social media. On24’s Persson says: “The most popular location in a virtual event is the auditorium, in which you view a presentation. All of this is done in real time but some conferences can be pre-recorded.
“When you enter, a screen appears on your monitor and then the presentation starts via video – it could be live or recorded, or slides. And everyone effectively has a front-row seat.” But she stresses: “You can’t just replicate what you experience in the physical world. People go to a virtual event for the content – that is number one.”
Fans of the simpler web-based sites may argue that the free will avatars have to engage with the environment means Second Life is too unpredictable to host events. Rathenberg says: “It is truly a second world and that means it is wild, it is unpoliced, there is a lot of sex going on, and people do whatever they want. That is not a safe place for our customers. We can’t have a naked guy fly past the keynote speaker, can we?”
But, as Parks points out, Second Life’s Virtualis is designed to combat this. “You can only get in if you are a group holding an event or if you would like to come in and take a tour,” he says. So nude gatecrashers shouldn’t be a problem.
But how likely is it that people will concentrate during a virtual event, given how easy it would be to pull up a spreadsheet and start working on something else? Paul Tilstone, chief executive of the Institute of Travel and Meetings (ITM), took part in a Second Life session and concluded that, against his expectations, such methods could actually be better at engaging people providing presentations were no longer than 20 minutes. This is because sites often feature gimmicks such as pop-up images that you have to click on to prove you are paying attention.
What’s more, Tilstone says: “The amount of times I have been at an event and seen people in the audience with their heads down, looking at their Blackberries, shows you that even during live events, people dip in and out.”
What you won’t get with a virtual session is the branded mugs, T-shirts and USB sticks you would normally pick up in an exhibition hall – or, more important, the ability to meet people face-to-face. “You cannot look someone in the eye, shake their hand and have a beer in the bar,” Rathenberg says. Still, that might be a small price to pay for anyone who has spent a day tramping around a trade fair, getting caught talking to time-wasters, and waking up in the morning not only with a hangover but a suitcase full of useless memorabilia.
So how long will it be before we are all masters of the metaverse? “People’s mindsets have to change – it’s a new trend but everybody who has a web browser is sooner or later going to take part in a virtual event,” Rathenberg says.
Persson gives the perspective from her side of the Atlantic: “I think we can draw parallels with what happened with web-conferencing ten years ago, when Europe was a little bit slower [than the US] in adopting the technology. In the next 12 months Europe will see some pretty significant increases – we are certainly seeing it our side.”
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