How BP improved collaboration while cutting costs with a ProtoSphere virtual world

We've shared with you case studies covering two of our life sciences clients. Today, we have one of our energy clients, BP, on the record.

BP usually holds an annual three-day conference in London to mark the culmination of its Graduate Induction program. Graduates network with BP executives and get fully indoctrinated into BP's corporate culture and values.

But the company took a completely different approach for its most recent conference. BP used ProtoSphere to create an immersive learning and collaboration environment for its graduates. I think you'll find the project and results to be very compelling. BP certainly did. It calculated savings of $3.7 million compared to producing a physical event.

That's just one major benefit the company realized. You can read about the rest, as well as BP's complete virtual world deployment story, below. We also have a fancy PDF coming shortly, which we welcome you to share with colleagues.

Webinar: Enterprise Learning and Collaboration in 3D Virtual Worlds, with Tony O'Driscoll and Karl Kapp

The good Drs. Tony O'Driscoll and Karl Kapp will be gracing computer screens on Tues., Feb. 9, when they hold a free webinar about 3-D environments, virtual worlds, and immersive learning spaces. The webinar, "Enterprise Learning and Collaboration in 3D Virtual Worlds," will cover key concepts from Tony and Karl's new book," "Learning in 3D." They'll discuss:

• The value of social learning for organizations.
• The impact of virtual immersive environments on society, business, and learning.
• How to integrate existing training and business into productive 3-D virtual work environments.
• 3-D learning experience design principles and sensibilities.

The webinar will be a great opportunity to learn how 3-D virtual worlds can (and should) be used for enterprise learning and teaming. You'll also have a chance to bend Tony's and Karl's ears with any questions you might have.

The webinar kicks off tomorrow, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. EST. For more information and to register, visit the invitation page.

ProtoSphere 1.4 Feature Peek: Presentation Boards let you display and share content on the fly

Our engineers have been hard at work on ProtoSphere 1.4, and have made some improvements to the dynamic billboards feature we showed you a couple months ago. It's evolved into Presentation Boards. They appear throughout the ProtoSphere environment on any surface, including walls, whiteboards, easels, screens, etc., and provide the ability to display and share content to anyone that enters those spaces.

But now we've created two types, Single-Slide and Multi-Slide Presentation Boards. Single-Slide Presentation Boards let you display image files and text. Supported image formats include .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .tif, .tiff, .png, .bmp, .tga, and .dds. You can also add text to the surfaces using the editor function. These surfaces are useful for agendas, announcements, note-taking, navigation signage, or other types of branding and personalization.

Multi-Slide Presentation Boards serve the same purpose, but they have the added benefit of being able to support multiple slides of content. So you can present PowerPoint slideshows (.ppt and .pptx) right in your ProtoSphere environment.

I've put together a video to demonstrate the Presentation Boards below:

Cisco's pipe dream: mainstream enterprise adoption of telepresence

I've written before about why Cisco's push to bring video to the desktop won't achieve critical mass in the enterprise. While telepresence might be justified as an investment for large conference rooms in global enterprises, it fails to address major cost and complexity problems and human factors issues that have historically prevented large-scale video deployments from achieving mainstream adoption.

Joel Stein reminded me of this in a recent Time Magazine article he wrote. He covered problems surrounding Skype and video presence, saying, " ... Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: We pay close attention while we're talking and zone out while you are."

That's just one of several funny, yet compelling comments Stein makes in a great op-ed column that, I think, is a must read for anyone interested in the human factors that drive communication and collaboration.

You can easily say the same of Cisco's WebEx, Microsoft's Live Meeting, and other screen- and app-share tools. How many times have you been on a WebEx or similar conference and put the phone on mute, checked e-mail, surfed the Web, took a mobile phone call, or walked away from your desk?

The fact of the matter is, we don't want to do video all the time. Cisco's pursuing a pipe dream, just like AT&T before them. The first video phones were shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair. They're still not mainstream. And they never will be.

SAIC's acquisition of Forterra: latest step in industry consolidation

You probably heard the news that Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) bought Forterra Systems, maker of the OLIVE virtual world. We shared our thoughts on Forterra's unfortunate demise back in December, when rumors were swirling about the company shedding 60 percent of its workforce.

Now it's official. Forterra is no more. My take is this was probably in a fire sale, since terms of the purchase were not disclosed. It's likely SAIC was attracted to Forterra's government simulation business, which is where the company was strongest.

The acquisition might also have been mission critical to some government contract SAIC was running to purchase the technology. (i.e., Some government organization with a mission critical commitment to Forterra technology got weak knees when they realized the company was caving.)

Twelve Forterra staffers joined SAIC. I interpret this to mean they'll continue some development focused around government projects/simulations. If they were merely after the core technology, they wouldn't have needed twelve bodies.

Ultimately, this deal is in line with my conviction that the virtual worlds market will consolidate along four lines:

• Collaboration products and services for business
• Training and learning services for education
• Simulation products and services for government
• Consumer entertainment and gaming products

Where do we fall? In general, bullet No. 1: collaboration products and services for business. As is pretty clear from what we write about here on our blog, we're focusing on addressing the primary pain points our customers are expressing to us. Those largely surround business applications such as global scientific research, data visualization and workflow collaborations within product development, marketing, sales, and overall business process optimization.

Thanks to Technically Philly for covering LIFE SCIENCES 2010

Wanted to thank the fellas of Technically Philly for covering our LIFE SCIENCES 2010 event! They report on how recent layoffs in the pharmaceutical industry are driving companies to look at virtual worlds as a way to collaborate more cost effectively. Click over for their take.

FutureWork Institute's Margaret Regan on why 3-D virtual worlds are the future of workforce diversity and inclusion

Many HR departments have striven to foster work/life balance, increase workplace diversity, and develop ways all employees can make productive contributions to the company, also called "inclusion." But reduced staff and slashed budgets are making these goals increasingly challenging to achieve.

FutureWork Institute, however, is taking a new approach to helping companies create flexible, inclusive workplaces. The organization consults to major global companies in the areas of diversity and work/life assignments. And lately, President and CEO Margaret Regan is championing 3-D virtual worlds as the future of diversity, inclusion, learning, and collaboration.

We interviewed her to learn more, and you can listen to the podcast above. Margaret gives us her take on why 3-D is better than 2-D for fostering workplace diversity and inclusion:

"Without a doubt, we have found that there's a different kind of learning that occurs in the 3-D world," she says. "You know you're at your desk or at home, but you actually feel like you are in the virtual world and the learning is more immediate ... learning seems to be retained better."

Margaret also talks about the Virtual Diversity and Inclusion Networking Event she held, which covered the use of ProtoSphere, Unisfair, and Second Life for large-scale meetings and global conferences.

And if you're an early adopter of 3-D virtual worlds and trying to get C-suite buy-in, Margaret has some advice. She shares what she says to people who believe 3-D virtual worlds are just for playing games, and are afraid the technology has a steep learning curve.

Hit play for the scoop.