I am much more focused today on what people are saying at the Virtual Worlds 2007 Conference and taking few notes and writing mostly from memory and what has stuck with me. Right now I'm listening to Virtual Worlds as Interactive Television.
Virtual Worlds as Interactive Television session
With the advent of virtual worlds networks, individual channels and individual shows can now create interactive versions of their franchises and engage fans directly, immersing them into the environment. Find out how to successfully extend a television brand, including measuring audience participation and extending the advertising business model.
- Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company
- Additional Speakers to be announced
Right now there's not that many people in the Virtual Worlds but there's a lot of Buzz and Suits at this conference - they're not looking at us - but the next 10 or 20 million people who will come onto Virtual Worlds. People here believe it will happen.
The interface to Virtual World is still too cumbersome for many people to use and, as a result, is a barrier to entry - but there's a lot of work that is being done to try to remedy that. It's also necessary - when your doing customer service - to staff your virtual enterprise and that's not an always an easy task.
It needs to get much easier to import data into Virtual Worlds (ie: 3D Studio Max, AutoCad, painting, etc) and a power scripting language. Also Video with DRM is missing from Virtual Worlds.
You need to be able virtual worlds and link them together and allow how much people can bring with them between worlds. And Social Networks are not really facilitated yet and they need to be.
Sibley also talked about focusing more on the audience in the Virtual World than the Virtual World it self - no one World will have everything you want - it's better to figure out the audience you want to reach and then build on top of that than trying to draw them all to one specific World.
Another speaker from IBM came up and spoke about how Mobile Devices are your Avatar in Real Life. Conference with Virtual Worlds PC's and Mobile will happen and mobile can be a remote control for your Avatar.
Real Life + Virtual Life = Interactive Life
Mobile Devices need to be treated differently due to performance issues - copying stuff from PC's to Mobile might not work that well and new thinking is needed here.
Questions: When does Virtual Worlds become a Television Phenomenon? Forget about the PC, when can I do it directly from the TV (Cable/Phone Industry). Do people of "color" want to consume Virtual Media more than anyone else?
Answer: Don't think of Virtual Worlds as a Broadcast Platform - what your looking at is a 2 way communication. The TV Platform does not have 2 way, by default. In the Social Network sites you learn to communicate with others while in the 3D Virtual Wolds you learn to interact and do the whole thing.
