Dr. Neil Hair

On Thursday I simulcasted Saunders first conference presentation to delegates in the UK from within SecondLife and live over an adobe connect meeting. It went extremely well thanks to the planning of my colleagues at Henley. The topic of my presentation to the 3rd annual conference on customer management was exploring current business models in SecondLife. I presented an overview of the virtual world (including a live tour of RIT's own island), presented my findings on business models in B2C, B2B and not for profit sectors, and outlined what I believe to be, the future of virtual worlds as they relate to commercialization. I particularly enjoyed the live Q&A session where I could see and interact with delegates and organizers alike. It proved to me once and for all the viability of electronic media in being able to deliver presentations and continue to engage the audience even if they're 3600 miles away and 5 hours ahead of EST! SecondLife is a wonderful tool for extending digital reach. Delegates in the UK saw a live presentation on the big screen and a virtual tour of SecondLife on another. I had expected more technical difficulties than actually arose, one of which was my avatar auto logging out of the virtual world for inactivity during the first five minutes of my presentation! I'm looking forward to updating my class materials to reflect my research in this space and those registered for my internet marketing classes at graduate and undergraduate levels in the Winter of 08 will benefit first.