Virtual business, for real?

It's cheaper to meet in Second Life than in a ballroom

Virtual reality simulations can help businesses and others meet or plan projects online at low cost.

You don't need a plane, train, or automobile to attend a board meeting in the metaverse.

Instead, you can send a digital surrogate - wearing a Star Fleet uniform, if you like - to a conference in Second Life, or in any of the other virtual worlds inhabited by the three-dimensional animated beings called avatars.

That's the new pitch virtual-worlds advocates like Erica Driver are making to recession-rattled business leaders.

It's cheaper to meet on a Second Life island than in a ballroom, they say, and easier to make new contacts amid virtual sculptures in a Second Life gallery than over boxed lunches at offsite meetings.

You can make your own buildings and signs in Second Life or rent space in the local currency, for a fraction of the cost of the real thing.

Driver is so convinced of the value of virtual worlds as business tools that she left her consulting job at Forrester Research in Cambridge in June to focus exclusively on what she calls the Immersive Internet.

It, she said, includes not only 3D virtual worlds but 3D simulators and games designed specifically to promote brands and messages, to recruit and train employees, and to create product concepts and prototypes.

"One of the values of each of these technologies is that it offers an increased level of engagement" in an activity, said Driver, who cofounded an Immersive Internet advisory firm, ThinkBalm, with her husband, Sam Driver, in Little Compton, R.I.

The kind of immersion and engagement Erica Driver is talking about made planning Library Park in Allston last summer a model for more inclusive urban design projects, by embracing residents who are neither engineers nor architects.

Hub2 (www.hub2.org) was a joint project of Emerson College, Harvard University, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

"Through their avatars, people were able to participate in a virtual charette," said Eric Gordon, Hub2's codirector and an assistant professor in new media at Emerson.

In workshops with Hub2 organizers, and on their own during the summer, more than 100 Allston residents gathered in one place with laptops provided by Hub2. From there, they walked their avatars through a Second Life simulation of the Library Park area along Harvard Street.

"In the workshops, someone might say, 'I'd like to see a fountain there,' " Gordon said. "And we could place one right there, in real time."

Allston residents in Second Life also planted flags with their ideas (a bench here, a bike rack there), which could be read and discussed by other participants.

Another example of academia's faith in virtual worlds is the University of Florida's announcement last month that it will sink $1.25 million of federal grant money into a Second Life simulator to train diplomats and military envoys.

Participants in the school's Second China Project simulation will be able to stroll through a virtual Chinese city, shop for gifts for their hosts, and practice the language with virtual cab drivers.

But academics may be quicker to embrace virtual worlds - and to put up with the likes of "griefers" (a Second Life term that basically means rude and destructive avatars) - than business executives are.

One reason is that "educators are fundamentally collaborators to begin with," said John Lester, Boston operations director for Linden Lab, the company that created Second Life.

Academics also have the time to absorb what Lester called "the bumps and waves" that come with emerging technologies. Second Life is known for its instability as well as for the creativity and dedication of some of its residents. System crashes and log-in difficulties are common.

Business and IT department heads can be spoilsports, too, as were those who tried to stamp out the earliest users of AOL Instant Messenger and Web browsers.

"It's the clash of work and the video games concept. A lot of these worlds are cartoony," Driver said, referring to the wildly imaginative (and not always safe-for-work) avatars that players create for themselves.

"Business leaders often say, 'This is not a work tool; get it out of here,' " Driver said of virtual worlds. Still, a critical mass of virtual-world uses inside companies could change that.

"If you start building something and it is gaining in value, the time will come when IT has to support it," Driver said.

New tools developed for Second Life - including an instant messaging client that works both "in world" and in the real world - and open-source 3D virtual worlds platforms are likely to lead to better opportunities for business collaborations.

Also, IBM is integrating its IM software for business, Sametime, with Second Life and several other emerging platforms. That way, designers will be able to pull 3D prototypes and documents out of real-world applications into a virtual world, where they can discuss business securely.

Even Hub2's Gordon, while acknowledging the growing pains, believes Second Life is solid enough for projects such as Hub2. Second Life proved to be "remarkably stable" throughout the project, he said.

Gordon said he is more worried about getting money for projects, to build upon the success of Hub2. Even virtual worlds, for all of their savings potential, come with their own costs, such as the price of development and design of new sims.

And, he noted, "It's a hard time to get money for anything."