IBM Creates Software for Holding Face-to-Face Meetings in Virtual Worlds

Description

IBM Creates Software for Holding Face-to-Face Meetings in Virtual Worlds

IBM is making it easier for widely dispersed businesspeople to interact and collaborate without the time and expense of in-person meetings.

What is making all this possible is the marriage between "virtual world" Web sites, and "unified communications and collaboration tools" -- technology that links such things as voicemail, audible chat, and instant messaging. Virtual worlds are interactive, immersive Web sites with three-dimensional graphics. There, people are represented by versions of themselves, called avatars. With origins in multi-player gaming sites, virtual worlds re-create the social and visual dynamics and cues of human interaction, and are now increasingly used in business settings.

IBM is now allowing selected clients test Sametime 3D, a new tool which will let business colleagues not only exchange instant messages and chat verbally, but also share presentations and ideas in private, prefabricated, reusable meeting spaces located in a variety of virtual worlds. These spaces will allow participants to, literally, throw ideas on the wall during a meeting to "see what sticks," and to vote on, organize, and save the most promising proposals. Avatars can make presentations to one another, socialize, debate, or, literally, examine ideas and 3D objects from all angles.

IBM's new software enables groups based in different locations to meet on a regular, periodic or impromptu basis in these virtual worlds. With this new software tool, IBM is providing several reusable meeting spaces, including a theater-style amphitheatre, a boardroom and a collaboration space which can each be used for impromptu or scheduled brainstorming sessions, status updates, town hall-style meetings, rehearsals, training classes, and more.

"This project is part of IBM's ongoing work to redefine the nature of online meetings," said Colin Parris, IBM's Vice President for Industry Solutions and Emerging Business. "The work that ...

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