Virtual Training World Out-Of-The-Box

Now that I am back on homeground after a whirlwind trip to the 3D event in Washington, I have had a chance to reflect on some of the highlights. One of the biggest eye openers for me was discovering Qwaq. Whats Qwaq you say? Well, in my view one of the biggest breakthroughs in making Virtual Worlds accessible to a wider training audience. Let me explain. If you want to use a Virtual World for training there is normally a stepwise process to conceptualize, develop and programme the 3D models for your buildings and rooms, reformat and import the required media objects, train new users on customizing their avatars and of course train people on how to navigate the new environment and manipulate their avatars. These are just some of the steps. Some virtual worlds like Protosphere and Olive come with ready-made classrooms and structures for you to customize. However, with for example Second Life there is a lot of work to buy the island, and create the setting you want for your training. All well and good if you have the time, money and expertise. With Qwaq, its all there out-of-the-box and with a price tag that, compared to some of the bigger players, won't break the bank to get a taste of a virtual world environment. Thats why I am excited. I have been using Qwaq for only a short time but believe it offers so many built in features and functionality, I really question going elsewhere. With (VOIP) Voice Over IP, document drag and drop from your desktop, inworld multi-editing (even of PowerPoint, Word, etc.), pre-built avatars, a small application easy to download and setup, choice of over 7 ready-made rooms and environments with a large collection of furniture, posters, panels, etc. you simply pop and resize into your world, Qwaq is a great first-entry Virtual Training Centre. No additional progamming required.

We are only at the start of really understanding how Virtual Worlds can be used for training. No-ones knows where this is heading and how we can fully benefit from using these technologies to enhance the learning experience. At the same time, the virtual world industry as a whole is still in the early innovation phase so there is no gold standard yet available that you can simply follow. What we can do, however, is to pilot these tools with the new learners coming into our organizations who are expecting more of a gaming/simulation knowledge environment. We need to be prepared to take risks and fail occasionally if we are to begin to leverage this new technology. I think Qwaq allows us to test the waters of Virtual Worlds and open our eyes to new fresh training opportunties and collaboration scenarios. If we all agree, there is no Internet-ready virtual world built yet with the power, graphics and immersive capability of an advanced x-box, PS3 or wii game yet, we can at least learn from what platforms are out there today and fine-tune our training for the next generation of learners.

3DTLC Some Highlights

What will virtual worlds look like in 5 years? 1. More consolidation 2. We will be immersed in the 3D environment not looking at a screen. 3. Better integration with a browser 4. Better AI using online Bots 5. Augmented Reality takes over from Virtual Worlds and 6. Integration of physical and virtual worlds. Virtual Worlds Roadmap Great initiative. By working on a Wiki with multiple experts in the field they hope to plan out the key steps and what essentially needs to be done to create a better, more commercially acceptable virtual world that meets our needs and that has much better interoperability with other systems. How BP Used 3D World Protosphere for Training? Used initially for graduade meetings to build networks. In the past they spent over USD 5m on a physicial event. This was cancelled so they looked for an alternative. Critical was getting senior executives running sessions in the 3D world. It was a big success and now that the world is built it is being used by many other departments. Key is not to use too many powerpoint slides but use images and talk about them. Critical to make it work was to setup a support team to manage the technology, make sure everyone had headsets, look after executives, etc. Joe Little the CTO from BP commented that technology was not the main concern but changing behaviour and influencing political groups is key. As CTO he made sure the technical issues like firewall configurations were handles well in advance. They host externally. Disability Support Groups Person with a disability talking in 2nd life about her peer support group. Very impression on how virtual worlds allow people to connect even with disabilities. Virtual Police Man now on talking about a volunteer virtual police force in a 3D world. Crimes: stalking,, flaming, damaging property. Scary stuff. They use virtual worlds to train virtual cops. They show them how to approach and eject people violating the rules of the world.

3DTLC Day 2 - What are 3D Worlds Used For?

How immersive technologies are solving business problems. Australian from SAP first up. 82,000 customers. Make SAP (interface) more approachable and bridge digital gap between new associates coming into the company who expect a very different working environment. Last harnessing the power of human networks. Used sensor networks and mirrored worlds - real to virtual. Could they do that with an SAP system. If something breaks they could use the SAP virtual world to train how to fix the real world. Great example using a model doll house and building the same in a virtual space. The real house was filled with sensors so if something changes such as a light goes out, then the virtual model identifies where this changes lies and you can visualize the impact on your screen. Chevron up next: 3D and a Virtual Refinery. Funny guy from New Zealand. Working smarter. Uses virtual objects mapped with real data to check relaibility in the virtual world, use for training, better and faster decision making, knowledge retention and knowledge management. Now up J&J Jennifer from Global Recruiting. Had dinner with her last night. They use Protosphere. Their problem: keeping people - employee retention is important. You lose 200K if someone walks out the door. Use for onboarding using a wiki for basic policies, matches new hires to buddies former MBAs (not mentors), orientation, senior mangers present in 3D environment on key topics and link to the social network for other documents, makes managers accessible, target to MBA associates, show articles viewed by their senior managers, small learning chunks. They can pick how they want to be onboarded. Now up Sun: ooops now Oracle. A Corp. Librarian. Exciting;-) Biggest issue: distributed workforce, get people more engaged, travel savings, engaging, socialization. Sees it as the future of learning. Use Wonderland (free open source). Did a program for new hire interns. Team building during 3D one and half sessions. They would not leave they loved it so much. Also used 3D for replicating a datacentre for training. Plus used for large conferences e.g. 800 people listening to executives throughout a day. This was cool. You can drag and drop a PDF or Flickr image into Wonderland. Powerful. Now floor is open to questions. J&J very focussed on reviewing data and finding out if a 3D world made an imapct compared to traditional methods. Jennifer and other Pharma are part of a regular group that meet regularly in second life to explore the potential of these worlds. Cost of building a virtual world? No-one wanted to say openly. But appears to be a major investment if you want to get serious. Project timleines and resources? Chevron: 16 to 18 months to build the Refinery with internal and external folks. Rapidly growing team. In Sun, requirements expand like crazy once word gets out. J&J grew usage by 200% after launch. People keep coming now to them. How did J&J get there? Lots of communication, newsletters, pounding the pavement, hot blogs. Sun do audio and video podcasts to get the word out. Chevron try and stand out by being different, e.g. M&Ms printed with his 3D RAVE brand. What can it do sompared to other tools? J&J believe its about being right here right now (no other tool gives us such an immersive environment), Sun say its really a major step up from a TC or web conference - more collaborative and very exciting. Chevron say in the virtual world he can build 3D models and attach complex data which would be nearly impossible in the real world. With SAP, the immense savings in using it for online conferences is making it unique - an effective tool in reaching more people.

Are we afraid to fail?

Strong comments from Visual Purple on launching visual worlds. We are afraid to fail and will keep churning out standard e-learning. From a career limiting aspect we do not want to take the risk. We are also faced with the IT folks who always says no. So it is easy to keep writing checks for safe projects. Virtual Worlds are new and scare people. Maybe the current economic climate is not appropriate for this level of risk. The other question is: what can we use them for? The answer is not always clear. When compared to the price - who wouldn't be scared? But lets face it we we never took risks we would never progress or grow. There would be no innovation. R&D would die. Carpe Diem.

3DTLC April 20 Afternoon Update 2

Duke are leading a panel around designing for virtual worlds. First demo was a meeting in 2nd Life. The presenter can show everything from their viewpoint using a special command. So all participants screen views can be manipulated. Interesting but a lot of detail for a 2nd life presentation. Hey wait, he just projected a live feed from his webcam to a 3D screen in the 2nd life world. Now Visual Purple are on stage. See their simulaton demo on their website to get an idea of their design ability. Looked impressive. Next a presenter talked about his experiences: it snot about technology its about behaviour, its not about being there, its doing. Its not about the theory but the gaming - it makes you learn and the triumph of winning. Look at the physics - put someone scared of heights into a simulation. Its about the rewards, ownership and distribution.

3DTLC Tweeting

I have never seen such tweeting, blogging, yamming, emailing, sms'ing direct and live from a conference in all my life. Its crazy. Over 10-20 questions are being posted live in parallel with all presentations to Twitter using the private channel #3DTLC hash tag which you can monitor in realtime using tools for example like Tweetdeck. The presenter checks every few minutes who has posted questions and answers 3-4 before moving to the next section. This is social media in action. Now to bring it to the classroom?

3DTLC April 20 Afternoon Update

Session on applying 3D to help people learn. Saw a study that positively showed learners learned and retained as much as their ILT counterparts. Must get access to the full presentation. Viewed demos on using simulations for training officers on Canadian Border Controls. Obviously, safer than the real thing. Liked the next bit a lot: Company using Unisfair (virtual event platform - more 2D than 3D) as a stage one to get people used to a virtual world. Live for up for 3 months and with 600 people. They found that people were scared of virtual worlds so Unisfair was the experiment to try it out and get people used to such a platform. Stage 2 (once people are used to a virtual world) will be using Protosphere for training simulations. Used for onboarding new MBAs in J&J. Then stage 3...is an island on Second Life used for Diversity and Inclusion (simulations). This is the Future Work Island on Second Life. Check it out video. Could we use such an environment for D&I? The demo I saw was very impressive. Next saw the use of virtual worlds for road safety simulations, emergency crews, clearing roads, dealing with accidents...

3DTLC April 20 Morning Update

Panel discussion around trends. Interesting comments from Gartner around challenges such as IT access (getting worlds behind a company firewall is a tough task), speed (can be slow and clumsy), and why should companies who have not yet mastered web conferencing can suddenly jump to virtual worlds. They urge baby steps. Lets walk first. Happy to see Gartner view browser-based virtual worlds as a growing trend. So where are we on the maturity curve? One speaker says early innovative phase. Theres a long way to go.

New Hire e-Support

Very impressive site from Sun for supporting their new hires at Join The Network New Hire Experience. From easy to navigate buttons Accelerate - Participate - Learn - Explore and Play, its well laid out and engaging enough to spend time online gaining insights into the company culture. I really liked the New Hire Quick Start Guide: and their Checklist in PDF format on the most important items to tick on joining the company with valuable links. Under the Play section they had a Flash game that puts you in the shoes of a Super Hero where you learn about the company's mission, vision and strategy. Very entertaining. There are blogs, including their famous CEO, wikis and other social network features. You are even encouraged to setup your own blog right away and create your own social network site! There are links mainly pointing to Intranet pages that list useful e-learning and other sources of internal knowledge. All in all, very impressive.

Augmented Reality for Training

Imagine pointing your cell phone camera to your hand and getting additional overlaid images or information showing up on the same viewing screen. What would it do for training? What if your phone could automatically recognize parts of the body. What if you could point your phone camera at a part of the body and view an overlaid image of what is under the skin showing veins or organs. What if it could show up shading which indicates areas that could be affected by a disease or show how a drug could interact with certain organs and demonstrate mode of action. This is augmented reality and it is already here. Where is the most efficient area of the body to administer an injection of your new product? What would this do for Sales Rep Training and in general physician detailing? Check this out: doseofdigital.

3D Training Event

My bags are packed for the 3D Training, Learning and Collaboration event in Washington next week. Hopefully, I will be reporting back some interesting and exciting developments that we can apply in the learning area. In particular, I need to find a cool solution that is accessible on our existing company PCs and does not require tweaking and configuring of our network or application suite settings. A tall order when most virtual worlds present a potential security risk with their connection protocols. Regardless, I remain positive that an appropriate solution can be identified (that won't break the bank). In this age of social networks, I also need to ensure we include some of these collaboration features and maybe more importantly, it needs to be radically different, and cutting edge. We all love a challenge ;-)

Web Walkthroughs Captured as Mini-Movies

I've been looking around for a tool that allows me to capture short movies of web walkthroughs for a while now. I could fork out some bucks and go to the trouble of installing new software, etc. but I was hoping I could find something free and web 2.0 ish which does the job. Imagine my delight to stumble across Screentoaster which is not only free and works perfectly, but it requires no download. It lives on the web - your company network adminstrator will thank you for one less application to worry about. You just go to the website and press RECORD. It could not be more simple. You can add audio, and subtitles, and even connect a webcam and record a movie within a movie. The finished masterwork can be saved as a .mov, or Flash file or uploaded there and then to YouTube. Not sure how stable the product is or the degree of support. But, hey its free, so who cares.