Wrap-up from the “Commercial Applications of Virtual Worlds” session
You will see a lot of coverage of State of Play on other blogs, like the Terra Nova blog. However, I’ll be posting some of my thoughts and observations over the next few days. My thoughts will be brief, just noting some of the things that stood out to me, and paraphrasing. I apologize in advance if I misinterpret anyone’s comments here. Here are some thoughts from day 4, Wednesday, August 22, 2007.
I was lucky to have a chance to lead a session on Wednesday afternoon. The theme of the session was “Commercial Applications of Virtual Worlds”. It was interesting to be “moderating” a discussion that did not have any panelists. So, all the attendees became de facto panel members! I tried to keep the session interactive and moving by basically just passing around the microphone. It was great to have a group in there with some strong opinions, and differing opinions. We heard some great views on why some people think that closed, branded worlds are not a good solution for companies, and counter-opinions supporting them.
Above all, the highlight of the discussion for me was the analysis of the 3 points put forward earlier in the conference about the commercial possibilities in virtual worlds:
- Collaboration tools
- A new sales channel
- A brand promotion tool
Most of the audience felt that collaboration tools and brand promotion are the only really viable approaches. We did get to hear about a particularly innovative method that a very large consumer electronics company is using for doing interactive design in cooperation with their customers. That was truly innovative and really interesting.
By the way, if anyone reading this blog attended the session, please add your notes below in the comments. As I was leading the session, I did not get a chance to take notes myself. Oh, and if you have photos from the session, please send them to me!
