Restoring the Meaning of Virtual Collaboration

by Patti Anklam

January 29, 2008 at 9:20 am · Filed under Collaboration, Distributed Work, Virtual Environments

Bill Ives posted about Virtual Environments for Business: Unisfair a few days ago, commenting on the emergence of a new style of trade show. I have myself recently been delighted about MPK20, Sun’s Virtual Workspace, which I read about first in a CIO.COM article.

“MPK” is Sun Microsystems designation for the buildings on its Menlo Park campus. There are 19 buildings of brick and mortar. MPK20 is the building where the virtual teams meet to collaborate, to bump into colleagues serendipitously, and to have meetings. Project Wonderland, as it is called, offers a really special glimpse into what is possible in the development of applications that support human interaction in a virtual space.

Demos guided by Nicole Yankelovich include a walkthrough of the the “Virtual Workspace” that illustrates a virtual team room, offices, a meeting room, and a relaxation space. What impressed me the most was the way in which the workspace is designed to enable people to collaborate on content. I captured a screen from the video file that shows Nicole and a colleague editing a Powerpoint presentation in virtual space.

We have long been used to the terms “virtual team” and “virtual collaboration” to mean the work of people who do not happen to be sitting together even though (to my mind) they are really collaborating. Seeing Nicole and Joe collaborate in a truly virtual environment indicates that perhaps the term virtual, as we have been using it, was merely an intimation of the office of the future.

Share:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Permalink

RELATED POSTS

-Requirements for Software for the Virtual Office
-Unisfair Upgrades Its Virtual Events and Environments for Businesses
-Leveraging the Virtual Workspace During a Recession
-Beyond Web 2.0
-From Secretaries to Virtual Assistants to … Social Media Assistants?

2 Comments »

[...] Restoring the Meaning of Virtual Collaboration More useful than second life (tags: virtual collaboration @work second_life secondlife) [...]

Patti, I agree about Sun’s virtual efforts. What they’re doing strikes me as quite different and somewhat ahead of what others are up to. That said, how would I really know? The one issue that comes up for me is around the asynch part of collaboration, which doesn’t appear to be as well integrated. But easy to sit on the sidelines and critique. I blogged it in December and Nicole Yankelovich, the project manager, commented, saying that they’re trying to drop the MPK name as it sounds so techie and refer to it as Project Wonderland. FYI, Aerospace Corporation, possibly the first enterprise to use Second Life, is doing some fascinating stuff in this arena, finding that they can do rocket simulations that simply can’t be done any other way.

Your comment

HTML-Tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Be sure to catch Bill Ives' ongoing review series in which he looks at online, sharable database apps. The focus of Bill's reviews: web-based business software that enables companies and individuals to better organize, track, and share information, as well as better manage projects, processes and workflows.

Among the Web-based tools he's reviewed: Zoho, QuickBase, and TrackVia.

Or, if you’d like to get all the tips now, click here to request a copy of the white paper – “7 Ways to Optimize Project Team Productivity: Using Customizable Web-based Software to Your Business Advantage.”.

The AppGap has hosted a series of discussions with leading thinkers and doers intended to illuminate how new apps and approaches are changing the way we work and help companies and individuals implement better collaboration, project management, and productivity practices and solutions. Access, via the links below, the recordings, each about an hour long, of the discussions.

- 5 Big Ideas for Getting All That Work Done
- Should Your Business be Friends with Facebook
- The Future of Work

Need help in getting organized? Want to keep things from falling through the cracks? Check out this free and simple to use online "To-Do List" called Intuit Task Manager, offered by our sponsor Intuit QuickBase. Sign-up is easy so you can get started with it right away.