I am pleased to join this blog and work with such an experienced group of colleagues, many I have known for some time and the others I look forward to meeting. I will be mainly focusing on applications of the new web for business. This first post is on an exciting application that brings a successful web consumer technology into the business world.

We have had virtual meetings for a long time. Then Second Life changed the playing field with virtual worlds. A number of large corporations began investing in their Second Life sites. First it was stuff like hotels. Then the marketing guys got involved and virtual worlds replicated conferences. Exhibits and show rooms sprung up on Second Life islands. This business impact was most likely not an original goal of Second Life, just another example of a web 2.0 tool being pushed beyond its original intentions because of the transformational nature of the new web.

But then there are always problems with pushing a product beyond its goals. In Second Life you have to build a lot of stuff and likely hire some expensive graphics people to do it. Even then your audience is likely to be the 10 million or so who are already on Second Life. That may be fine for some products like the Toyota Scion to be in Second Life as it is kind of weird anyway. What about the average business conference attendee? They will not want to have to download a large application, create an avatar, learn commands, and all the other requirements to entering Second Life.

I recently talked with Don Best, of Unisfair, a company that is creating virtual environments designed explicitly for business clients. They have created the ability to create virtual environments with ease of use for the business participant. I asked how this is different from webinars. Don explained that a webinar is more like a single one-to-many presentation with a speaker and participants who can ask questions, etc. What Second Life offered was actual virtual worlds. Now Unisfair has adopted the concept for business events. They state that if you can create it in the physical world, they can replicate it in the virtual world.

So Don took me on into a virtual environment set up for trade event for National Instruments. The company used to do a 18-city road show that drew about 100 people per stop. In May they did a one day virtual event for their US audience that drew 2,000 “live” participants and then was available on demand for another 90 days. It worked well so they did another for their European audience in November.

The virtual environment I saw had three main components, a conference hall (where sessions were held), an exhibit hall, and a resource center to collect and download stuff from the conference. You can also network with other attendees who have similar interests. In the exhibit hall, booths are staffed by actual (virtual) people standing by during the live event to answer questions. Even when the event goes to on-demand status you can ask questions and get responses. The booth staff also know that you have entered their booth so they can ask you questions based on your profile. They actually have a head start on the staffer in the physical world who cannot read a visitor’s mind. All the stuff normally found in the exhibit booth is there, including the gifts.

Now this does not get you to exciting places like Orlando or Vegas as a business expense but then firms can eliminate that cost and the environment stays greener. The green benefit extends to both reduced travel and all the physical stuff that gets thrown away at these events. In some other ways it is better than the “real” thing since you and the sponsors have much more accessible records of what happen. You can build a profile and search and meet people with your interests. Simultaneous sessions are not a problem. The sponsors can see all the things you did, at least the online part. What happens here does not stay here. But, if used properly this is a good thing. A recent article in the New York Times, Cyberspace Trade Shows Bring Action to the Desktop, provides examples of increased sales leads for sponsors of virtual events at reduced costs.

I can also see internal uses for global enterprises. They have already been used for job fairs. The Unisfair website provides an example of the format including a resource center where I got the NYT piece. I think there is a lot of promise here. One of the tricks to making it work will be the proper management of all the data collected and the appropriate facilitation of social networking. These virtual events will never completely replace physical events for certain situations but they offer a very useful alternative and add to the richness to the new web, as well as offering another way to help the environment. It is one more consumer web idea that has crossed over to the business side.