Not long ago, the meetings industry saw a deluge of news and reviews centered on Second Life. The popular, 3D virtual world, brought to the public by Linden Labs, allows users to interact via avatars (online characters that represent the real-life people sitting on the other side of the computer screens).

While Second Life sets some industry professionals’ heads spinning with its potential applications for business, education, and training, it repels others with its bulky downloads, frequent bugs and updates, and relatively steep learning curves. As a truly representative alternate reality, Second life also comes with some of the ailments of the real world, including thriving red-light districts and the occasional questionable individuals you wouldn’t really want associating with your attendees.

Second Life was not built specifically with meetings and events in mind.

VirtualU from Digitell, Inc. was.

Who: Digitell, Inc.
What: VirtualU, a 3D virtual meetings environment.
Where: www.digitellinc.com

“Our company has been a digital solutions provider for associations since 1986,” says James Parker, President of Digitell, who took on the role of virtual tour guide to introduce me to the VirtualU platform. “Now we've moved all online, and our product that we produce for most of our clients is a suite of digital services that start with capturing all their education [content], putting it into a digital library online, and providing access to their attendees and members. A lot of our clients have been coming to us and asking for digital solutions on how to extend the life of their exhibit hall. Then the economy started to go down, and people needed alternative ways to meet.”

The solution started with a 3D exhibit hall for Digitell clients, and it now comprises an entire virtual meetings world called VirtualU. VirtualU offers clients the option of holding an online-only meeting that takes place solely within the virtual environment or a “hybrid event” that involves streaming conference video into a virtual meeting room to engage online attendees.

“A hybrid event gives [organizers] the ability to broadcast a live event into a virtual, 3D environment,” Parker says. “I consider it like an overflow room for the world.”

At a recent hybrid event, Parker says, both real-world and virtual-world attendees and speakers were able to witness the true engagement power of the VirtualU platform. Not only did virtual attendees see live streaming video from the conference—conference attendees saw the live virtual environment projected on a big screen in the physical session room.

“All the live people could see the chat, and it turned into an amazing social frenzy,” Parker says, “so much so that they ended up changing the way the general session platform was set up because the speakers wanted to be able to read the comments, as well.”

Getting Started

This week, I “met” Parker in front of the Virtual Convention Center to take a tour of the available options. We spoke via phone with half a nation between us, while walking around together in a robust online environment that offers all the capabilities of a real-life convention center—and then some.

The VirtualU experience begins, appropriately enough, at www.VirtualBeginnings.com. Here, one is met with a brief run-down on the virtual meetings platform, along with a three-and-a-half-minute video introduction. From there, one can opt to contact a representative for a guided tour or just create an account right away. Either way, one needs to fill out some basic information—name, email address, user name, password, etc.—and wait for a confirmation email before moving on. For those individuals who inexplicably tend to choose IDs like HotBabe123, a friendly advisory reads, “As VirtualU is a professional environment, we advise using your real name as your user/avatar name.” And, for anyone who does not abide by that advisory, a name change can be requested from an administrator later.

Once an account has been verified, one is asked to fill out a brief profile, including company name and other descriptors. One can select a generic avatar from a variety of pre-built characters, which can be customized later (I opted for a grab-and-go persona). Next comes the download—a quick, painless 6.3 megabytes that places a VirtualU icon on the user’s desktop. From start to finish, the account creation process can be completed in about 10 or 15 minutes, and one is then immediately able to enter the virtual meetings environment. From the start, the process is fast and user-friendly, and it presents a big time savings over Second Life’s mandatory stint in Orientation Island for new users, which can be tedious and confusing for some first-timers.

Experiencing VirtualU

Built on a platform called ActiveWorld, VirtualU is not as graphics-heavy and cumbersome to navigate as some other 3D platforms. “In general, our world [needs] much less for your computer requirements than most. Some of the other platforms take much more robust computers,” Parker says.

When one clicks the VirtualU icon, one enters a quick-loading interface that includes a primary view of the virtual meetings environment in which avatars move and interact, along with access to video tutorials and text chat functions at the bottom of the screen. Depending on one’s computer system, some users might experience a bit of lag as objects load up upon first entering a new environment within the world. Accessing VirtualU from a rather “seasoned” laptop, I had to wait a minute or two for some environments to fully load. However, as Parker notes and I experienced, once one has visited a location for the first time, its objects are cached so they do not need to re-load upon returning.

A right-hand information panel allows users to view one another’s profiles, obtain information about virtual exhibitors, participate in real-time questions and polling, and even post live updates to Twitter from within the virtual world.

“We're a big believer of integrating the 2D and the 3D in the experience,” Parker explains. “Some things are just better off being written and read in 2D. The right-hand panel is a great way for us to integrate functions like questions and polling. If you click on the ‘Nearby’ button, it'll show you all the people who are nearby you and who they are, and you can simply network with them.”

Users can easily navigate using their arrow keys, and they have the option of walking, running, flying, or teleporting through the environment. Real-time conversation takes place through the text chat feature, which offers both public and private options, or through integrated VoIP capabilities that allow users to speak in real-time using their computer speakers and microphones or a headset combination. For a large gathering, audio from session speakers is streamed into the virtual environment through a conference call, so hundreds of participants can listen to live presentations through their own computer speakers at the same time. VoIP is a good option for meetings of up to 10 people, but it is, Parker acknowledges, “the weakest link” for larger groups.

Upon entering VirtualU, users can explore a variety of 3D, fully-featured meeting, exhibit, and social spaces, including an outdoor courtyard, indoor and outdoor auditoriums, a show room, and an exhibit hall, among others. Users also have the option of viewing an alternative 2D version that displays video and other multimedia, instead of the 3D environment in which avatars interact directly.

“We have both a 3D and a 2D platform, so users who come into the world who don't want to create an avatar have the ability to view all the material and content in a 2D, browser-based platform,” Parker says.

Virtual attendees can also take home virtual handouts, as a Briefcase feature allows users to take away PowerPoint presentations, pdf documents, and other electronic materials from online sessions. In addition, video content generated from real-life sessions can be archived in a digital library to be made available to attendees after the conference, either free or for a fee.

Moving Forward

Why should organizers pay to use VirtualU as their virtual meetings platform when they could use Second Life for free?

“First and foremost, we feel that the reason you want to use our platform over Second Life is, one, the learning curve in Second Life is significantly steeper and, two, in Second Life, you're only buying the land,” Parker says. “Then you need to go out and build all your features and all your functions. Even if you have somebody to build it, now you need tech support. You need people to train the people that come in. Then you have to worry about security issues. Here, we don't have to worry about that. We are our own world.”

An advantage of VirtualU is its ability to offer multiple environments. Each client organization can have its own environment built and ready to use within a couple of days, and the organization can use its own online space again and again in the future. When using an established meetings environment in Second Life, groups are often held to the same space availability issues they can run into in real life—as Parker says, “If I’m using it, you’re not.”

Pricing for an online-only event starts at $1,000, and a hybrid event—which includes an onsite team to record and stream the live conference—begins around $7,500.

“Once you own your own space, you can run events from anywhere from $500 to $1,000,” Parker adds.

At present, VirtualU does not offer e-commerce options through its registration page. If a client wishes to charge a registration fee, attendees must register through the organization’s website before signing up to access VirtualU. E-commerce capabilities are in the works and are, Parker says, the last element of significance that remains to be built into the platform.

For organizations that are considering online events or a virtual complement to their face-to-face meetings, VirtualU seems to cover all the bases and offers an easy-to-use, affordable option.

Serenity J. Knutson is the Editor in Chief of PlannerWire.com, the News, Information and Community website for meeting and event planners. Contact her at Serenity@PlannerWire.com.

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