I’m a member of a global learning design community working with a multinational energy company based in The Netherlands. In 3 of the last 4 years, we’ve been invited to participate in a global conference held at corporate locations in Europe and the United States. The interaction at these conferences is excellent and always proves to create synergy between the members and develop strong design processes which improve the overall quality and productivity of the group. Many believe face to face is the only way to achieve these outcomes. I’m one that has been in that camp for many years.

This year, in an effort to be “green” and decrease our global footprint, we thought we’d conduct our conference in Second Life, and I must say my eyes have been opened to new possibilities. I found the experience to be quite interactive and I found myself having a similar emotional connection to the other participants as if we were face to face. BTW – I have to say, that my Avatar was totally cute and I chose to cut and color my hair and pick a comfortable outfit for my online adventure.

This new experience was a great surprise to me because my typical online experience while listening to a webinar was one of multi-tasking and reading email. This was totally different – I felt it important to stay engaged in conversations. I felt it was important to follow acceptable cultural mannerisms in interactions: greeting people as they walked up to me during a break, being attentive during conversations, adding some parting words before walking away from a group, and so on. You get the picture!

Our session was very well organized. We met in an outdoor auditorium to welcome us to the conference and review the agenda for the sessions. We then split up into groups, with each group having a leader to take us to the next stop on our agenda.

We moved from the auditorium to a break out room where we did an icebreaker activity with our group. The activity was a clue hunt; we were given clues about the members of our group and had to match the clues to the member we thought the clue belonged to; we did it by posting the clue next to their actual photo which was displayed on the virtual walls of our breakout room. This was really fun and energizing, similar to any icebreaker you would design for a face to face event.

We then followed our group leader (on foot or through teleportation for those Star Trek geeks) to various presentation rooms where we got to meet with experts in various areas. We even got to take a field trip during one of the sessions to a European university which is involved in some research activities with the company. We were greeted by university staff and got to tour the campus.

At the end of our event, we had a social celebration, where the entire group met back together in a large community room and we had music, we danced, and we socialized with our fellow designers. Sounds goofy, but it was really fun!

So, I had a 3 hour adventure where I was exposed to new technology and I learned valuable information to enhance my future learning design projects, I was able to visit an actual university through virtual means, and strengthened the relationships I hold in high esteem with my colleagues on the team. I can’t think of many other times I have accomplished so much from my home office and, to top it off, I was able to experience all of this in a comfortable pair of sweats with unlimited access to a coffee refill whenever I needed it…definitely a good day at the office!