Clever Zebra release two virtual worlds white papers

To coincide with their latest vBusiness Expo, Clever Zebra have released two white papers – available at no cost.

The first is The Essential 7 Point Quick Start for Meetings Professionals, the other is Going Virtual: A Three Point Success Plan for Business.

To get copies, click on the incorrectly titled ‘Download your copy now’ links at this page – you’ll then need to enter your name and email address and then wait a day or so to be emailed the documents. That said, I did get my copies within an hour or so.

The documents themselves are aimed squarely at businesses not yet fully engaged with virtual worlds, and in that context these are quite useful and simple to read. For the more informed there are some contentious statements made. An example:

A Virtual World does not have rules, quests, or any kind of narrative associated with it.
World of Warcraft is not a Virtual World.

That’s one narrow view of virtual worlds – albeit one that will appeal to larger businesses who will have a natural aversion to gaming-based scenarios. Credit where credit’s due though, Clever Zebra don’t beat about the bush about Second Life’s stability issues:

Second Life is notoriously unstable, and regularly crashes, or limps along with limited
inworld services as the system experiences peak loads.

Overall, these two documents are worthy additions to the growing free body of knowledge for business in virtual worlds.

vBusiness Expo line-up announced

Virtual world business advisers Clever Zebra are continuing their relentless schedule of events and products with the announcement of the line-up for the July vBusiness Expo being held on the 30th July:

– Steve Prentice from Gartner will provide the opening keynote address: ‘Virtual Worlds in Business – Are we virtually there yet?’, “where he will summarize the state of the virtual world business in mid 2008, and explore the opportunities and pitfalls of virtual worlds in business.”

– Dr. Tony O’Driscoll from Duke University will provide the second keynote: ‘ “Webvolution” and the iWeb Singularity.’ – “Dr. O’Driscoll will focus on how 3D internet technologies are redefining how we live, work and play.”

Clever Zebra’s pitch to business for the day is:

Learn from the real experience of organizations using varied platforms with a wide variety of use cases. (These use cases will also help you justify virtual worlds budgets as well as help you better understand the value of virtual worlds). Our panel on “Virtual Worlds @ Work” led by SRIC-BI’s Eilif Trondsen Ph.D promises to be one of the high-value highlights of the day.
Learn about new platforms and technolgies about to affect the enterprise virtual worlds market during our “Clever Zebra Virtual Radar” panel led by me, Nick Wilson.

I’ll be speaking with VastPark CEO Bruce Joy and Sun Microsystems Wonderland’s Nicole Yankelovich among others and discussing the technologies likely to affect the enterprise market within the next 3 – 18mts

Finally, although details will come a little later, we are working together with our partners at Forterra Systems to provide a range of educational sessions that will run concurrently at varied times throughout the day. This means that you’ll be able to catch just the sessions that will help you the most.

The feedback I received from a couple of businesses that participated in the first vBusiness Expo was positive and it’s good to see Aussie startup VastPark getting a guernsey on this one.

vBusiness expo gains momentum

Clever Zebra are holding their vBusiness Expo later this week.

35 speakers are confirmed from organisations such as Gartner, Forrester Research and IBM, with the key focus being “what is the practical purpose of virtual worlds?”.

Registration is free and there’s still places available. We’ll bring you key debates and issues as they occur.

New Second Life business / education tool

Clever Zebra are a well-respected Second Life development company who recently changed their business model to an ‘Open Solutions’ approach. This week they released a new and free tool called Zebra Presenter. It’s an in-world presentation package and having seen a few of them over the past year, this would have to be the best one to date.

Check the introductory guide to Zebra Presenter produced by Australia’s Skribe Forti:

This is one noteworthy product: it’s free, it’s feature packed and it’s user-friendly. It doesn’t get much better than that.

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