ABC News, Crayon, and Cisco on Virtual Workplaces

In the first part of its series on the future of the workplace, ABC News talked to the guys at crayon about working virtually. The video's below, but it ABC is still focused on the whiz-bang exciting element of virtual working. Crayon Co-Founder and CEO Jospeh Jaffe offers that "Our belief is that if we bring like minds together no matter where they are in the world, we can actually create that connectedness as if we're actually here in the same place at the same time." Christian Renaud of Cisco expands a little on what makes that work.

At the Cisco virtual worlds blog, Renaud outlines a few key learnings from his experience in virtual meetings on Cisco's internal platform, apparently the way all of the team's meetings are conducted.

- While it's not a face-to-face meeting, or a Cisco Telepresence, the visualization of seeing other participants in a space should not be overlooked. People like to know that there are others listening, participating or engaged at the other end of the wire. It tends to keep you engaged in the conversation instead of having numerous distractions at your desk.
- Since we get some visual indication of who is speaking, or about to speak, the flow of the discussion is a lot smoother and people tend to not talk over one other. Just eliminating the "can you repeat that?" and "I'm sorry, you go ahead" from meetings saves a lot of aggravation.
- Viewing lists of information isn't helping me with the information overload. Being able to view it in 3D, walk around it, see it from different angles, and see the indirect linkage between it.....now that brings a whole new element to "Knowledge Management".

Most importantly, though, Renaud says that it's getting them out on the playground for learning and experimentation.

At the SLCC this weekend there was some circling talk about the applications of Second Life for meetings. Most agree that it's problematic right now, but that any application that can make it easier is almost a sure-fire success. I'd be interested particularly in anything that continues to smooth out the conversation flow.

How many of you are using Second Life or other virtual worlds for meetings? What about closed platforms? Any particular advantages?