Virtual Events Cost Microsoft 1/3 of Physical

An April launch for three new products held in Second Life and attracted almost 500 people throughout the day cost Microsoft only $4000. Microsoft told Erica Driver, former analyst for Forrester and now co-founder of ThinkBalm, now that the company  has developed its virtual assets and can reuse them, it costs about 1/3 of the price of a comparable physical event to run a virtual event. The price-per-head only gets better as you add more attendees. More importantly, attendees reported positively about the learning experience.

That's led Microsoft Developer Network evangelist Zain Naboulsi to encourage the rest of the company to adopt more virtual worlds technology. Even better for him, the various in-world successes have prompted community members themselves to begin working on a more heavy-duty virtual environment for OpenSim that integrates with Microsoft's  office and productivity software. [via ThinkBalm]