The blog “Leading Virtually” has an interesting article on Sun’s Project Wonderland, a virtual work collaboration tool. Virtual worlds are nothing new of course, Second Life has been around for a few years, as has World of Warcraft, but recently businesses seem be getting in on the act. Second Life in particular has what looks like a virtual business park for interviews, simulations, etc.
Now Sun has a product being trialed by employees and educational institutions to collaborate and do business. Sharing and collaborating on applications while chatting with your co-workers is not new, this can be done with Skype, GoToMeeting, etc. However, melding the 3D virtuality with app-sharing functionality (putting these apps up on virtual walls) to create virutal workspaces is kind of neat. Tie that together with the feature of being able to walk around and use “spatialized” vocalization and now you can chat with other people that happen to be close by.
Maybe this will provide the random interaction that teleworkers miss? These lobbies may become the new watercoolers for the converations and interactions that make worklife interesting. Add in the rising costs of air & land travel and a population increasingly used to living online, and this may become the norm faster then we think. We’ve already seen consumers dropping landlines for mobiles; perhaps cars for broadband connections is next?
