Tailorable blog

Typing to an empty room

Last week I finally gave my first presentation for a Second Life audience - and it was a bit weird. I have attended quite a few business meetings in Second Life, but now was the first time I was on stage, presenting slides and “talking” to the audience about business models for a presence in virtual worlds. 

The preparation took a bit more time than usual: instead of just preparing my slides, I also had to export them as separate images and place them in a virtual screen. Fortunately, I carry around a presentation screen from the EduNation shop in Second Life. So, I arrived with my own virtual presentation screen and laptop in the virtual conference room a few hours before, to test things. Fortunately, it was easy to contact the owners of the virtual room to get rights to place my virtual objects there: I was simply added to the group of owners.

More annoying was the fact that voice communication is still not supported in Second Life. There are some ways of using external software to create an audio stream and then make that stream audible in Second Life. However, we did not have time to set all this up, so I ended up preparing the key sentences to type with each slide in a separate document, to make sure I could give the presentation at a speed that kept the audience happy.

The presentation itself went okay, but it was strange: it was a bit like talking to an empty room - except for the fact that I was typing. Normally, you use the non-verbal cues from your audience to see if they understand you, to decide on the pace of your presentation or when it is time to add something funny to wake them up. These non-verbal cues are missing in Second Life and my audience (of about 10 local organizations active in Second Life) was a bit hesitant to interrupt me with questions. Usually, feeling the energy from the audience and providing them energy is important, and all that was missing here. So, it was good to have this experience, but I certainly prefer to give face-to-face presentations, even if the content is about virtual worlds.

By the way, the material about business strategies in virtual worlds, on which my presentation was based, is online: Does Your Company Need a Second Life?