Second Life in the Corporate World

The blogosphere has made much ado lately about an article in The Wall Street Journal by Anjali Athavaley on virtual job recruiting within Second Life. Fortune 500 companies seem to be using the virtual world to conduct interviews and get to know candidates at a distance. SL continues to be one of the most heavily hyped yet lightly used serious game applications out there.

Job applicants interested in using SL for interviews often face the challenge of creating and dressing their avatars appropriately. The article related several amusing anecdotes such as newbies unable to properly control their avatars in the interview room. I noted back in April that things had improved graphically since my previous forays in SL. Alas, as I noted then, I too had initial difficulties in clothing my avatar properly. So, I can imagine the stress such endeavors would add to the interview process.

An even more intriguing article ran in WSJ’s technology report back on Monday. (These special report sections are published on Mondays because Mondays are slow news days for papers; they are usually pretty thin at the start of the week.) This one, by William M. Bulkeley, details the use IBM makes of SL.

Now, here is where my comment about SL being lightly used requires an exception, assuming Bulkeley’s reporting is accurate (which I’m sure it is). IBM uses SL like crazy. They own over 50 islands on SL, they hold beaucoup virtual meetings on SL, they use SL to meet with clients, and they hold employee presentations with virtual PowerPoint slides.

The article details how IBM has jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon in a big way, not only with SL but also by encouraging employees to blog, network online, create and maintain corporate wikis, leverage instant messaging and otherwise share information with one another and clients.

As stated on numerous occasions, the corporate world seems to be always ahead of the technology curve, and education seemingly always behind. Although SL and other Web 2.0 apps are gaining ground in education, they are not in large part an everyday component of student/teacher interactions. But, if these two WSJ articles are any indication, students will be part of this online gaming and Web 2.0 world in one way or another, before, during, or after school.

References

Athavaley, A. (2007, June 20). A job interview you don’t have to show up for. The Wall Street Journal, p.D1.

Bulkeley, W. M. (2007, June 18). Playing well with others: How IBM’s employees have taken social networking to an unusual level. The Wall Street Journal, p.R1.