 Great American Networks Conferencing opens Orientation and Conference centers Saturday 19 May 2007
By Farqot Gustafson, Reporter
SLReports.Net
Updated: 16 May 2007 4:45 p.m. SLT
As SecondLife evolves beyond its virtual Las Vegas environment—and
reputation—more companies are establishing a presence here. Consumer
retails such as Circuit City and Sears, as well as IT heavy hitter’s
Cisco, Dell, IBM and Microsoft, have created showrooms for their
products, and many more are on the way. And why not—with 30–40,000
potential in-world customers at any moment, it’s a logical, albeit
passive way of making your presence known.
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So what’s the
next step? How about bringing your employees or even customer’s
in-world, for orientation sessions, conferences and product
demonstrations?
I had a chance to spend some time this week with SecondLife avatar
Pierce Benelli, V.P. of Sales & Marketing for Great America
Networks Conferencing (GANC), at their orientation and conference
centers. GANC is a Chicago-based RL video conference provider, which
offers audio, video and Internet conferencing and services.
We began our tour at the Tutorial Center, located on GANC 1. Developed
by Anarchy in the UK, Ltd., the island at first reminded me of a
cleaned version of SecondLife’s Orientation and Help islands (I half
expected to see a newbie tooling around on a Segway). What I found was
neatly laid out city plaza, leading to a series of projection screens,
and a sandbox to practice in.
Pierce showed me several of the tutorials, which explained the basics
of SecondLife, better than SecondLife does, frankly. As an RL trainer
and technical writer, I was very impressed with how GANC will introduce
newbie’s to the fundamentals of SecondLife.
From there, we flew to the dock and teleported to the conference center
on GANC 2. We landed in the Main Square. Laid out to resemble Granada
in southern Spain, the square area includes a modern open air café, a
market area of old stone buildings, and the conference center itself.
Designed to imitate Granada’s 14th century Moorish Alhambra Palace, the
conference center is one of the most visually stunning sites I’ve seen
in SecondLife. The variety of textures, use of color and low prim count
make for a memorable experience.
I saw two conference areas. Conference suite 1 (located in what looked
like a small castle, with design elements from a mosque, temple and
church) was primarily a large room, with tables seating 8-10 people.
This setup allows for small, intimate discussions, and should work well
with smaller group audio sessions.
The second, in the Alhambra Palace, was a large round chamber, with a
projection screen for a ceiling (thank planetarium in layout, only much
larger). The participants are seated in the round, facing a speaker’s
stand. Here participants can have streaming audio and video
presentations, including 3-D mockups, as well as MS PowerPoint
presentations.
According to Pierce, groups of up to 50 can be set up between the two
facilities. Although they can seat more than that, the limitations of
SecondLife itself slows everything down way too much for that to work.
And due to those limitations, the quality won’t match that of the
holographic projections of a Star Wars Jedi Council meeting, but Pierce
see’s that improving over time as well.
The rest of the island is a visual treat to explore as well. The market
area allows visitors to pickup clothing to customize their avatars, and
even some building materials to work with in a second sandbox. The rest
of the village has a variety of buildings to explore, and there are
plenty of paths to walk, and even an old sailing ship to explore.
Hopefully, conference participants will get the chance to do so; I know
I’d loved to have entered SecondLife here!
Having sat through all too many jumpy RL video conferences over the
last 10+ years myself, I can appreciate what GANC is doing here. In a
little over a decade since the public was really allowed access to the
Internet, we’ve seen great changes in it, and how it is being utilized
by both individuals and businesses. GANC is one of those businesses who
are pushing out the frontiers, and are doing so in an exciting way
within SecondLife.
My thanks to Pierce Benelli for his time on the tour, as well as Atalar
Longstaff (GANC President) and Astryd James (GANC V.P. of Client
Relations) for their time answering my questions, and showing me
around.
For more information, look at either GANC website (www.ganconferencing.com or www.slconferencing.com).
Pierce can reached at pierce.benelli@gmail.com. |
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