The Virtual World Conference 2010

"This was the first conference of its type that I have experienced and I am very keen to attend again. The key advantages for me included the range and calibre of the speakers, the informality of the presentations, and the unique facility to genuinely confer with others in the room without interrupting the speakers themselves. I know of no other context in which that could happen.
Congratulations on a professionally hosted and exceptionally interesting conference." - Suzanne Conboy-Hill

www.thevirtualworldconference.org/


The Virtual World Conference was a one-day conference exploring the uses of virtual worlds for learning, collaborative work and business. This event was held on the 15th September 2010 and hosted entirely in Second Life, where 21 leading international speakers from across the globe had showcased the innovations and applications within Virtual Worlds in order to debate key issues together with a worldwide audience.

Hosting the conference on a virtual platform, in deference to global insecurity and climate change, was to see all stakeholders accessing remotely via their desktops. This unique event had followed the sun, with speakers in each time zone contributing to a full 24 hours of activity. With so many global challenges ahead, participants and speakers had begun to consider the opportunities for virtual worlds to address some of the core issues in contemporary society.


This conference, the first of future community-driven events had considered: "how can virtual worlds change how we learn, work and socialize?" By addressing this key question, the conference focused on:

• Social interaction and collaboration in virtual worlds
• Business applications and strategies for using virtual worlds
• Virtual societies and communities
• Formal and informal teaching and learning in virtual worlds

The conference had bought together researchers and experts in the field of virtual worlds spanning from East Asia to West America to consider these central themes with the purpose of creating a new cross-sectoral virtual networking community for considering these and future issues and challenges.

The conference was chaired by Prof. Sara de Freitas (Serious Games Institute/Lab Group) and Anna Peachey (The Open University/Eygus Ltd) in the European time zone, Andreas Schmeil (PARC/University of Lugano) in the American Pacific Coast time zone and Claus Nehmzow (Alcus International Ltd/Hong Kong) in the East Asian time zone.

The Virtual World Conference 2010 hosted trainers, experts, teachers, policy-makers, managers, consultants, tutors and researchers from industry, academia, schools and policy development, with representation from a wide range of different sectors including:

• Education: schools, colleges and universities
• Research: universities, institutes, industrial labs
• Training: training organizations, private foundations
• Industry: international companies, SMEs
• Health: hospitals and training institutions, care trusts
• Environment: planning agencies, environmental agencies, emergency response organisations
• Government: central government departments, agencies and local government authorities

Confirmed speakers:

Chairs:
Claus Nehmzow
Anna Peachey
Sara de Freitas
Andreas Schmeil

Europe:
David Burden
Daniel Livingstone
Sisse Siggaard Jensen
Beatrice Hasler
Hanno Tietgens
Kyung Sik Kim
George Papagiannakis

East:

David Piesse
Jay Jay Jegathesan
Brant Knutzen
Dave Taylor
Simon Newstead
Benjamin Joffe
Westley Field

West:

Barbara Westmoreland
Claudia Lamoreaux
Sabine Lawless-Reljic
Randy Hinrichs
Eilif Trondsen
Andruid Kerne
Jani Pirkola