The Future of Work... Available Now

Imagine sitting in an office with coworkers from Boston, London, Bejing, Sydney and Singapore.  The meeting room has a beautiful panoramic view and is outfitted with abundant white board space and the latest technology. Screens display living documents--collaboration docs, rich media, desktop sharing, office documents, web content, and your company's Intranet, and at any moment, anyone in the room can alter any of the shared information in real-time. Meanwhile, a 3D printer stands at the ready to quickly produce functional models of every iteration of the product prototype you're discussing. Try to imagine that none of your colleagues from around the world has had to travel to get to this space - all you've had to do is log in to your company's office in a virtual world.

Now, envision you and your colleagues taking a break from the meeting, engaging in casual conversations and knowledge transfer - "water cooler" conversations.  Recall some of these conversations from the past and the relationships you developed outside of meetings-the camaraderie, respect, trust, and the serendipitous epiphanies that have arisen thanks to these casual interactions outside of the board room. What if you could get that with your colleagues around the world on a daily or weekly basis, again, without leaving your home base?

Today's economic, environmental, and business climate is putting tremendous pressure on companies and governments to cut costs, innovate faster, and work in a more eco-friendly way. These imperatives are driving forward-thinking organizations to explore emerging technologies that enable teams distributed around the globe to communicate, collaborate, learn, and create more effectively.

Virtual world workplaces allow organizations to reap the benefits of real world meetings without incurring the time, cash , and carbon costs of business travel. More than that, these environments are enhancing traditional work with new capabilities for real-time collaboration, communication, rapid prototyping, and more.  In this session, see a demo of a "living" workspace in Second Life and learn about how virtual worlds are improving efficiency and encouraging innovation in the Enterprise.

As the Director of Enterprise Systems, Chris Collins leads corporate partner initiatives at Linden Lab. His main focus is building a worldwide network of large enterprise partners to continually add value and expand the reach and breadth of the virtual world of Second Life. Through his efforts, Linden Lab's consumer and corporate customers will benefit from increased scalability of the Second Life Grid.

Before joining Linden Lab, he was Founder and CEO of Zudora, a job search engine. Prior to Zudora, Chris was the Managing Director of The Solution Base, a CRM software and consulting company in the UK, where he succeeded in turning the company around from a loss to a profit within his first year. Chris has worked as a consultant and an accountant in Australia, Europe, and the US; he has a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Finance from the University of Western Australia.

Developed and launched by Linden Lab in 2003, Second Life is the world's leading 3D virtual world environment. It enables its Residents to create content, interact with others, launch businesses, collaborate, educate, and more. Since its inception, Second Life Residents have logged more than one billion user hours and generated more than USD1 billion in user-to-user transactions. With a broad user base that includes everyone from consumers and educators to medical researchers and large enterprises, Second Life has become one of the largest hubs of user-generated content and the largest user-generated virtual goods economy in the world.

Linden Lab, founded in 1999 by Chairman of the Board Philip Rosedale and headquartered in San Francisco, develops revolutionary technologies that change the way people communicate, interact, learn and create. Privately held and profitable, Linden Lab is led by CEO Mark Kingdon, and has more than 300 employees spread across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.