Metaverse Journal Partners with Enterprise 2.0 Thinkfest

Photo by OwnMoment

Luna Park – For More Than Fun

For generations, the Big Dipper and other rides and entertainments at Sydney’s Luna Park (“Just for Fun”) echoed with the delighted, sometimes happily terrified screams and yells of children and people otherwise known as adults. When you walked in under the enormous teeth of the Big Face, you knew you were leaving the cares of the everyday world behind for some fantasy and fun.

The fact that Luna Park, now with conferencing facilities as well as amusements, will be the venue of next Tuesday’s Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum does not mean that the presentations and deliberations will be anything but serious – and seriously business-focused.

But in an interview I recorded last night, David Holloway, Editor-in-Chief of The Metaverse Journal, alluded to Luna Park’s iconic value for Sydneysiders and visitors as a place of fantasy and escape, which he related to perceptions in some corporate circles when the subject of Second Life or, more generally, virtual worlds, comes up.

David Holloway

David and The Metaverse Journal are official partners for the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum. And IBM, a company very actively engaged with the development of business applications for virtual worlds, is the Platinum Sponsor for the event.

Writer, musician and composer, David has a Master’s in Nursing and is currently working on an MBA.

Interview Highlights

In our half hour conversation we touched on:

  • the use of Second Life (SL) for US Presidential candidates, notably in support of Hillary Clinton’s campaign
  • Australian telco Telstra’s international success in sustained development of its SL initiative
  • IBM’s immersion in Second Life and partnership in other virtual world developments
  • realistic timeframes for return on investment to be measured in years
  • the challenge of finding developers who can deliver an appropriate product
  • the promising Brisbane, Australia newcomer (no, not the new Prime Minister), OpenLife
  • China’s embrace of and serious investment in virtual worlds
  • corporate skepticism and fear about virtual worlds
  • a highly amusing (well, for me anyway) and instructive example of a health-related metaverse development

Listen to the interview here

This interview is also posted on my new Social Media Show site (Update Dec 2012: that site has now been closed) and is the second in a series relating to the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum to be held in Sydney on February 19, 2008.

Copyright © Des Walsh 2008. Author Des Walsh provides social media consulting and coaching services to large and small enterprises. If you found this post useful, you might like to subscribe to receive further posts in your RSS feed reader.

Des Walsh

Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.

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