I’ve noticed both Jack Morton and GPJ talking about virtual events more and more lately.
Jack Morton released their new Virtual Events platform recently, which seems to loosely resemble Second Life, but built as a virtual ‘convention centre’ of sorts. This is an interesting idea – we’ve already seen companies taking advantage of Second Life itself to differentiate their online ‘events’ from the now-traditional webcast/webinar platform, so it makes some sense that a large player like Jack’s have come up with their own solution in-a-box.
GPJ’s Diretor of Digital Experience in the UK, Kevin Aires has been talking a lot about virtual events lately. I think it’s clear that the big players have all seen both the threat that virtual/online poses to live events (to a limited extent) but also the opportunities attached. Interesting times.
Jack Morton Virtual Experience Platform
#1 by Kevin Aires on June 6, 2009 - 3:09 am
Hey Steve, thanks for the mention
Yes I think the events industry is certainly taking note. The interesting thing from the speakers at Virtual Edge last week was that pretty much everyone including virtual platform providers themselves, see virtual as an amplifier to physical meetings rather than a replacement. So physical and virtual events compliment each other really nicely providing overall a more powerful customer journey experience.
I think the big “threat” is if clients see physical events and virtual events as interchangable because they both have the word “event” in the name. i.e. they really aren’t for the most part.
#2 by Chris Haff on June 9, 2009 - 8:21 am
Hey Steve, thanks for writing about out platform. I thought I’d share a link to our walk through piece:
http://www.jackmorton.com/virtual/Default.aspx
As you’ll see it’s not so much a Second Life virtual world as a dimensional space that users can intuitively navigate. One of our goals was to not be wedded to any particular environment. The walk through shows another, more intimate space also designed by some of the same folks that bring our award winning set designs such as for the Colbert Report and ESPN to life.
Aside from full visual control we have created integration points for social networks and various back end systems to allow deep integration with other platforms, including the systems we use for live events. As Kevin says it’s largely about extending the reach.