Synthetic Environments and the Enterprise

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The first Topical Meeting of 2007, “Synthetic Environments and the Enterprise” will be held at the Santa Clara Techmart (5201 Great America Pkwy #122, Santa Clara, CA 95054) Tuesday, February 20, with Leighton Read and Christian Renaud. This meeting is co-sponosred by the Santa Fe Institute, Cisco Systems, and Media X at Stanford University. Additional information will be sent via email soon.

Summary: There’s a lot going on right now in a place that doesn’t really exist. Millions of people are spending part of every day engaged with others in intense collaboration, competition and exploration in virtual online worlds. Some are playing massive multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft™ and others are meeting people via their computer-generated avatars in a virtual reality amusement park known as Second Life™. Entertainment applications are driving technology — as always for cutting edge media — but serious people are asking more and more thoughtful questions about how these new ways of connecting people and problems can be harnessed for real-world challenges. This meeting is a chance to see what business can learn from the rich tapestry of human behaviour now playing out in synthetic environments. We will look at initial corporate efforts to meet customers in these worlds and attempts to address the challenge of managing collaborations across large scales of time and geography. We will explore how old models of leadership hold up in these brave new worlds and which of the successful game design principles can be integrated into enterprise workflow today. Invited participants will have a chance to place their own bets on the pace of innovation in enterprise application of game-like technology. Come play.