Can you be in two places at the same time?
That was the dilemma I faced when I agreed to present at the AICPA Tech + Conference in Las Vegas and found out my session was scheduled for after lunch, the day before our big conference, the MDBIZEXPO. It turned out that there was no way to physically get back to Maryland from Las Vegas in time for our show setup. So I decided to use the virtual world of Second Life to solve my dilemma.
Our volunteer leader, Byron Patrick(a major influence of how we got to SL) ran his avatar from Vegas, showing the session on the big screen, and I presented from in-world or virtually to the group in Vegas. We then added ten guest speakers (seasoned SL CPA/accounting types) who joined me on stage to present to not one but three audiences. We had a live audience in Las Vegas and Baltimore, and a virtual audience in Second Life. We even had the founder of Second Life, Philip Rosedale attend and give our audience a glimpse into the future plans for SL. Ten people from all over the US and Canada presented to these three audiences without any travel expenses, talk about green!
Check out our brief clip of the event below:
Byron sums it up pretty well in his comments to our post on www.cpasuccess.com Forget best practices, think next practices:
"This session was an experience like no other! Not only 3 locations but hundreds of people were involved plus panelists in additional locations. Could this of been accomplished via other methods...sure. But this isn't about what we can do now, its about what we will do tomorrow. This session was a look at today but more importantly a peak into the future of communication and collaboration."
So I guess the answer is you can be in three (or more) places at one time...
Check out a copy of our presentation here
and photos from our session on Flickr here
What do you think about our session?
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