CPA Island

How to save money by training in Second Life

Is Second Life a legitimate training platform?

After "what the heck is Second Life?", this is the most frequent question we continue to hear.

As you know we have been using Second Life for training applications for awhile now. Having run over forty events virtually and "mixed reality" for over 500 people, we believe in this format as a viable, cost effective training platform.

But don't take our word for it listen to what the experts are saying:

Virtual Meeting Rush - Treasury & Risk magazine, September, 2009

A Second Chance for Second Life - WSJ, August 19, 2009

A Second Look at Second LIfe - Chief Learning Officer Magazine, May 2009

Accounting for Second Life - Journal of Accountancy, June, 2008

Virtual Worlds were also featured as one of the Top 5 Training Trends for 2009 by Chief Learning Officer magazine.

Want to see more -check out all of the articles about business uses of Second Life on the SL wiki and the last two recaps of sessions we did for XBRL and at the AICPA Tech + Conference this summer:

XBRL International Conference via Second Life

How to be in two places at one time

Are you ready to try Second Life for training?

How to be in two places at one time

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?