CPA Island

CPA Island hosts conversation with MBAA

Can you be in two places at one time?

Answer: Yes, if you travel via Second Life.

Yesterday I particpated on a panel at the MBAA International Conference in Chicago this week, except I did not get on a plane. I joined them from inside of Second Life right from CPA Island.

The program titled, Teaching IFRS: Technological Innovations and Best Practices is a moderated panel by the  Chair: William Miller, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and features Panelists:

• Mark Holtzblatt, Roosevelt University
• Tom Hood, Maryland Association of CPAs
• Norbert Tschakert, San Diego State University

I got invited to this after meeting Norbert at a Pearson Accounting Educators Symposium last year. He and the oether members of the panel are doing some real innoavtive teaching methods and using them to bring IFRS into the college classrooms. They discussed how they used student produced videos, technologies liked Linked in to find experts and start dialogs, and looking ahead at technology aids to teaching like social media and mobile.

I hope I added to the conversation by sharing our experience with Second Life as a learning environment, and a meeting environment, and share the stories of several accounting educators I have met in Second Life.

Here are a couple of resources that my fellow panelists wanted to make available:

A student video titled An Open Letter to Educators

A new study about video use in higher education  http://library.nyu.edu/about/Video_Use_in_Higher_Education.pdf

Also, we are contnuing to make kiosk available on CPA Island for any accounting educators to feature their school and accounting program as well as use of our facilities to hold classes - contact Tom Hood at the MACPA mailto:tom@macpa.org for details.

XBRL International Conference via Second Life

Check out our video clip of the opening of XBRL International's 19th Annual Conference live from Paris, France and virtually in Baltimore (at MACPA offices) and on CPA Island in Second Life.

This highlights the power of this medium for education and learning activities.

See more photos of both the live and virtual events on our Flickr stream

More resources on XBRL:

CPA Success articles about XBRL

Our earlier virtual event featured a mixed reality session with the SF Feng live in an Francisco and virtually from CPA Island - see our blog post with links to archived video of the entire session

CPAs & Second Life featured at AICPA Tech+ Conference

What are CPAs doing in Second Life?

Find out by attending the upcoming AICPA Tech + Conference in Las Vegas. Or pop into Second LIfe and join us as we present this session in Second Life along with real life!

Join Byron Patrick (in-world as Bean Wollongong) of Hosted Solutions (and one of the founder's of MACPA's NYPN group) and Tom Hood of MACPA (appearing as Rocky Maddaloni) in a session, CPAs & the Virtual World of Second Life. This session will feature the major activities of CPAs in the virtual world. Watch for some special guests that will be joining us... 

Including a surprise visit by Linden Lab & Second LIfe founder Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden).

From accounting education to continuing education, meetings, student recruitment, and even consulting and business development. The virtual world of Second Life offers an exciting new medium to do real work!

Register for CPAs & the Virtual World of Second Life Monday, June 15th 4:00 pm - 4:50pm (ET) or 1:00 pm - 1:50pm PT/SLT

Here are our materials for the session: CPAs & Second LIfe and a post on our companion blog CPAs in Second Life

Pictures from the session are here on Flickr - STay tuned for archive of video from today.

Resources & recent articles:

See our blog post – 2008 Year in review – CPAs start adopting Second Life for Training

and our post at CPAs in Second Life – Is Second Life for Real?

Accopunting Technology (Alexandra DeFelice)  article - Second Chance for Second Life - May 20, 2009

Hypergrid Business (Maria Korolov) – Do You Need a Virtual World – May 13, 2009

Accounting Web article (Gail Perry) – Flying Around CPA Island with Tom Hood – March 5, 2009

SLENTREPENEUR MAGAZINE - Real Life in Second Life

Ground Breaking article in Journal of Accountancy – Accounting for Second Life June, 2008

Is Second Life for real?

We are often asked if Second Life is THE Virtual World platform. This latest report indicates the leading virtual world platform continues to be strong.

Linden Lab released encouraging statistics this past week on their Second Life blog from their CFO and frequent guest presenter on CPA Island, John Zdanowski aka Zee Linden (pictured at right on podium) in-world. This is great news for educational institutions and training organizations as the platform continues to grow and mature.

"Linden Lab is pleased to announce results for Q4 and 2008.  User hours increased by 61% over 2007, highlighting the tremendous growth rate in user engagement that Second Life maintained throughout 2008.  User hours increased steadily each quarter, culminating in a record-setting 112 million user hours in Q4.  In addition:

• Peak concurrent users were up 31% over 2007
• Land owned by Residents increased 82% over 2007
• Exchange Volume increased 33% over 2007
• User-to-user transactions in Q4 increased 54% over Q4 of 2007.

Financially 2008 was an outstanding year for the company from a profitability and cash flow perspective. We are in a strong position to weather the economic downturn while continuing to invest in the Second Life platform." - Zee Linden, CFO of Linden Lab

The other thing I noticed, is that Second Life seems to be maturing and finding its niche - meetings and training. Considering that everyone is looking to cut costs and improve efficiency, I am bullish on the potential of Second Life to do real training, meetings, and business. As Zee Linden said during last year's "mixed reality" session at the MDBIZEXPO, "Second Life is more compelling than a conference call, less intimidating than a video conference, and a hell of a lot better than business travel."

We held

See our prior posts on Virtual Worlds & Training:

CPAS in Second Life blog post A Second Life for training

CPA Success blog post Four tips to help you cross the digital divide

CPA Success blog post Here's a look at Second LIfe's business potential

Accounting Education & Second Life:

CPA Success blog post Accounting for Second Life

Journal of Accountancy article (June, 2008) Accounting for Second Life

CPAs in Second Life post about Accounting Education

CPA Island Hosts Session with the AACSB

Dr. Michael Kraten of Suffolk University will present "Using Virtual Reality Technologies to Explore Worlds Beyond the Blackboard" at the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) International Conference in St Petersburg, Florida. This session will be presented in a "mixed reality" format at our outdoor amphitheater on CPA Island 2 in Second Life. The event will be held Monday, June 30 from 1:30pm - 3:00pm (EST) or 10:30 am - Noon (SLT/PDT).

Hope to see you there!

Here is the presentation we will be using Download cpas_second_life.pdf

CPA Island hosts "Mixed Reality" event with CFO Rising Conference

Linden Lab's CFO John Zdanowski addresses SLACPA members on CPA Island in Second Life while speaking to a "live" audience of four hundred CFOs at the CFO Rising Conference in Orlando, Florida. This is what is known as a mixed reality event when you mix a traditional "live" conference event with a virtual reality event.

                      

Using a microphone and hooked up to the conference sound system, both audiences were able to interact via voice and chat. John Z's alter ego, Zee Linden is shown in the pictures (he's the buff blonde guy) speaking to almost thirty SLACPA members who came to see his presentation in Second Life. The virtual audience was able to interact with John and the audience in Florida could actually hear the questions from our SL audience.

CPAs, Accounting Educator's, CPA firm administrators, a CPA Firm COO, and several MACPA staffers were among the SLACPA attendees in the virtual world.

The feedback from the SL audience was great, despite some technical sound difficulties for some of our attendees. We learned that you have to play with the voice and sound preferences - clicking on the voice icons on bottom right of your screen and then adjusting the volume slider to hear, a well as checking the voice preferences in your setup.

I thought Zee's presentation was great and we will be offering the update to this event during the Maryland Business Expo on June 18th at 2:15pm - 3:05 pm (EST) 11:15 am - 12:05 pm (PST /SLT).

This will be another "mixed reality" event with Zee broadcasting to our "live" audience from inside Second Life, and of course to our virtual participants. The CPE credit will be possible thru the use of Web 2.0 technologies using our blog to host the materials, bio, and other required content and a post session survey.

For a recap of the presentation see our post Here's a Look at Second Life's Business Potential

CFO Rising Session to be held in Second Life on CPA Island

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 from 10:45 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. (EST) 7:45 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. (PST/SLT), the Business Learning Institute Conference Center on CPA Island will host the CFO Rising session featuring Linden Lab's CFO, John Zdanowski.

John will be speaking on The Virtual World of Second Life from inside of Second Life as his avatar, Zee Linden. He will be speaking to two audiences - the live audience in Orlando and the virtual audience in the conference center inside Second Life.

From the virtual stage, participants will hear his presentation,view his powerpoint slides and even network and chat with others in the audience. We are excited about the possibilities of delivering real training using this platform. Plans are underway to qualify this for CPE (Continuing Professional Education).

See the post on CFO.com featuring this session and CPA Island A CPA Fantasy Island in Second Life

Check back for details on how to get CPE for this event...

CPA Island to Host first virtual/real Accounting & Business show

CPA Island just finished adding exhibit space in preparation for the first Accounting & Business show in Second Life. The Maryland Business & Accounting Expo will be held on June 17th & 18th, 2008 at the Baltimore Convention Center and in Second Life on CPA Island at the BLI Conference and Exhibition Center. The show was developed by the Maryland Association of CPAs and Fusion Productions and features MACPA's Business Learning Institute.

 

The virtual expo will feature booths customized for our exhibitors and feature notecard givers and computer terminals with live links to their websites. The virtual show will be broadcast live from the exhibition floor during the show. Space is limited to the first thirty sponsors & vendors. All exhibits in Second Life will be up for nine months following the show. This is an amazing opportunity to get companies and providers to the Business & Accounting communities "on the grid"  in Second Life and on the first and only island dedicated to CPAs - CPA Island.

The show theme will be Innovation & Growth: How to Find & Seize Great Opportunities. The show feature national thought leaders in the business and accounting fields. Starting with a keynote by Jim Swartz, bestselling author of Seeing David in The Stone, Professional Services guru, Ron Baker will talk about his latest book, Mind Over Matter. Mike Willis, founding chairman of XBRL International will be on hand to present the latest developments in IFRS and XBRL. Leading Technologists Bob Scott from Accounting Technology Magazine and Greg LaFollette of CPA technology Advisor are also expected to share their wisdom and insights. All in all there will be 70+ professional development seminars featured along with six general session designed to help the entire Maryland business community.

Sponsorship information can be found by contacting Barbara Berlin at (443) 858-5823 or mailto:barbara@macpa.org