By Marcus Cannon, Business Development & Project Manager, Visual Purple, LLC

Sometimes the bottom line really is the bottom line. In the midst of an economic downturn executives are leery of spending on anything that doesn’t seem likely to increase profit. Charles Cooper echoed this sentiment recently closing with the advice that “telling the boss that you’re saving the environment in the process is not likely to be the clincher. Ever.” Similarly, JP Morgan’s managing director Mike Dorsey recently put it as bluntly as possible: “Saving the world is not a substitute for being financially successful.”

Luckily, using virtual world technology in order to offset travel costs is cleantech that makes sense. More and more companies are recognizing that consistently high fuel costs, lodging costs, per diem costs, and the opportunity cost of having the workforce away from the workplace doesn’t make that much sense. There may always be some number of events that companies will want live, but that number is dwindling. As virtual world technology improves, distributed workforces are more and more able to effectively use VWs as effective mediums for training, project meetings, team-building exercises, and conferences. Despite the traditional misconception—employees won’t pay attention because they’re sitting in their offices on their computers—many firms report that employees have higher immersion and participation levels while attending via a VW. These employees are not jet-lagged, they’re not sitting in a stuffy (or frigidly cold) conference room with dim lighting, and they’re able to bring the full resources of their native work environment to bear on problems and challenges being collaboratively discussed in the VW.

In a bear market prospects for cleantech as a feel-good investment are indeed bare. But when a minimal investment can offset massive costs and contribute to a company’s environmentally friendly image, that’s an investment executives are likely to embrace.

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Ever had to travel to a business tradeshow or conference? As I am sure most of us have, we endure the tedious travel arrangements, flight and transportation hassles (don’t you just love those buy on board meals???!!!…yummmmyyy!), outrageous hotel and food expenses and those seemingly endless days. An emerging alternative to eliminating these hassles and cutting expense would be to attend a Virtual Event. So what is a “Virtual Event” you may ask? Well it is a virtual world based experience that allows you to interact with the conference and other attendees in real time and non-locally. A much easier solution and Virtual Events = Lower Cost for companies.

The world is going green, oh excuse me, “clean” seems to be the new buzz word, following this trend, Unisfair began calculating the positive environmental impact. So what’s the moral of this post? Virtual Events cater to a variety of needs, range in size, are extremely cost effective, and enjoy political correctness.

Some of us at Visual Purple have experienced virtual conferences and the general consensus is they are a step in the right direction. However, fidelity seems to be the operative concern. One of the tangible benefits of enduring a real conference is to mingle and meet new folks and explore ways to work together. And key to that relationship building is detecting the nuances of body language. As virtual worlds become a higher fidelity experience, we can see the day where virtual conferences really will be almost as good as being there.

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