Gronstedt Group’s weekly “Train for Success” Second Life sessions bring together training and communication professionals globally to explore how leading corporations are transforming workplace performance with virtual worlds.

When: Thursdays, 9.00-10.00 SLT (noon-1.00 PM EDT/18.00-19.00 Europe Continental)

Click here to teleport to “Train for Success” if you already have a Second Life account.

Click here to learn how to sign up for a Second life account.

Click here to watch videos and download audio recordings of earlier events.

Send us an email with your avatar name so we can add you to our Second Life group to get regular updates of the week’s program.

Events

Thursday August 21, Jon Brouchoud, Second Life architecture
Jon Brouchoud (aka Keystone Bouchard) is both a real and a virtual architect who, along with an international group of colleagues, has been pioneering the use of 3D virtual space for collaborative design. He co-founded Studio Wikitecture, which uses Second Life as a platform to explore whether an open source paradigm can be harnessed to create innovative architectural and urban design solutions in both the real and the virtual world. Their most recent project won the overall 'Founder's Award' out of more than 500 entries worldwide in the Open Architecture Challenge, an international architecture competition developed entirely in Second Life. Jon will talk about virtual architecture, and about the collaborative tools and processes Studio Wikitecture employs in its projects. As a special bonus, he'll also take us for a tour of the Architecture Island collaborative environment.

Thursday August 28, Nicole Yankelovich, Sun Microsystems
Join us for a rare opportunity to learn about the features and vision of Project Wonderland, the open-source toolkit for building 3D virtual worlds for business and education collaboration. Nicole Yankelovich is the Principal Investigator of the Collaborative Environments Project at Sun Microsystems Laboratories.

Thursday September 4, Aaron E. Walsh about the Immersive Education Initiative
Aaron E. Walsh is founding Director and lead architect of the Media Grid Institute, which promotes the use of a public utility grid to develop and deliver high-end virtual reality and 3-D simulation programs. He's also a faculty member at Boston College and an international best-selling technology author. Last year, he was named to Computerworld's list of "40 Innovative IT People to Watch." Aaron will tell us about one of the Grid's central projects, the Immersive Education Initiative

Thursday September 11, Claudia L'Amoreaux, Linden Lab
Claudia L’Amoreaux, aka Claudia Linden, is Linden Lab's point person for education initiatives in Second Life. She’ll share success stories and best practices from learning projects in Second Life and will facilitate a conversation about how organizations can create immersive, constructivist virtual world learning experiences.

Thursday September 18, Erica Driver, ThinkBalm
While the transformational power of the 3D web may be obvious to those of us who've spent time exploring the medium, it's not necessarily obvious to our bosses and clients. Erica Driver will share her thoughts on making the business case for enterprise Immersive Internet initiatives. Erica is a co-founder and principal at ThinkBalm and a leading industry analyst with 14 years of experience in IT. Prior to co-founding ThinkBalm, Erica was a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, where she launched the company's Web3D coverage and was also the co-conspirator behind Forrester's Information Workplace concepts and research.

Thursday September 25, Chuck Hamilton, IBM
IBM's Chuck Hamilton will lead a virtual tour of IBM’s facilities. He'll also relate the incredible tale of how he convinced IBM’s senior leadership that they need to play more, a process that helped launch 15,000 IBM employees into Second Life.

Special thanks to Peter Guastella, aka PeterG Ember, and Lesley Scopes, aka Light Sequent, who help manage the events.