Knowledge sharing in 3D virtual meeting rooms

Up until now I have been using videoconferencing tools on the desktop and laptop, like Skype and ooVoo, to communicate and collaborate with virtual team members. They are located in New York, Tokyo and Singapore. I still find these tools amazingly good.We are collaborating to write a manual, courseware, and a wiki of essential and highly desirable KM Methods and Tools for the Asian Productivity Organization.

Yesterday, Andy Burnett, a team member from KnowInnovation.com based in New York State and Cambridge UK, invited me to try a virtual meeting using Software-as-a-Service that combines collaboration with a Second Life type interface, from Teleplace.

It was awesome!! Immediately,I started thinking about how this could improve effective knowledge working, through its very rich environment.Even though it was meant to be a simple introduction and walk through tour, we started to look at and use project information, in new ways, handling more complexity more naturally.

Teleplace promotes this as a tool/service for collaboration in virtual meeting rooms. That it certainly is. It has an intuitive environment that, to quote teleplace "combines VOIP, Chat, Video, a robust Virtual Operations Command Centre, and can be deployed either behind a firewall or in the cloud."

In terms of effective knowledge management, at project, programme, team and organizational levels, I see much more.

For a start, knowledge working productivity could dramatically increase with faster and smarter decision making. And this should significantly accelerate knowledge transfer. And that is just the beginning, after a 30 minute introduction.

So, our global virtual team of 5 people, across Asia, USA and Europe, will take advantage of the 30 day evaluation period for our next virtual meeting, this Thursday 17th December.

I will share my learning's and experiences after that.

Ron Young

www.knowledge-management-online.com