The globalization of businesses results in people that have to work together in teams being on different global locations. This increases the number of virtual team meetings, and therefore the need for software and tools to support these virtual team meetings.

This research will focus on the already available options and opportunities within Second Life. Previous work within Second Life provided some basic supporting tools needed for virtual meetings. We have already built several generations of brainstorm, voting, and idea organizing tools during the past two years. A key characteristic of tools to support virtual meetings is space, as SecondLife provides us with a 3D environment to build and use the tools. Another key characteristic is the feeling of co-presence, being present at a certain location together with other people, due to the virtual representation of yourself and others.

This research will seek to improve in the current set of available virtual team tools. The synchronous (same-time) type of meeting sounds already very promising, but there are some difficulties or perhaps better opportunities.

1. It takes some time and effort to get acquainted to the Second Life environment and its tools. Assistance is needed that can learn new users the possibilities of Second Life and the tools in an easy and time-efficient way, rather than the trial-and-error or personal coaching used at this time.

2. People living and working on different global locations have time differences. This increases the difficulty of planning same-time meetings. This increases the need for tools that can be used asynchronously since not everyone can be available to meet at the same time. There is also a need to create the need for some kind of a planning tool where everyone is not available at the same time.

3. Currently a tool-facilitator needs to be available when teams are using the tools during real meetings. When using the tools in an asynchronous way, the facilitator might not be available at all times.

With the previously mentioned opportunities and difficulties, there are two research questions to address during this research.
Research question 1:
How to use space to give people individual instructions on how to use Second Life itself and the there available virtual team tools?
Research question 2:
How to use space to plan and provide tool-support for asynchronous meetings in Second Life between virtual team members?
Practical implementation:
During the project, in addition to researching these two questions, additional solutions will be developed and built to test these in a real project. The project to be used for this is a game that is developed in Second Life by Tilburg University, in cooperation with Het Expertise centrum.
Responsibilities:
The project will be executed by Richard Mulders (BSc) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ir. Michiel van Genuchten, and Dr. Ir. Hajo Reijers. Project customers are Anthony Adams from the Alpine Executive Center in Second Life, Prof. Dr. Ir. Michiel van Genuchten, and Dr. Ir. Hajo Reijers.

Studying in a virtual world the effective use of business meetings.
Research Questions:
1. How can space as provided in virtual worlds help in idea generation?
2. How can the number of dimensions aid in structuring an idea session?
3. How can rights management be implemented within the limites of a virtual world?

This spatial tool enables groups to assess issues and vote on a series of questions in sequence using two criteria.

Questions can be identified in advance, or imported from another tool, for rapid voting. Facilitators can freeze a vote at any time and focus attention on the results dislay to allow discussion and analysis.

The upright dynamic display shows the Mean and Standard Deviationand continuously updates as avatars move on the voting floor grid.

The research follows the design-science paradigm in which a prototype is built, then tested, gathering feedback, and finally corrections are made starting the cycle again.

Three applications inside the virtual world Second Life were built for brainstorming, organizing ideas and for decision-making. The tools were then tested in face-to-face meetings with professionals from real companies as well as with participants geographically distributed around the world.

Brainstorming Posts

Early development of meeting tools for brainstorming made use of hovering text displayed in front of a post.

The display of Ideas generated on this tool were difficult to view and although the ideas culd be entered automatically in a database, they could not be further organized and sorted by the participants.

Dynamic Voting Board

This tool still has potential uses at the Center. It is quite functional for immediate feedback. A click on one of the choces registers the vote and the relative lengths of each choice bars are automatically adjusted.

The tool is two-dimensional but the immediate display of resluts is useful and efficient.

Multiple Choice Voting Poles

This two-dimensional tool is easy for perticipants to use, but the question and choices are displayed as hovering text... not so easy for some people to see.

This tool is being replaced by our new voting doors vot4e tool which is menu driven and three dimensional tool requiring each avatar to move through a door to register a vote. Its part of our mission objectives to keep remote participant engaged.