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The Future of Work: Virtual Worlds and the Enterprise

Does meeting in a virtual provide a measurable return on investment? What virtual world platforms are best suited for business? What are the best practices that make an event or initiative successful?

Margaret Regan, CEO of the FutureWork Institute, joins us for a discussion of best practices in the use of virtual worlds for enterprise. Margaret will discuss three virtual world platforms that her organization has used to successfully deploy enterprise solutions, including Protosphere and Second Life. She will discuss how one client saved $1.7 to $1.8 million and 900 work days by holding a diversity and inclusion summit in a virtual world. She will talk about the specific challenges to virtual environments, including user orientation and support, and the technical challenges of deploying in a large organization. She will also talk about FutureWork Island in Second Life, previewed here:

Update: Show transcript.

Guest Biographies

Margaret Regan

Margaret Regan is the President and CEO of The FutureWork Institute—a global consulting firm that translates future trends to transform organizations. Operating on four continents—North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America—the Institute is an incubator of innovation and change in addressing current and future workplace issues: diversity and inclusion, work/life, the future of organizations and their employees. Its focus is on helping clients achieve a MindShift, a HeartShift and a SkillShift in creating a more inclusive and flexible work environment.

Recently, she developed FutureWork Island in Second Life to engage clients in diversity education and simulations in the 3D virtual world . She created the content for Cisco’s Connected Women’s Island in Second Life and worked with clients in the virtual world of ProtoSphere. She also developed the first Virtual Global Diversity Summit for 1000 executives of Sodexo and Microsoft on the Unisfair platform.

Margaret has appeared on NBC-TV’s Today Show, CBS This Morning, NBC Nightly News, and CNN, to comment on emerging workforce trends. She has been frequently quoted in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the South China Morning Post. Currently, she is featured on Close-Up TV as the CEO of “one of the most innovative businesses in the U.S.,” in Diversity Journal as a pioneer of the profession, in CNN/Money Magazine as the expert on future workplace trends and in Business Week for FutureWork’s creative approach to “my-job my-way, “my-business our way” and “my perks my-way.” In 2008, she was awarded the Promise of Diveristy Innovation Award by the American Institute for Managing Diveristy for these innovative approaches to work and for her ground-breaking work on diversity education in the virtual world.