One of the things I’ve tracked on this blog is the growing occurrence of virtual conferences. Today there is a nice article in Business Week about how Cisco recently had a virtual conference alongside a physical conference in Hawaii. They used a special-purpose virtual world system made by Unisfair. One interesting quote from the article (talking about Unisfair and their conference events:
The Menlo Park (Calif.) company has arranged more than 400 events since it started in 2002. "It took us almost four years to get to that first 200, and in the last 12 months we’ve basically doubled in size," says Brent Arslaner, vice-president for marketing at Unisfair.
Cisco also has a substantial presence in Second Life. They were one of the major sponsors of the Life 2.0 Summit in March.
Troy McConaghy 
This is a fascinating growth area – and one that is just coming of age at the right time for our Carbon-Constrained travel limited future. We should post a metric on screen for "CO2 Tons Avoided" so all the participants can feel good and green. And the best part is that there is very little lost in terms of knowledge transfer – actually probably more efficient there – but the missing human contact can be made up with phone and video communications, along with the annual or quarterly "big convention" format.Thanks Troy – I always enjoy your SL conference comments on the Sunday BBC chat. EdselH
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