“Virtual Worlds in 2020 Workshop”

Join us Oct. 13, 2009  for our 3rd annual “Future of Virtual Worlds” session -  “Virtual Worlds in 2020 Workshop”.
This year we host an interactive workshop where you can bring ideas, input, and questions for a rare, long term view of virtual worlds available exclusively at the Virtual Worlds SIG.

In just a few weeks we enter a new decade equipped with abilities that existed only in science fiction a few years ago.  Although plans for using using graphical, collaborative virtual worlds  predate the internet itself by many years, many advances in productivity remain unclaimed.  It’s time now to take a look ahead. This workshop will produce a set of inputs showing what might be possible – along with a list of challenges to be overcome along the way over the next decade.

Some questions to consider:
- What must virtual worlds eventually do that they do not do now?
- What known changes will have the most impact on virtual worlds between now and 2020?
- What hurdles must be overcome to enable more collaborative virtual worlds?
- What goals should virtual world developers be most focused on in coming years?

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Kicking off this workshop will have a rare introductory demo of Meeting Labs (http://www.meetinglabs.com), a new offering from Forterra Systems by Laura Kusumoto, VP Forterra Studios and Chris Badger, VP, Marketing.

We will then break into discussion groups to outline some of the most crucial factors for virtual worlds between now and 2020, within a format of distinct scenarios. Leading discussion and breakout groups we will be joined by other leaders in the virtual world space such as Michael Gialis of Project Wonderland at Sun Microsystems, Inc. and others to be confirmed.

Have questions of your own?  Bring them on! Have ideas about solving challenges facing virtual worlds? Meet others interested in the same.  An online form is available for your advance input at (http://tinyurl.com/futureofVW) and results will be posted from the workshop.

Don’t miss this highly interactive session where you can directly impact the vision of the next generations of virtual worlds!

Bios:
Laura Kusumoto Vice President, Forterra Studios
Laura Kusumoto has over 20 years of experience in engineering, operations, creative design, 3D graphics, and AI. Before coming to Forterra Systems, Laura was President of IDO Systems, Inc., a startup that developed an MMP platform with virtual chat, dance, and robot-fighting applications. Before that, she headed operations for the digital media R&D group for LEGO, which included the commercial production Mindstorms. Laura was the producer in charge of the first Intuit (makers of Quicken) website, editor-in-Chief of the Pricewaterhouse Coopers Technology Forecast, and instrumental in the creation of a jet-fighter VR location-based entertainment system. Before moving into multimedia, Laura was an engineering consultant and analyst for organizations such as Hewlett-Packard and Xerox; and a project manager and software engineer in artificial intelligence, nuclear safeguards, and oceanographic applications. Laura received a MS in computer science at Santa
Clara University.

Chris Badger Vice President, Marketing, Forterra Systems Inc.
Chris Badger is a visionary executive leader for high growth business software application companies with a keen ability to launch and grow large revenue streams. He provides strong cross-functional management background bringing new products to market ahead of competition by collaborating closely with strategic customers and partners. Chris also has broad expertise managing high growth marketing, alliance and sales teams focused on maximizing market share, revenue, and profits. His extensive experience closing multimillion-dollar deals in domestic and international markets has yielded global revenue streams up to $210M per year.

Chris co-founded and was CEO of InsideScoop, an On-Demand business intelligence platform which launched two products before being successfully sold to Harte-Hanks (HHS), a worldwide, direct and targeted marketing company. At his prior company, gForce, he created and managed the North American sales organization as well as managed the strategic alliances for Cisco and Siebel before the company was sold to SumTotal Systems (SUMT), the global eLearning market leader. Chris held a variety of product management, alliance and sales management positions at Clarify, an early CRM market leader before the company was sold to Nortel, and with Quantum Corp. He has received an MS in Engineering Management from Stanford University and a BA Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth.
Virtual Worlds brings together the developers, programmers, and visionaries required to build virtual world platforms and their interconnected applications.  Meets fourth Monday of every other month, 6:30PM at Pillsbury Winthrop Office, 2475 Hanover Street, Palo Alto.

Logistics:
6:30 PM – 9:00 PM October 13, 2009
Pillsbury Winthrop
2475 Hanover St.
Palo Alto,  CA

Price:
$15 at the door for non-SDForum members
No charge for SDForum members
No registration required

Agenda:
6:30 PM Registration and Networking
7:00 PM -8:40 PM Presentations

[See you there! -Bob Ketner]