The Virtual World Conference 2010

BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE

The Virtual World Conference is a one-day conference exploring the uses of virtual worlds for learning, collaborative work and business. The event will be held on 15th September 2010 and hosted entirely in Second Life, where 21 leading international speakers from across the globe will showcase innovation and applications within Virtual Worlds in order to debate key issues together with a worldwide audience.

Hosting the conference on a virtual platform, in deference to global insecurity and climate change, will see all stakeholders accessing remotely via their desktops. This unique event will follow the sun, with speakers in each time zone contributing to a full 24 hours of activity. With so many global challenges ahead, participants and speakers will begin to consider the opportunities for virtual worlds to address some of the core issues in contemporary society.

This conference, the first of future community-driven events will consider: how can virtual worlds change how we learn, work and socialize? Addressing this key question, the conference will focus on:

• Social interaction and collaboration in virtual worlds
• Business applications and strategies for using virtual worlds
• Virtual societies and communities
• Formal and informal teaching and learning in virtual worlds

The conference will bring together researchers and experts in the field of virtual worlds spanning from East Asia to West America to consider these central themes with the purpose of creating a new cross-sectoral virtual networking community for considering these and future issues and challenges.

The conference will be chaired by Prof. Sara de Freitas (Serious Games Institute/Lab Group) and Anna Peachey (The Open University/Eygus Ltd) in the European time zone, Andreas Schmeil (PARC/University of Lugano) in the American Pacific Coast time zone and Claus Nehmzow (Alcus International Ltd/Hong Kong) in the East Asian time zone.

The Virtual World Conference 2010 will host trainers, experts, teachers, policy-makers, managers, consultants, tutors and researchers from industry, academia, schools and policy development, with representation from a wide range of different sectors including:

• Education: schools, colleges and universities
• Research: universities, institutes, industrial labs
• Training: training organizations, private foundations
• Industry: international companies, SMEs
• Health: hospitals and training institutions, care trusts
• Environment: planning agencies, environmental agencies, emergency response organisations
• Government: central government departments, agencies and local government authorities

Confirmed speakers:

Chairs:
Claus Nehmzow
Anna Peachey
Sara de Freitas
Andreas Schmeil

Europe:
David Burden
Daniel Livingstone
Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Beatrice Hasler
Hanno Tietgens

East:
Mervyn Levin
David Piesse
Jay Jay Jegathesan
Brant Knutzen
Kyung Sik Kim
Simon Newstead
Benjamin Joffe
Barbara Westmoreland
Westley Field

West:
Sisse Siggaard Jensen
Sheldon Brown
Claudia Lamoreaux
Sabine Lawless-Reljic
Randy Hinrichs
Eilif Trondsen
Andruid Kerne

For more information and to book your place click HERE

Please note that access to the auditorium where the conference will take place will be restricted to the conference group. When booking your place, please leave your avatar name in the comment box to allow us to identify you.

For more information contact our Events Team sgi.events@cad.coventry.ac.uk or call +44(0)2476 158 201.