I spent some time looking at the technology from qwaq.com. They have built an application that is designed to support virtual teams by creating a “place” online for co-workers to meet. Think Second Life, but restricted and augmented for the purpose of facilitating online meetings and discussions. There are times when I see a technology and it takes about 30 seconds for me to figure out that this is something that will be valuable to us for years. Let me describe it to you…

First, they have paid me nothing for this exposure. I just thought it was worth writing about for our readers in that it is the first I have seen a virtual world tool used in this way, and with the cleverness they have included. They have built an inventory of rooms that you can assemble to meet in. Each one with a different type of usage, a few for just visiting between avatars, a few more for meetings, and some for idea sharing with presentation spaces on the wall. If you have your video turned on, you can either see a video window with other participants, or you can have the video delivered as the head of your avatar. So if you space things right, you real head fits nicely on the Gumby like avatar. Or, you can just create an avatar like any other virtual space.

The sound is spatially accurate so as someone moves around, the sound changes locations in your headphone. This is a bit freaky at times as an avatar will move away from you while talking and you actually hear them change to a different side of your head, and then the sound becomes more distant as they move further away. You can set the avatars to walk together in case you are moving through the office and want to walk with a co-worker. When you want to show someone a video or graphic, you can just throw it on the wall or floor and view it. If you want to collaborate on a document, you just drag the document onto a workspace on the wall and you can take turns editing things.

If you cannot be at the meeting online, someone can record the entire meeting as a video file and you can view it later. Just to get an idea of the visual, take a look at the graphic below. As I mentioned earlier, it is immediately apparent that this type of application improves on both Second Life, and video conferencing as a method for allowing virtual teams to get together online. Now, just so you know I am not doing an infomercial, there are still a number of areas where they can improve the system. The bandwidth constraints make it difficult to work with some video files, and the more people that attend a meeting, the more strain you will put on the bandwidth and processing capabilities of the application. The standard Gumby avatars could be dramatically improved in the graphical look. And they could provide some improved capabilities around facilitating the actual meeting process. With all of that said, take a look at a demo if you get a chance and see what you think.

By the way, the cool social media Website of the week is www.namechk.com. Use it to see if your username is available on all the top Web 2.0 sites.

Scott Klososky
Scott@klososky.com