About This Report

At a Glance: Key Conference Facts:

• This year is the second for the conference, which launched in New York, New York, in March 2007 with about 400 people attending. The following conference in San Jose, California, in October 2007 was attended by about 1000 people, increasing to more than 1200 for this New York event, and with over 40 exhibitors.
• The sessions were organized in the following four tracks (two of these tracks—kids and teens and virtual law—had not had extensive coverage at the 2007 events):
  • Kids and teens
  • Marketing and entertainment
  • Virtual law conference
  • Technology and results.
• The choice of keynote speakers—from Mattel, MTV, and Neopets (the last two are both owned by the media company Viacom)—reflects the present reality of the virtual-worlds industry: Entertainment and gaming, especially for preteens and teens, represents the "low-hanging fruit" for the industry.
• A full program is available at www.virtualworlds2008.com.
• Among the speakers were executives from the following organizations (plus speakers from the exhibiting companies below): Google, Random House, IBM,Cisco, Sony Computer, IAC/Interactive Corp., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Sulake Corp., and Needham & Company.
• Exhibitors included firms in the following categories (for complete list of exhibitors and links to their Web pages, see www.virtualworlds2008.com/expo/index.html):
  • VWs and VW platform developers. Firms included Activeworlds, Linden Lab, Qwaq, Multiverse, Whyville, Habbo, Gaia Online, and Freggers (German VW that targets teens). Sun (developing the Wonderland platform) did not exhibit but participated on several panels in the enterprise roundtable.
  • VW service firms. The three most well-known players—Millions of Us, Electric Sheep, and Rivers Run Red—and Metaversatility as well as IBM, were among the represented firms.
  • VW ecosystem players. A wide range of players in this category had booths at the exhibition, including some smaller service firms (like Wyndstrom and developers of tools for avatar design and construction, such as Daz 3D, Evolver, and CyberExtruder), and some middleware players including Mycosm and Vastpark.

Table of Contents

Conference At a Glance	3
Selected Observations	5
VW Industry: Status and recent developments	6
Platforms, tools, and technologies	9
Enterprise Applications	14
Selected Presentation Summaries	17
Charles Scothonand Rosie O'Neill, Mattel, Inc.	18
Jeffrey B. Yapp, MTV Networks Music & Logo Enterprise Group and Kyra E. Reppen, Neopets	21
Sibley Verbeck, The Electric Sheep Company	23
John Swords, The Electric Sheep Company	25
Future Trends	28
Conference Predictions and Implications	28