HRPS Conference Presentation Summary

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to particpate with colleagues from IBM and Duke CE in a plenary session at the HRPS Conference

Our session was entitled “Second Life: What’s the Business Case for HR in the Virtual World?” My buddy Steve Mahaley (Ace Carson in SL) did an awesome job of producing this plenary. And boy was it ever a production! We had two large screens. One was projecting SL the other was projecting charts. We had an elaborate script and had to manage timing with Chuck Hamilton from IBM who was dialled in on SL from Vancouver.

We kicked it off with a fun video (Rip, Remix, Reload rules in effect here) where the idea was to present SL as a frivolous place that is the domain of 17 year old pimply faced males…check it out:

We then went through the Platform, the Industry Applications at IBM that dealth with HR (Recruiting, Call Centers, Intern Training, Onboarding, Alumni etc, etc, etc by taking a virtual tour with Chuck. We ended the session with a Video that summarized all the applications we had covered. Check it out:

We ended with a very healthy and pragmatic Q&A from the audience of HR Decision Makers and we got a lot of positive feedback after the session. All in all it was a great conference and I think we got these senior folks thinking about the opportunities that the first-person interface can provide to their increasingly important function.