The Future of (Virtual) Work

While the media industry zigged to Media Week events today, I zagged -- attending a seminar put on by my friends at the Future Work Institute , a high level consultancy to leading ( "Fortune 1000") companies on diversity issues. A tremendous amount of the conference focus was on virtual worlds. FWI has an island on Second Life where they conduct seminars on diversity, do various educational games, help people role play to understand what it's like to be treated as from a certain race or culture, and so on . They've gotten some big corporate clients, including Cisco, IBM and others to sign on, use the virtual space to do training.

I became more convinced than ever that companies are going direct to their constituents, using media techniques, and that the more media savvy consumer and worker will be more empowered this century. FWI founder Margaret Regan, and old and dear friend, raised some fascinating questions about media consumption according to generation, culture and nationality, and how to handle information gaps. But that'll have to wait -- I'm tired and it's late. Stay tuned.

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