VenueGen CEO, David Gardner will be speaking virtually at the physical conference in San Diego at 1:15 ET January 10th. He will be joined by two other virtual industry CEO’s discussing the value of greater online engagement, what audiences/use cases are the best fit for immersive modalities and where online immersion creates the greatest ROI.
David Gardner, CEO of VenueGen
Although the VEW conference have been an annual physical event for years, this is the first time one of the presenters has presented virtually at the event. “There’s certainly some irony in flying each year to a physical conference about meeting virtually”, Gardner states. This milestone is yet another indicator that immersive technologies have matured and are ready for the enterprise. Gardner will be using the VenueGen platform for his virtual appearance, content and audience interaction.
EXCERPT: Chris Lineberry is the principal of the Florence Virtual Academy in Florence, Arizona.
Chris Lineberry
“One of the problems with online schooling is building a sense of community,” he said. So the school decided to use the VenueGen Web-based meeting platform because it offered the ease of use and security his school needed at an affordable price. “This gives us a real ability to reach students,” he said.
Immersion.VenueGen users get a sense of immersion – of “actually being there” – when they attend virtual events on the platform. As a result, it helps bring students together who are located around the school district, or, in fact, anywhere in the state. The school also holds all its staff meetings in VenueGen, as well as meetings between teachers and students.
Staff meeting in VenueGen. (Image courtesy Chris Lineberry.)
“What I really like about it is the sense of immersion that the kids and the staff are able to get from it,” he said. The schools serves a wide variety of students…But they know the value of a high school diploma and a quality education,” he said.
VenueGen, a leading 3-D Virtual Meeting and Training platform provider, has been named one of the Cool Vendors in Social Software and Collaboration in the April 6, 2010 research report published by Carol Rozwell of Gartner, Inc.
As stated in the Gartner report, “the five vendors profiled in this Cool Vendors research demonstrate the breadth of social-software tools. On one hand, they can use the social network to solve problems. In addition, they can provide a platform for engagement in virtual environments that’s superior to more traditional settings.”
Gartner, Inc. names VenueGen a "Cool Vendor" of 2010 for it's e-training app
VenueGen’s 3-D meeting and training platform is delivered as a browser-based software as a service. Users sign up just like a simple Web conferencing tool, and they instantly get a photorealistic avatar based on a picture of themselves. Unlike passive audio and Web conferencing, users are engaged, vocal, and actively participating, thanks to the virtual environment replication of a real conference environment. VenueGen starts at $90 per month, and free 30 day trials are available.
“Billions of dollars are spent each year on business meeting travel, training, and distance learning. The 3-D meeting, collaboration and corporate training markets are accelerating. 3D meeting platforms are becoming mainstream applications,” said David Gardner, CEO VenueGen. “We believe Gartner has identified this trend and we are proud to have been included in the Gartner Cool Vendor report. At $90 per month, VenueGen becomes attractive to every company using audio, video and web conferencing. Our video shows how VenueGen is remarkably different.”
VenueGen features:
Automated setup - Sign-up is as fast as a Web conferencing tool. Users set their avatar profile and their avatar moves and acts like they would in the real world.
Photo realistic avatar – Users can upload a photo, it maps to the avatars face, and people can see you and identify you instantly in a meeting. Avatars look just like their owners. No cartoons, no game characters — you look businesslike, and you get business done.
Positional sound – Drag your mouse left, drag your mouse right, and you scan the room and will see and hear people exactly as they are positioned in the room. This dramatically reduces audio fatigue experienced in typical audio and Web conferences.
Integrated content – Share documents, PowerPoint, or browse the web while you are in the 3D room.
Ease-of-use – No menus, no keystrokes. Users simply right click their mouse, and options such as “sit in this chair,” “walk over here,” “point at this person” appear. Users are productive in minutes.
Replicate the real world – You can be in Paris, London, New York in the same afternoon. Without any video equipment, you can conduct lifelike 3-D meetings with colleagues and partners around the world. All you need is a laptop, and either voice over IP, or any telephone line (standard dial-in like Web conferencing)
Used for Corporate Training & Collaborative Meetings
Corporate training - Put dozens or hundreds of people in a virtual room, sharing content and ideas, and running productive virtual training classes that are truly engaging. Attendees learn more, retain more, and are more vested in the outcome. They leave training classes connected to their colleagues and revitalized, with high recall of information and ready for action.
Meetings – Every business line manager has staff meetings, project meetings, informational meetings and more. Team members are all over the country or the world. VenueGen is used for these applications in small to large companies from millions to billions in revenue.
ONE+ ‘s Jason Hensel talks with VenueGen CEO David Gardner about the usability and user-engagement advantages of immersive web technologies. “You recognize people on-site. You can see who’s talking. When everyone turns and looks at you, your energy level spikes. It feels just like being in a real meeting.”
Creating engagement via Web conference is challenging even with small groups, and large groups can be almost prohibitively difficult to monitor. The ideal solution would recreate the natural engagement and interactivity of face-to-face instructor-led training (ILT) in a way that’s as easy, convenient, and accessible as Web conferencing. A handful of up-and-coming companies are introducing Web 3-D apps as a potential solution. They look similar to Second Life in certain basic ways, but are super-intuitive to use and are designed specifically for business use in terms of scalability, participant control, usability, and multi-screen, low-bandwidth content-sharing (a useful feature that ’2-D Web conferencing platforms don’t provide).
The best of these platforms have gone to great effort to recreate the essence of face-to-face communication, without a user learning curve, for better online learning. For example, they feature directional, actual-distance (but adjustable) sound, which studies indicate is crucial to the brain’s ability to quickly absorb information.
They also allow both learners and instructors to be in control of all the non-verbal communicators we semi-consciously use in-person that contribute to an engaging sense of presence. Instructors can tell by sight when learners are focused and engaged from anywhere inside the 3-D training room (and learners know it, so they’re naturally more engaged).
Collaboration flows more freely with more people participating and fewer people talking over one another or ‘checking out.’ Because they’re virtually sitting among their easily identifiable peers instead of alone in front of a 2-D Web conference, learners are more accountable for their presence, so they become more engaged in the course objectives. In essence, being in one of these Web 3-D environments ‘feels’ natural, so both training and learning become almost as naturally engaging as they are with in-person ILT.
- Kate Hendrick, director of marketing for VenueGen
Attendees at one of the seminars at this year’s Virtual Edge Summit in Las Vegas were amazed at the 3D technology that’s now on the market for virtual meetings and events.
Comments such as: “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” were uttered during the demonstration by David Gardner, chief executive of VenueGen – and this was despite a technology malfunction that meant it had to be cut short.
What delegates saw were 3D virtual meetings populated by avatars, but more life like than people are used to seeing in environments such as Second Life. What’s more, the avatars had the faces of the people they were representing, with the 3D immersive technology creating a real feeling of the presence of others in the meeting.
What was clear to Gardner’s audience was how much more engaging an environment VenueGen’s 3D event was compared to the two dimensional versions that are becoming increasingly widespread. And it is this increased level of engagement that Gardner believes makes meetings held in a 3D environment much more effective.
“Analysts Gartner and Forrester both predicted the rise and widespread adoption of Web3D by 2010,” said Gardner. “This was the hype cycle, and what people found was that the technology was difficult to build, couldn’t negotiate firewalls easily or be downloaded quickly enough. Plus it was complex to use and expensive. But now we’ve hit the five-year point, I believe all these issues have been resolved.
“But one key issue remains – we have failed to make the case for how important engagement is to online meetings. It’s very hard to measure, but last year $350 billion dollars was lost through disengaged staff, according to research.
“Why would people spend so much on Telepresence, when WebEx was so cheap? Because it is engaging and 2D screen sharing is not.”
So what about the cost of 3D immersive meetings technology? Well Gardner was keen to point out that is has become very affordable.
“Web3D can be installed in under a minute, learned in 30 seconds and is cheaper that WebEx,” he said.
So after a five-year wait, perhaps Gardner may well see his vision for the future of corporate meetings come to fruition in 2011.
David Gardner will explore the potential of new in-browser meeting environments to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of dispersed business teams
(Morrisville, NC: January 10, 2011) For business to truly recoup value by moving training, meetings and events online, they need a more engaging, natural-feeling solution than the web conferencing and screen sharing platforms that dominate today’s market, says David Gardner, CEO and creator of VenueGen, a subscription-based web application that enables business customers to more effectively engage teams on-line in fully immersive Web3D virtual conferencing environments.
Gardner will explore these solutions, as well as the implications of new technology on the future of corporate training and events, in two sessions at Virtual Edge Summit 2011, the industry’s largest gathering for virtual events, meetings, communities, and learning, held this year at the MGM Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as virtually.
3D Immersive Worlds for Business Engagement will take place Wednesday, January 12, 11:00 – 11:45 PST. Gardner will join IT/IS expert and KohdSpace Chairman Terry Thorpe, along with John Jainschigg, virtual events expert and CEO of World2Worlds, Inc (www.world2worlds.com), to examine the proof and case experiences behind the capacity of fully immersive 3D online environments to drive engagement and improve results.
Virtual Environment Platforms: From Social Gaming to Social Mediawill take place Wednesday, January 12, 2:15 – 3:00 PST. The session will focus on how the convergence of social gaming and virtual environments is changing expectations for online business experiences. Other thought leaders participating in the session are Ken Hayward, digital media expert and CEO of Vcopious; Rahul Rankavat, director of software development at Vcopious; and Manu Gambhir, social gaming expert and CEO of Ryzing.
For more information, or to schedule an interview with Gardner at the event, please contact Kate Hendrick by phone at 919-228-4995, by email at khendrick@venuegen.com, or via Twitter at @VenueGen.
About David Gardner
David Gardner is a serial entrepreneur, technology investor and futurist with a proven track record of early identification of paradigm-shifting technologies. He is a trusted advisor concerning new technology trends who believes Web-3D is on the verge of dramatically transforming many web-based business models as we know them today.
David Gardner, CEO of VenueGen
Experienced in taking IT products and Internet-service model companies to market, Gardner has founded seven technology companies—including PeopleClick, the first hosted software-as-a-service enterprise application; and healthcare communications technology exchange ProviderLink, now owned by Compuware—without a single failure or loss of investor funds. He has served on several boards, spoken at multiple industry conferences, and published over twenty forward-thinking papers and articles on technical, business and managerial topics.
In 2007, Gardner founded VenueGen, a company dedicated to creating a new standard of in-browser web-conference platform for more engaging, productive and efficient online training, meetings and events. He currently serves as CEO.
About VenueGen
VenueGen is a subscription based Web3D conference application enabling business customers to efficiently and affordably train, collaborate, meet and share content online without sacrificing the engagement and productivity of face-to-face communication.
Compared to the web conferencing and screen sharing platforms currently on the market, VenueGen’s immersive 3D environments facilitate lifelike, natural-feeling interaction for improved learning, motivation and overall performance. VenueGen features fast, easy installation; a minimal usability learning curve; private, secure environments; and one-of-a-kind content sharing capabilities that use negligible bandwidth, allow multiple content windows to be shared simultaneously, and empower each user to control his or her personal view of content.
VenueGen is included in Gartner’s Five Coolest and Most Promising New Technologies, and has received accolades from USA Today, Business Week, CNBC and others. To learn more, please visit the company’s website at www.VenueGen.com or follow VenueGen on Twitter at twitter.com/venuegen.
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The makers of VenueGen are seeking your input to design the next ideal venue. What kind of room, elements, functions, or settings would you integrate to enhance your VenueGen virtual meetings?
VenueGen is the on-demand web conferencing platform that enables users to host public and private virtual events in businesslike venues. Creating a meeting is simple: Customize your avatar, choose a virtual room, and step inside where you can see and hear your colleagues around the room.
When placed in a familiar environment, participants feel naturally inclined to open up conversation and interact with one another. Versus the average phone conference call, the true-to-life experience impacts group productivity in a significant way. User report improved communication, faster learning, and better decision-making. This is totally immersive 3D web conferencing.
At present, VenueGen offers over 30 different businesslike venues for users seeking formal or casual meeting places. Some of our users’ favorite rooms are the board rooms, lecture halls and theaters. Among the most unique spaces are the outdoor stone amphitheater, a late night talk show studio, and even the deck of a luxurious yacht. Check out some screen shots of the rooms here.
Our customer feedback is important to us, and your comments will help make the virtual experience even more productive and meaningful for everyone. Thanks!
Many businesses are looking for ways to save time and money. One area that tends to get a lot of attention is travel expenses. For businesses that require frequent collaboration between workers, VenueGen’s virtual meetings can provide cost-effective solutions without losing the benefits of face-to-face communication.
VenueGen makes expensive transportation costs and travel time a thing of the past. The virtual 3D web conferencing platform provides an effective means of communication as effective as a 500,000 telepresence room—it’s that sense of actually being “there” with your colleagues. Featuring photo-created avatars, realistic meeting rooms, VoIP technology, surround sound, and content sharing, it’s the all in one program that’s easy to use and simple to install. No telepresence equipment or cameras required.
The effective communication produces better results for both business and customer relationships. Meeting attendees are able to see people’s facial expressions and read their body language which can greatly facilitate communications. Sharing documents and presentation slides enables worker collaboration over the internet.
The browser-based software loads in just seconds, allowing remote workers to come together in real-time over the internet. VenueGen makes it possible to hold meetings, lead training sessions, and service clients right from your desktop.
