Speakers from the following organisations shared their knowledge and experience of business in virtual worlds at the conference.

Biographies

Joe Little

BP Group

Joe Little works in the Chief Technology Office of the BP Group. The group looks at new and emerging technologies and seeks to accelerate adoption of those technologies within the group where there is real business value. His specialisation is in Virtual Worlds, Immersive Training and Collaboration and social networking. Over the past 3 years Joe and the rest of the CTO team have experimented with virtual worlds in a number of scenarios from IT strategy planning, training, collaboration, online events and consumer education.

Corrina Jorgenson

Afiniti

Corrina Jorgensen is co-owner and Managing Director of Afiniti Limited (www.afiniti.co.uk), an IT consultancy focused on inspiring, involving and interacting with the user to adopt technology for improved ways of working; ultimately making change stick. 

Her third company with the same investors, Corrina has over 20 years experience beginning in IT Training and Consultancy, quickly moving to general management running a £m++ entrepreneurially led organisation.  In the last decade or so, Afiniti’s focus has been on working with transformation programmes to really embed change and make it stick.  Adding a project management academy to the portfolio has enabled Afiniti to add value for the client, both by delivering better projects and by world class training solutions resulting in project management elevated as a profession in the organisation producing professionally qualified, certified project managers.  Corrina’s passion is in communications and change management using creative and innovative ways in which to engage and actively connect with the audience.  Corrina has held Board level appointments for the past 15 years and was Chair of the Board of Governors of her son’s school for two years.  Corrina is on the Advisory Board of KW Pro a German consultancy.  An enthusiastic, energetic results oriented individual, Corrina leads a dynamic and talented team based in London and lives in Edinburgh with her two sons and husband.  Corrina has a BA from Napier University in Edinburgh and began her career with BP.

Highways Agency

Fergus McBride Bsc MA, has been devising and applying business solutions for learning and HR issues in organisations since 1996. Fergus initially trained as a project engineer, researching engine technologies for the automotive industry. Recognising a personal interest in behavioural aspects of organisational performance, he further studied organisational approaches to business management. He applied this experience in a senior role for five years with a national HR Consultancy – working extensively with the technical and engineering sector and with public sector too. Since 2003, he has been working with the ‘Road Responder Community’, in particular contributing to organisational design and development with the Highways Agency (HA) Traffic Officer Service (TOS). Working with the TOS has meant integrating learning requirements of the TOS role with existing protocols, behaviours and ‘know-how’ already in place with the wider Roads Responder Community including Emergency Services.

Marcus Carter

Virtual Farmers Market

I went to school in North Wales and left at 16 to work in agriculture in Australia.  I rode horses and mustered large numbers of cattle as well as land irrigation for the following 8 years.  I returned to the UK and completed my education at agricultural college in Devon.  I worked for Genus Breeding in Devon for the following 8 years.  I looked after 230 diary farms and looked after their Artificial Insemination programmes from bull selection to matching strengths to weaknesses for overall herd improvement.  I then joined my family business manufacturing pate to the independent food trade in the UK and Ireland. I also took the brand to Japan and the USA as well as selected parts of Europe.  I currently own my own food distribution company specializing with Butchers in and around London with goods to sell in addition to meat in their shops.  Alongside this I am creating the world’s first 3D virtual farmers market.      

Magnus Reigstad

StormFjord

Magnus Reigstad started working in the Oil and Gas sector in 1988 at the Mongstad Refinery in Norway and is still working with Oil and Gas technology. Magnus is now CEO and one of the founders of StormFjord. He has a degree in physics from Norwegian University of Science and Technology and has been working within R&D as a consultant and as Associate Professor

Rob Edmonds

SRI Consulting Business Intelligence

Rob Edmonds has worked as a writer, analyst and consultant at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI) for over 10 years. He is joint founder of the Virtual Worlds@Work Consortium that SRIC-BI launched in 2007 to help companies explore and exploit new virtual worlds opportunities and now writes many of the Consortium’s publications. Rob has presented at virtual worlds and eLearning workshops and conferences around the world and written numerous reports on topics including eLearning, artificial intelligence, Web services, handheld devices and pervasive computing. Before joining SRIC-BI, Rob worked at IBM Global Services.

Coventry University

Dr El Parker is Principal Lecturer in Natural Disasters in the department of Geography, Environment and Disaster Management. Her primary area of interest is people centred early warning systems focusing of the communication of hazard and risk between professionals and the public. She has also been heavily involved in developing training programmes for emergency planning practitioners in order to build their capacity to respond to emergencies, this involvement raised an awareness of the need to provide cost effective operational, tactical and strategic training opportunities at greater frequency than many multi-agency budgets will allow. Virtual world environments can provide potential solution.

Caroline Avey

ACS Learning Services

Caroline Avey:  learning strategist with ACS Learning Services. She has over 15 years experience in instructional strategy, design and development, working on custom and generic projects for Fortune 500 clients and public agencies. Currently, she is known for her work on developing strategies and practical applications of learning in 3D-virtual worlds and with web 2.0 learning applications. She has experience in designing, developing and facilitating learning for 3D virtual worlds and 2.0 assets. ACS is a large, global professional services outsourcing firm, with ACS Learning Services providing  a range of multi-national, corporate learning to include strategy, content development, delivery and technology solutions. In a more traditional learning strategist role, she has assisted clients with development of learning paths, competency models, curriculum design, needs assessments, learning media selection guidelines, as well as, strategies for curriculum deployment and development of informal learning. Caroline has experience in a variety of media including instructor-led workshops, webcasts, multi-media, live experiential simulations, games, resource guides, competency profiles, curriculum development, executive workshops, resource support materials such as job aids, learning events at conferences, and most recently a web-based training with simulated learning paths.  Additionally, Caroline has worked to launch a BPO learning team for a major, global firm. In this responsibility she has co-developed the tools, processes, infrastructure, staffing, and staffing development for this outsourced team.

Paul Turner

The Walk In Web

Paul Turner started his working life as a psychiatric nurse and served 19 years in the British National Health Service as well as spending a few months as Director of Quality Assurance in a hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

After he became interested in the Internet, he decided to start a business building websites and later expanded this business to a point where it was earning more than his income in the Health Service, which prompted him to run his business on a full time basis.

In 2007, he closed that business to open a new one which specialised in Second Life. The Walk In Web offers Second Life consultancy to real world organisations, helping them to find ways to use this new technology to their advantage. Over the past two years, The Walk In Web has worked closely with The Serious Games Institute, helping to make their events available to a worldwide audience via Second Life and creating content in Second Life for a number of organisations. Paul can be found in Second Life under the name Pall Ariantho and is always happy to meet with people to show them round in there.

Daden

David Burden started his career in army communications before being "demobbed" in 1990, when he then worked for a variety of IT companies ending up as Marketing Director of Aseriti, a £70m B2B IT services company. During the Dot Com boom David founded a wireless data company developing both WAP and Voice XML systems, as well as founding the Midlands chapter of the First Tuesday Networking organisation.

David has been involved in virtual worlds since the mid 1990s, having created early spaces using VRML and played in several early 3D communal worlds. David has been in Second Life since 2004 and has also had homes in There.com and Alpha World. David founded Daden, a Virtual Worlds and Virtual Character Consultancy in 2004 to help businesses and organisations explore the social, educational and commercial potential of virtual worlds. David has a keen interest in artificial intelligence and Daden have an AI platform for use both in SL and on the web.

David is a Chartered Engineer and lives in Birmingham - where he is active in City and Regional business, technology and innovation initiatives.