Does it have to be timely to be relevant?

I saw a very interesting online conference come across my email the other day. It's for "Stepping into Virtual Worlds" which happens January 30th, completely virtually through Second Life. How incredibly neat is that?

I did see this posted last year, but I was too late to attend at when I found the conference. So when I saw this the other day I was excited that perhaps I could attend this year and experience some true learning through Second Life. I've sat in on some concerts, movies, and even a few comedy shows. I've visited some sandboxes where I could read text and learn how to perform some tasks. I haven't yet experienced a learning scenario.

I mentioned this to my boss and thought what a great opportunity to see some of the potential opportunities for this type of training. I can imagine how wonderfully it could possibly work with a hospital facility's training needs. Best yet, is I could use it as a work at home day and stay in my pajamas.

Unfortunately the feedback I received from my supervisor, who by the way is supportive about my elearning initiatives, question the relevancy of such a seminar at this point in "our" elearning journey. "If something like this is years down the road of time from where we (our organization and learner) then should I be wasting time exploring this option now."

My answer is yes. I think it's quite important to be exploring all learning/networking options out there within reason. When I say within reason I mean within money constraints and time constraints. I've found that you never know where the next great idea is going to come from that you can apply to your/work learning environment. Being on the forefront of many of these tips, tricks, and techniques is very much intriguing and exciting.

I'm curious if others have come across this "road block" within their personal learning initiatives. Do you believe that there is a proper time for seeking out new learning techniques or should one explore them as they present themselves?

SL Question - How do you start sending staff into Second Life for training?

I certainly haven't got all the Second Life lingo yet, but I'll try to pose my question here anyway. I was looking at a virtual conference in Second Life coming up that had some health care topics involved. Thinking about this I thought neat, I could register and give it a try to see what was covered and how they even do a conference in SL.

I then wondered though, if I wanted to create/send coworkers into SL for a virtual experience how would that be done. I realize it would take some time to get land and create my area (Sim? is that right?), but then what. Would you just tell your people to show up? I'm thinking not. It takes some time to get use to the environment, moving and looking around, inventory, chatting, etc. This is not to mention the billion hours (oh yes I mean billion) spent on creating and changing the appearance of your avatar.

I'm curious to find out how one would get their staff started into SL and how long it takes. Given you've already set up the area. Would you create 5-10 random avatars that staff could use to start with? Would you let them create their own avatars? Anyone interested in responding I'd be grateful. I'm not going there yet, but am quite curious.