Stuart I hear what you are saying re the technical challenges and the time challenges but I would suggest that similar challenges occur in any ‘virtual environment’. One must always have the hardware to manage the required applications and take the time to form some mastery of them so that the experience might be effective and not too burdensome.

In particular, I would say that the hardware challenge has reduced significantly since the early days of Second Life as, technically, the specs now required have not increased dramatically when compared to the expotential increase in the capabilities of even standard hardware.

In terms of the time taken to learn the environment, to enjoy a conference only requires learning a minor subset of the full capabilities, all of which are comprehensively covered in YouTube videos, and the SL entry tutorials that every new user is subjected to, i.e. how to move, how to teleport and minor use of Inventory. Once learnt… well it’s the old bicycle adage.

What I would say though, unequivocally, is that the benefits brought about by one’s sense of presence, of actually being there together with all the other attendees, far outweighs the effort required to attend.

I have written some on this in an article: Being there: A presence of self – https://fxualeducation.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/being-there/

Thanks Aaron !
I haven’t used Second Life for several years, but it was interesting, I also had a play with IMVU.
I think there are perhaps two challenges to using Second Life for a ‘standard’ conference.
1. The technical challenges – the hardware required to have a good SL experience.
2. The time challenge – it takes a certain investment in time to get the best out of a SL presence and event.
However, I do think there are things we can learn from these gold standard virtual environments, that can then be incorporated into more traditional environments.
Just as a basic starting point, if using Moodle for a virtual conference for example…
a) Everyone has a blag, which helps others understand their perspectives and opinions (or a feed from their external blog)
b) Everyone has a profile, with multiple photos
c) Everyone has interests and tags
d) Everyone joins groups – perhaps based on tags and interests
e) Everyone votes in Choice activities – so there is a shared understanding of the group
All these aspects, and many more, can be part of the pre-conference setup, and allow people to understand and connect better.
Hmmmmm, I might start thinking about the New Zealand conference soon, or the idea of an ElearningWorld online conference, and how some of these ideas could be beneficial 🙂

The conference site is here https://www.vwbpe.org/

I have written a number of articles here https://fxualeducation.wordpress.com/ which may give you some insight into the possibilities of virtual world environments in education.

Regards
Aaron