Amanda Linden reports on the Second Life official blog that Tami Griffith of the U.S. Army Research and Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) is organizing something called the "Federal Virtual World Challenge." According the Amanda, the Challenge is a competition and showcase to "encourage the global development community to create innovative and interactive training and analysis solutions in virtual worlds." In other words, to help the U.S. military and federal government writ large do education and data analysis more effectively using these virtual world technologies.
Amanda interviews Ms. Griffith about the Challenge in her blog post, which has some interesting insights from Ms. Griffith about the affordances of virtual worlds for collaboration across distances and institutions. I really like Ms. Griffith's point about how avatars have a "leveling effect" that can improve communications between people.
Given the nature of this site, I am particularly keen to know about the civilian and public good applications for the Challenge, despite its military sponsorship. After all, many of the civilian communications technologies that are part of our daily life came to us, in part, from the military, from DARPAnet to GPS.
I'll post here once the Federal Virtual World Challenge goes officially public. Stay tuned.
[IMAGE: "Patriot Island / US Military Veterans Center" in Second Life. Visit at this link]
