Jan de Bruin & Dirk-Jan de Bruin Tilburg University/ Multi-UserVirtual World Consortium P.O. Box 90153 5000 LE Tilburg The Netherlands J.A.W.deBruin@Kub.nl

Bruce Damer & Stuart  Gold ContactConsortium 343 Soquel Ave, Suite 70 Santa Cruz CA 95062-2305 USA contact Bruce Damer via our Webmaster

Bibliographic Reference: A paper from Bruce Damer, Stuart Gold, Jan de Bruin, and Dirk-Jan de Bruin, 'Conferences and Trade Shows in Inhabited Virtual Worlds: A Case Study of Avatars98 & 99'. Paper presented as an invited paper at the Second International Conference, VW 2000, Paris (France), July 5-7, 2000.
The paper is published as: Bruce Damer, Stuart Gold, Jan de Bruin, and Dirk-Jan de Bruin, Conferences and Trade Shows in Inhabited Virtual Worlds: A Case Study of Avatars98 & 99, in: Jean-Claude Heudin (ed.), Virtual Worlds, Second International Conference, VW 2000, Paris, France, July 5-7, 2000 Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Berlin, 2000: pp. 1-11 (ISBN 3-540-67707-0).

View of attendees standing at Ground Zero at the Avatars98 conference and trade show.View of attendees standing at Ground Zero at the Avatars98 conference and trade show.		Presenter in the speaker pod at  the Educators track of AV98.
AW browser showing the schedule  board of AV98.		Crowds at the ground zero of Avatars 99 viewing a live webcast and going to teleports.
Exhibits for companies and participating organizations such as Boing at AV98.		The information booth of AV99 with the booth map for the exhibit floor in the background.
Giant number 2000 unveiled at the final ceremonies of AV99		Giant number 2000.

Virtual organizations, inhabited virtual worlds, virtual conferences, virtual tradeshows.

The Contact Consortium (CCON) organizes large-scale events in Inhabited Virtual Worlds (IVW). Avatars98 (AV98) and Avatars99 (AV99), both times including a conference and trade show, were completely held in IVW-Cyberspace. In the first section, the use of IVWs is examined as an instrument for strengthening the bonds between a virtual organization, such as CCON, and its adherents.

We also point to the implications of using the encompassing concept of "world" for IVWs. In the second section, we discussthe origins of IVWs and some influences that shape their development.

The third section describes the manifold social activities that are already possible in IVW and some new developments. In the fourth section, we focus particularly on trade shows as an example of such a new social phenomenon in IVWs.

We applaud this, because social technologies from all kinds of social realms should be incorporated into IVWs. In the fifth section, we enumerate the lessons we learned about organizing large-scale events in IVW-Cyberspace.  Finally, we present our picture of the developmental situation regarding IVWs in the sixth section.

There is a movement of dedicated Internet users who want to colonize Cyberspace and transform it into a galaxy of interconnected IVWs. CCON is one of the spearheads of that movement. Because CCON is working with volunteers, it can only give the movement direction by mobilizing consensus and commitment. Such an organization is labeled "virtual" or "imaginary" (Hedberg et al. 1997).

Virtual or imaginary organizations utilize an inspiring vision, information technology, alliances, and other types of networks to initiate and sustain a boundary transcending activity (Hedberg et al. 1997). These organizations are mainly based on integrative forces such as trust, synergy, and information technology and not primarily on forces such as force and utilitarian motives (money). Because of those integrative forces, the imaginary organization, with only a small core of employees and the support of many involved volunteers, can have an impact far greater than you might expect from its formal size. All this makes this type of organization so fit to act as the organizational arms of a movement. Organizations can become imaginary organizations by a kind of transformation. Contact Consortium (CCON) started as such.

Working with people spread all over the world, it is very important for CCON to organize regularly large-scale events that inspire and mobilize its adherents. CCONs annual conference fulfills these functions. In order to make it easy for people to participate in their events, CCON held AV98 and AV99 completely in Cyberspace. CCON wants to colonize Cyberspace by creating Inhabited Virtual Worlds. Not only the concept of "virtual", but also that of "world" (or "society", as social scientists would call it) must be taken seriously. The traditional philosophical concept of "world" (Kant) means an all-encompassing context for the totality of human activities and experiences (Düsing 1986).

Following this line of reasoning, IVWs should be sustainable societies where complex social interactions are possible with a full range of social institutions to shape them. CCON's activities such as, for instance, "holding a conference'" "operating a virtual trade show", "organizing an architectural competition" (Damer et al. 1999) in IVWs are large-scale events which can be seen as experiments in building institutions for IVWs on the Internet.

As yet there is no authoritative history of the development of Virtual Worlds on the Internet that covers the whole period and analyzes the technological as well as the social forces and the prime movers (agents) which drive the development.
We can only point to certain developmental influences, such as the merging and crossover between (social) technologies, originating in various social contexts by different agents that use IVWs for different social functions and highlight certain breakthroughs.

The technological as well as the social roots of IVWs lie in the earliest text-based multi-user environments. In the 1970s and ‘80s we saw the development of UseNET, LISTSERVs, MUDs, MOOs, IRC and conferencing systems like the WELL (Rheingold 1993) and in the ’90 this continued on the World Wide Web.

A breakthrough was the merging of text-based chat channels with a visual interface in which users were represented as ‘Avatars’. That development gave an important impulse for the growth of IVWs. It occurred first in Habitat in the mid-1980s (Benedikt 1991) and reached an important milestone with the launch of the 3D

Internet-based Worlds Chat in the spring of 1995. By using Avatars, one can feel the emotion of being in world without having to bother about complicated and often expensive VRequipment.

Another important technological trend in relation to the graphics used in IVWs is an example of crossover between different social contexts and their types of social interaction. The development of 3D-rendering engines for IVWs was stimulated by 3D-rendering engines, which were originally used for gaming application. There are, for instance, the multimillion, multi-user worlds built for gaming by companies. Active Worlds is an example of a world platform based on a 3D-rendering engine.

IVWs did not only receive impulses out of the realms of chat and gaming. Many IVWs on the Internet are built for research purposes. Universities and other knowledge centers were quick to observe the possibilities of IVWs for educational purposes. And we should not forget the homebrew IVWs, created by dedicated individuals from all over the world.

The last category can increase enormously for several reasons. Firstly, IVWs could spread over the Internet because they could run effectively on a large range of consumer computing platforms at modem speeds. Secondly, the present generation is used to the document-based web. The next generation, however, brought up on Doom and Quake, is far better used to environments that stress navigation through very complex, 3D spaces full of behaviors. It is possible that for the next generation Inhabited Virtual Worlds will no longer be associated with specific social activities but will become part of an everyday life of play, learning, work and just being.  That will expand the social functions of IVWs across the whole spectrum of human activities.

We also think that major breakthroughs will come from developments within the realm of economic and organizational activities. We are thinking of two fields in particular. Firstly, the field of computer-moderated collaborative work, done by Virtual Teams recruited from a network of organizations. Secondly, the field of digital marketing techniques, such as virtual trade shows, as a medium by which a (virtual) organization can link itself to (potential) customers and clients. Both types of activities can be done using various technologies. Electronic mail and chat room technologies are still the most frequently used in, for instance, the field of computer-moderated collaborative work.

But also in the realm of economic and organizational activities the trend is evidently towards rich multimedia digital conferencing on the Internet (Bisdikian et al. 1998). The next logical step, in our opinion, will be that  the realm of collaborative virtual environments and advanced marketing techniques will provide us with new testing grounds for IVWs. The use of trade shows in AV98 and AV99 are examples of such experiments. Later on we return to this topic in this paper. 

If we look at the development of IVWs, not so much from the technological but rather from the social point of view, it is very important to have a lot of IVWs, preferably used in different social contexts. This creates the possibility of the spontaneous invention of new uses for IVWs. Such new social inventions can then spread from one IVW to others by imitation. Sociologists would call this the process of  spontaneous institutionalization on the Internet.

While we find the graphical component that creates a ‘place’ very important, we must not forget that, in the end, IVWs are all about social interactions and the bandwidth of human experience. Putting IVW to the test of applying them to different types of social events will speed up developments. We must pay more attention to the study of social technologies in IVWs that can be used to serve up different types of social events and - in the end - really full-fledged societies

IVWs, as a medium, are still in their infancy and it is still too early to know how the medium will ultimately be used.  There is, however, a growing literature on various topics such as Virtual Worlds architectures, community development (Damer 1998, 1999; Powers 1997) and avatar design  (Wilcox 1998).

IVWs as a social reality The famous sociologist Durkheim called social reality a reality in its own (Durkheim 1895). IVWs constitute a special type of social reality that can support several types of social interaction: collaborative work, educational processes (distance learning), gaming and so on.

IVWs can have small meeting spaces, but can also handle mass and large-scale social events and meetings with thousands of attendees from all over the Earth. In this paper we focus in particular on this latter type. AV98 & AV99: large-scale events in IVWs

CCON (www.ccon.org) hosted AV98 and AV99 as large-scale events totally online inside Cyberspace. AV98 was the worlds’ first large-scale social event held in this way on November 21 1998. We concentrate on AV98 and return to AV99 in the last section. There we enumerate the lessons that were learned from AV98 and describe the changes brought about by those lessons in AV99.

AV98 combined a number of Virtual World platforms, such as Active Worlds, Blaxxun, Traveler, WorldsAway and Roomancer, and also several webcast technologies were used. The center of activities was the AV98 world, a one-kilometer square space in which a conference hall was constructed, built in the Active Worlds platform. The intention when Avatars98 world was designed was for it to be usable by attendees on low-end (Pentium 100) computers on minimal net connections (14.4 BPS speed modems). The world was populated by specially designed Avatars, animated 3D models of users. It can still be visited by using the browser from www.activeworlds.com and selecting the AV98 world.

In relation to the concept of "world", it is important to stress that AV98 was certainly a large-scale event with over 4000 attendees represented as Avatars. It also encompassed a broad range of types of virtual meetings.
The complexity of AV98 can easily be demonstrated by enumerating the types of meeting spaces that the conference hall featured:

a landing zone for new attendees;

an awards area;

forty participating locations all over the world, some of which were con­nected by using streaming webcasts; a conference with six speaker pods for parallel tracks in virtual breakout rooms;

an art gallery;

a trade show of forty-eight exhibits for participating companies and organizations.

In the next section, we shall return to this topic.

>It is difficult to enumerate the elements that will always be present in a IVW, particularly a complex IVW, in an analytical way. In our opinion at least the following five elements should always be present. In the first place, it is central to the concept of IVW to use Avatars, the visual embodiment of people in Cyberspace. Interactions between Avatars go beyond interactions in simple virtual meetings in which only (spoken) text and documents are exchanged. Avatars can, increasingly so, also embody such important aspects as emotions. A conversation between people as Avatars in an IVW comes closer to the feeling of a face-to-face conversation than a conversation made by exchanging text by e-mail.

This makes the building and maintenance of the trust we mentioned before possible. A second important characteristic of IVWs is the possibility to construct various types of virtual meeting spaces. For their design, we can use different generative metaphors. The metaphor of room can be appropriate if the meeting space is functionally equivalent with rooms in physical space. One type of Electronic Meeting Room (EMR) in IVW can be the meeting space, where ‘one-to-many presentations are given to usually closed audiences with the assistance of bot-driven slide shows or audio. There are also EMRs where ‘a two-way interaction’ exists with one or more speakers and responding audiences in a distributed environment. This can be done by web links, live video and audio streaming and backchannel chat for questions and answers. Communication in the conference tracks during AV98 and AV99 was instantly logged for the conference proceeding.

The third element is the use of meeting spaces, particularly if we design large-scale events in IVW, which are functionally equivalent to ‘public spaces’. Such spaces make us realize once more that the concept of ‘world’ goes far beyond the concept of room. One of the functions such public spaces render is to give a crowd the possibility to find its way to more specific events. Crowd management in public spaces is very important in all large event spaces, such as conferences with multiple tracks, exhibitions, and theme parks. An eye-catching difference with physical reality is that, in IVWs, visitors can instantaneously teleport or warp themselves from one location to another. Central in AV98 was a tall 3D billboard of events with times and meetings. We return to this topic in the fourth section.

A fourth element of events in IVWs that is needed, if we aim at the feeling of total immersion in a world, are the side events. For instance, AV98 included an art gallery permitting the public to submit 2D artworks or photographic images for display. There was also a webcasting wall to display live camera views of a number of participating real-world locations or news broadcasts. In general, mediacasts can provide streams of video and audio from real-world locations directly onto surfaces in the virtual world or onto parallel web pages and generate an encompassing context for the (large-scale) event.

And last but not least, every virtual meeting will have some physical team locations coordinating the action in that world. The proper definition of roles, clearly posted information about schedule, group dynamics, and a culture of respect and quality hosting, handling fatigue after hours at the keyboard, and providing interesting visuals by webcasting from the ‘operations center’ are all activities which bring a virtual event to life.

Various kinds of exhibitions can be organized in IVWs, e.g., science, art, and trade shows. An art gallery was operational in AV98, but this was just a side event in order to increase the total experience of really being in a world. AV98 was mainly a conference and a trade show. We shall subsequently pay attention to the conference and the trade show as important social activities. Because it is more experimental to organize trade shows than conferences in IVWs, the possibilities of organizing trade shows are discussed in more detail.

The conference of AV98 consisted of six tracks. Several Special Interest Groups (SIGs) of CCON organized a track. To get an impression of the way the conference was conducted, we go briefly to one of the tracks organized by one of the SIGs of CCON in 1998. This is one of the more popular SIGs, which studies the relation between Virtual Worlds and learning. This track was one of the most well attended and best produced.
The track coordinator (Bonnie DeVarco) will prepare a report about the behind the scenes planning and operation of the track. This report will cover the way in which on AV98 the following standard elements of holding a conference was taken care of:

Introduction to the pod, the track and the speakers;

Setting up a speaker series in Cyberspace;

Real-time slide shows and panel discus­sion in a distributed environment;

Student experiences from the panel;

Instant logging and posting of conference proceedings.

The V-Learn track on education in virtual spaces, was again one of the best-organized tracks at AV99.

For more information about the set up of the V-Learn track and for the transcripts of their sessions held on AV99, see: www.ccon.org/vlearn/vlearn99.htm.

It is fair to say that the trade show in AV98 was only a modest experiment and not really a commercial endeavor, but more a fund-raising instrument for CCON. With this in mind, we pay attention to the possibility of organizing trade shows in IVW. One of our main points is that the general characteristics of IVWs can also be applied to trade shows in IVW on the Internet. In addition, we try to give these characteristics a more specific meaning while speaking about trade shows.

A developmental view on trade shows In relation to the development of multimedia ICT, organizing trade shows in IVWs is, as we see it, a logical step in a developmental process. First traditional trade shows in physical space started using more and more advanced multimedia applications and ICT. For instance, the tracking of attendees can be done be adding bar codes to their badges and scanning them at the booth for a statistical analysis of attendance.

The next step is to create virtual trade shows on the Internet where customers, by using more or less sophisticated search engines, can choose from a certain stock of products put into some kind of electronic catalogue.

This type of broker application is made more visually attractive by designing 3D-graphics. An example is the virtual 3-D Millennium Christmas Trade show with 3D booths, which was operational on the Internet from October 29 till Christmas 1999. Of course, this is not an Inhabited Virtual World: customers do not interact with one another.

The last and logical step is to have trade shows in an Inhabited or Avatar Virtual World. Clients and customers are then aware of each other and can interact socially. Trade shows in IVW on the Internet fulfill their broker function by being a place where complicated social interaction is possible.

There are not very many theoretical publications on trade shows. The publications are often practical and aim at ‘how to do it’ prescriptions.  In analyses of the functions of trade shows the distinction ‘selling and non-selling’ plays an important role.

In the arsenal of non-direct selling marketing instruments, trade shows in physical space stand out as instruments with a large bandwidth of consumer contacts. Attendees can see the products, experience hands-on demonstrations, ask questions and receive direct answers, hear and read complex messages about the products, and compare them with other products. Other marketing instruments like direct mail, advertisements in print, sales calls, and radio messages do not match this performance. All this is, however, about products and selling. Trade shows can also have important non-selling functions.

In one of the few articles in which a conceptual framework for the study of trade shows is presented, the activities at a booth during a trade show are categorized as information-gathering, motivational, relation-building, and image-building activities (Hansen, 1999).  This kind of analysis pushes the functions of trade shows far beyond the selling function. In general, we believe that trade shows in IVW can increasingly perform a broad range of social functions in relation to clients and customers in the future. Interaction mediated by Avatars and - eventually - comple­mented by video and audio streams in IVWs can come close to face-to-face selling interactions in physical spaces and also the non-selling functions can be performed in IVWs, as we shall elucidate in the next subsection.

We think that the point of view of the social scientist should be more prominent in the discussions about IVW in general and also when we think about new social activities such as organizing trade shows in IVWs. Hansen's type of action analysis brings the AGIL-scheme of the sociologist Talcott Parsons, the most influential social theorist in the 50s and 60s, to mind. Parsons theorized about four distinct functional aspects of action (Parsons et al. 1953), which could be ordered in a hierarchy. At the lowest level, he placed the Adaptive function of action (A), followed by the Goal-attainment (G), the Integrative (I), and the Latency function (L) as the function on the highest level.

The Adaptive function has to do with the acquirement of means by which an action system can adapt and partly control its environment. The Goal-attainment function is about the selection of goals to be achieved by the system and the mobilization and allocation of the necessary means for these goals. The Integrative function focuses on themes such as solidarity, cohesion and societal community. The Latency function is the highest function. This function specializes in the task of defining the code (central patterns and values) of action and the management of tension around these central patterns within the system. We bring the complexity of this scheme down to some easy recognizable action criteria that can be deduced from this AGIL-scheme.

After this, we concentrate on the flexibility and effectiveness of the means (A), the efficient realization of specific goals (G), the building up of social cohesion (I), and the problem of maintaining trust centered on a certain set of values, a concept, or an image (L). With this AGIL-scheme in mind, we conclude that in the research on trade shows, attention is mostly paid to the lower functions. In our opinion, the networking society and the prominent role played within it by virtual or imaginary organizations, will make cohesion-building (I), and the creation and maintenance of trust (L) with customers and clients into problems of growing importance. We underlined this already in the first section, when we spoke about the growing importance of the type of organization that Hedberg et al. call the virtual or imaginary organization.

In the (near) future, trade shows in IVWs will have the possibility of combining the traditional booth activities, which are focused on the product and - eventually - selling, with other activities. Lectures and talks (important for image building) can be held in some kind of conference room. There is also the prospect of in-depth discussions, the performance of complex collaborative work, and complicated negotiating being done in electronic rooms powered with the tools of Groupware. (Group (Decision) Support Systems).

In that way, the higher functions can receive more attention. This having been said, we shall restrict  ourselves to the lowest levels, the functional themes of flexibility, effectiveness, and efficiency that are the most employed themes in the discussion about trade shows. Flexibility, Effectiveness, and Efficiency First of all, in Parsons’ scheme, the theme of flexibility is related to the adaptive qualities of social systems. This quality depends on the amount of information and the elimination of various kinds of constraints (time, space, and cost constraints).

All kinds of registration techniques are used to gather information about the flow of attendees through the trade show in physical space. An advantage of organizing trade shows in IVWs is that tracking and ‘click through’ path tracing can be done quite easily. It is also an important aspect of trade shows in IVWs that bots, automated agents, can be employed.

They can perform simple tasks in the process of information exchange. They can also drive the visitor’s web-browser to retrieve their conference pass information and perform a ‘card swipe’ operation in exchange for sending information. Of course, the booth as such can also perform information broker functions and serve as a portal into either the organization’s website or to custom-built virtual worlds where special talks or events might be held during the period of the trade show.

An obvious advantage of virtual trade shows is that the trade show can be set up quite quickly. For instance, the Active Worlds technology provides streaming and reuse of 3D objects in a Lego-like manner. Therefore, trade show and booth designers can put together and duplicate a lot of prefabricated objects and design booths of all sizes.

The arsenal of 3D objects will grow fast. In the literature on trade shows, a great deal of attention is paid to staffing the booths. In trade shows in IVW, persons from the sponsoring organization can do this, but in future, bots can play a larger part in the booth activities. This implies a better division of labor between bots and persons. People can then handle the more complicated questions from clients and customers.

One other thing that trade shows in IVW can handle quite efficiently is the allocation and transportation of people to their chosen location. The technique of a ‘big board’ conference and trade show schedule, an idea borrowed from Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash, brings people to the desired location (booth) with a click of their mouse.

AV98 and AV99 were not subjected to rigorous evaluation research. What follows is nothing more than a couple of claims formed about these large-scale events on the base of participatory observation.For AV98 these - positive - claims - are:
·     More attendance: The attendance, calculated at over 4,000 visitors, was ten times that of the previous physically located conferences.
·     Cost-effectiveness:
The budgetary outlay, excluding the extensive volunteer time costs, was 10% of the previous years.
·     Mobilization of groups: By moving the conference inside Cyberspace, we empow­ered local groups and organizations to host their own events. Art museums had public openings with the Virtual Worlds displayed on the walls, Cybercafes created evening parties and discussion, school and university classes convened and connected in, and people hosted gatherings in their own homes.
·     Satisfied customers: Attendees reported to us that they had enjoyed the presentations and discussions. Order was kept by a volunteer organization that dis­ciplined unruly attendees by ejecting them from the world for periods of time. No attendee reported undue disappointment with the event other than reflecting the sometime slow performance of their browser in heavily populated areas.
·     Fundraising:
The sale of booth space in the exhibit hall raised funds for the Consortium (although much of this space was donated, as the exercise was still very experimental).
·     Laborsaving automation: Bots, or auto­mated agents, helped answer questions and direct attendees. Bots will be used more extensively in the future to man exhibits and interact with attendees, offering them web tours, video promotions, capturing visitor data in card swipe fashion and awarding prizes.

Using the experiences of AV98, CCON designed AV99 as an even more complicated event. While AV98, for instance, used a single world server, AV99 used more servers, more disparate working teams, even more worlds and about twice the number of attendees. 

We can look at IVWs using different levels of analysis, such as the micro-, meso-, and macro-level. As we stated before, each level has it own type of generative metaphors or ideas. On the micro-level the room metaphor comes to mind. We used on the meso-level the metaphor of the imaginary organization with its own kind of boundary transcending activities to describe CCON as an organization and to give meaning to new marketing instruments fit for the networking world when we were talking about trade shows in IVWs.  In relation to the macro-level, we used the metaphor of world to create an encompassing view.

On the micro-level, AV99 was a test of DigitalSpace’s innovative automated virtual discussion room (VDR) platform. The VDR system is driven by a back-end database conversing with embodied and invisible bots (agents) which allow a speaker to completely configure their own speaker breakout room. The session is then scheduled and the room built just prior to the arrival of the speaker, then taken down for the next speaker. This capability would allow for a bottom up emergent program, i.e.: anyone could book his own session (subject to approval).

On the meso-level, AV99 could be considered a challenge for CCON to check if this imaginary organization could handle a dispersed event design, construction and hosting across both multiple teams of volunteers and multiple worlds. This was done to test whether a common theme could be maintained by disparate teams with their own creative direction, and as an attempt to do load sharing across multiple servers.

On the macro-level, AV99 was an exercise to expand on the successful areas from the previous year in the direction of an even more encompassing in world event. Changes were a larger exhibit hall, webcasting world, art gallery, industry awards stage. Moreover, a tour of worlds area showcasing the best examples of innovative worlds built by citizens was added. Also CCON created a museum of past Avatars conferences and Avvy Awards winners. And last but not least, there was a special event, the unveiling of a giant number 2000 to help roll in the Millennium.

The results of an informal evaluation of AV99 show us that the positive claims that can be made are roughly the same as for AV98. The following are evaluative impressions we have about the new elements of AV99:

Even while AV99 was a success, there were technological, architectural, social, and routing problems to deal with. On the technological level, the world servers operated without overloading and were thematically ‘held together’, although the larger real estate that was built meant that some worlds were incomplete or lacked quality controls. As an architectural problem, we can point to the exhibit hall that was built on an ‘open’ diamond plan with booths widely distributed to create a much more ‘lonely walk through’ experience.

Booths, however, were difficult to position, because adjacent areas were off the visibility horizon. A social problem was that with the larger team, volunteer ‘fall through’ was more pronounced and builders changed till the last minute. Although navigation aids placed between and in each distinct world seemed to allow visitors clear directions, we do not know it for sure because AV99 lacked a tracking mechanism.

Due to time pressures, CCON’s VDR system came online only days before the event so it was impossible to process that many bookings from the community. The day of the event, however, we were able to guide three tracks of speakers into their breakout session area and permit them to set up their sessions. Important beta testing of the web form and database itself was carried out and we are constructing a whole new level of object oriented func­tionality into a second release of the system.

The new areas seemed to draw interest with the updated ‘avant garde art gallery being the largest social draw, hosting a post conference cocktail party that lasted several hours. The unveiling of the number 2000 millen-o-dometer experi­ence created quite a sensation with several hundred attendees floating their avatars up to the top of the five story high numbers. Such experiences give all who participate a palpable sense of the emotional and experiential power of this developing medium of a shared, three-dimensional Cyberspace.

A full report on Avatars99 can be seen at: http://www.ccon.org/conf99. In conclusion, while quite labor intensive, virtual conferences and trade shows modeled after Avatars98 and AV99 will produce wide coverage and easy access for large audiences. We expect events like this to be increasingly part of the online time of ordinary and business net users alike in Cyberspace.

Social science point of view needed To round off our paper, we take a look at the developmental situation, as we perceive it, in relation to IVWs. In line with our basic theoretical stance, we stress that, next to technological considerations, we must also apply social science schemata. In this paper, we already used different levels of social analysis (micro-, meso-, and macro) and different generative metaphors which can guide our design processes of IVWs. Also we reformulated the theoretical literature on trade shows within the Parsonian AGIL-scheme.

In order to draw the developmental picture, we also need a social science scheme to be able to locate IVWs on a scale of developmental complexity. We roughly apply Parsons’ theory of evolutionary universals (Parsons, 1966) - and the levels of societal complexity he uses - to the evolution of IVWs.

Three stages of colonizing Cyberspace In the early stages of colonizing Cyberspace, it is natural that a lot of attention is paid to architectural work on the layout of the world, its buildings, and Avatars. Many IVWs are in this spadework phase and are only creating the preconditions for becoming a society.

The second phase starts when the basic social institutions are erected to regulate social life within an IVW. These are the ‘basic anthropological institutions’ with the function of streamlining human activities around basic human needs, such as sex (the institution of marriage), the institutions of communication (language), and of giving meaning to life (religion) and so on. Such IVWs can be labeled primitive societies.

In the modern phase of IVWs, we typically observe a functional differentiation of societies and the formation of specific institutions. Institutions such as a strict division of labor (for instance, in the form of bureaucratic organizations), money and market systems, universalistic systems of law (basic human rights and so on), a system to guide society and develop policy (a political system). CCONs position CCON is facilitating the breakthrough of IVWs from the primitive to the modern phase of societies. The content of all the major institutions in the modern phase is discussed in CCON’s Special Interest Groups. In our opinion, IVWs need to include the social technologies associated with various functional subsystems of society.

The realm of pastime, personal chat, and gaming must remain important for the further growth and development of IVWs. However, there is also the growing use of IVWs within the economic system and government. From that realm we may expect the inclusion of Groupware to facilitate (virtual) meetings. The development of e-commerce and the use of virtual trade shows in the economic system is another impulse for a whole new array of ICT- and social technologies that can be used in IVWs.

To include these technologies in the VW browsers would make IVWs an even more exciting place to be, but would also make them more suitable as an exercise ground for the policy, organizational, and commercial tasks of real life.

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Powers, M. 1997. How to Program Virtual Communities, Attract New Web Visitors and Get Them to Stay.  Ziff-Davis Press, New York. Rheingold, H. 1993. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. Addison-Wesley, New York. Wilcox, S. 1998. Creating 3D Avatars. Wiley, New York.

BIOGRAPHY Bruce Damer and Stuart Gold are members of the Contact Consortium. Damer co-founded the organization in 1995 and Gold has headed up TheU Virtual University projects since 1996. Dr. Jan de Bruin is a policy scientist at Tilburg University, trainedas an economist, sociologist, and political scientist. Dirk-Jan de Bruin isa member of Contact Consortium and founder of Multi-User Virtual Worlds Consortium.

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