Virtual OS

Patrick McAuley patrick.mcauley at sympatico.ca
Tue Feb 22 14:23:10 PST 2000


Pete, a couple of weeks ago, I asked this list about technology support for OS.  I got a few responses on the list, but one of the most intriguing was from a colleague outside the list who pointed me to the Collaborative Virtual Workspace (CVW). This is freely available software that enables groups of people in locations remote from one another to collaborate.  It use a "building and room" metaphor that seems to me to make it well suited for supporting a virtual Open Space event.

To get a feel for CVW, here's a link to an overview:
http://cvw.mitre.org/cvw/info/CVWOverview.php3

Just to tantalize you, here are a couple of brief excerpts:

"To a user, a CVW is a building that is divided into floors and rooms, where each room provides a context for communication and document sharing. CVW allows people to gather in rooms to talk through chat or audio/video conferencing and to share text and URLs with one another with their chat. (See figure 1 below.) Defining rooms as the basis for communication means that users are not required to set up sessions or know user locations; they need only enter a room. If users choose to communicate through audio, video or text, then the communication session is established automatically for them. Users can also lock rooms and communicate privately within and between rooms. 
"Rooms are also the basis for document sharing. Users can place documents of different types into a room, allowing anyone else in that room to read the document or view information about the document (such as creator, description, creation date, modified date, last modified by). Persistence is supported because the rooms exist even when no one is in them. Consequently, the document remains in the room for future visitors to see until some authorized user moves or deletes it. "

"A graphical "map" display of the floor plan is provided to help visualize the collaboration space.  Users can navigate through the virtual building with the graphical map or with a textual command. Additionally, users can navigate by joining a specific user, without knowing their current location in CVW."

I'm not aware of CVW ever having been used for Open Space, but I'd sure be interested in trying it out!

Patrick McAuley

PTM Consulting
20 Magnolia Lane
Guelph, ON  N1G 4X7  Canada

Tel:  (519) 827-9396
Fax:  (519) 827-0956
patrick.mcauley at sympatico.ca



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