When people come to me talking about work in 3D, I can almost guarantee I'll hear the word "PowerPoint" in the first paragraph. What is it about this particular tool and why do they want it in 3D?
Start by separating this out. We're all very used to thinking 2 dimensionally. The desktop, the application, the image on screen, the chat window - most of the day-to-day work environment is very flat, predictable. Break out of the office, get folks together at a conference, we all cram into a room to watch a PowerPoint - one person delivering a message to many. But in the middle of that, small meetings, brainstorming sessions, people sitting around a table drawing on a whiteboard, putting the pieces of a project together. All the companies I have worked at have had the same experience - whether it be brainstorming a book project while at Wrox, to deciding how to deliver a solution to a customer while working as a consultant. These meetings of somewhere between 2 and 20 or so people tended to be the most productive and essential of the working day.
Now, while it's possible to deliver the big presentation on a screen to a bunch of folks at a conference, that's not where I see the true power of 3D. I see it as a way to collaborate on a project, to get together and bounce around ideas. It's how I work with my team on ReactionGrid, and using tools like those developed by our friend Jeff Lowe (http://theimmersivelife.wordpress.com/facilitatortoolbox/), we are able to express our ideas and come up with real results. It's those tools combined with the virtual environment of smaller teams getting together to work together that I think work the best, and it's projects like these that are the most exciting and fun to work on. I don't have to be in the same physical space, if the team are virtually there with me and we can discuss all that is needed in a productive manner in a virtual space.
So when someone asks why I do all this 3D stuff, it's not for big presentations with virtual chairs, auditoriums and PowerPoint screens - not primarily in any case - I do this for the fun and excitement of true virtual working and the potential of these tools to make a real difference to our working environments. It's very early days, the tools AND the platforms all still in constant flux and development, but it's really starting to come together. Friday's brainstorming session with the ThinkBalm community on ReactionGrid really was a fantastic session for just this sort of experience, and I highly encourage anyone interested in learning more about that community to visit http://www.thinkbalm.com/community/.