Head in the Oven

The NewPR conference on Friday was, as always, great fun. The light bulbs that go on are especial fun and meeting Victoria Newlands (a student from Lincoln University who is really into social media) and having a good gossip with Simon Wakeman, Stuart Bruce, Neville Philip, Rob Skinner and Rob Skinner was an extra bonus.

Nicky and Andrew Wake from Don't Panic have a very friendly way of managing conferences which is a boon. I should say that Sam (from Bournemouth Uni was there too... Hi Sam! can't wait for you to blog about the conference too (and this is what we got up to while you trained it back for the Graduation Ball).

The conference closed with an overview of networking and a short but debate-provoking look at virtual environments but mostly Second Life.

One of the conference goers, said that she would rather out her head in the oven that go into SecondLife.

It struck me that this is where most of us really are.

We have our heads stuck, not in an oven but close to it, a computer screen. In there we play with a pretty clunky virtual environment (word processing, emailing, a bit of IM, cut, copy, save, drag, retype, look up phone number, tasks to do - all that sort of stuff). Its very boring. It is virtual environments with none of the fun. It is the equivalent of a smoky industrial town of the 19th century. It is a pretty smelly oven.

PR's, Journo's, marketers, CEO's all with their heads in the oven.

Perhaps it is time that decent virtual environment should be made available.

Something and somewhere worth inhabiting. A place where work is not clunky, soulless, and populated by documents, pages and emails but populated with people, action and results.

We have had our heads in an oven.... Can we move on now please?