Certification Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 27)

thing, because the moment you want to get up and have a coffee, that’s the moment something’s probably going to fall apart.” Monitoring is the key element of a virtual world administrator’s function. “We tend to be able to cover it about 20 hours a day at the moment, then after that we use some remote monitoring,” Sima said. Although Sima and his co-workers are firmly situated in front of a computer screen all day, they still need good people skills in order to handle tech support requests. “We’re not talking about conversations via e-mail anymore,” Sima said. “Support requests are going to be in-world requests, [such as], ‘I’ve got something in-world and I don’t want it to be there.’ You’re probably going to have to meet them in-world to see what it is they’re talking about. If you’re not polite, courteous and flexible to meet them, they’re not going to get a great impression of the grid, or that you care.” This produces an interesting disconnect for the virtual world administrator, as it’s easier to be polite and customer facing when doing so virtually. “Nothing against IT technical staff, but we’re not always the fittest, most pretty looking people,” Sima said. “[So by doing] customer service on an in-world basis, you can present a good face.” But presenting a good face doesn’t help when you don’t speak the same language as an end user. OpenlifeGrid has users all over the globe. “We don’t even have an individual country that has more than a 20 percent share in the registered user base, so it would be wonderful to speak 100 languages,” Sima said. “I only speak a few languages, and even those come in handy. I don’t know that anybody’s got a grid that only has one culture of users in it, just one language. Those kinds of grids are meeting their end now as everybody becomes more global on grids.” According to Sima, the virtual world market has clear indicators of where there are strong users of virtual worlds: the U.S., U.K., Germany and the Netherlands. Virtual worlds may, at present, be limited in where they expand from there, due to language barriers. March 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 27

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - March 2008

Certification Magazine - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Mastering IT: Choosing Between an Immediate Job and Higher Education Inside Certification Virtual World Administrators: Service Requests in Cyberspace Interface Boomers in IT: Will the Talent Shortage Affect Techies? Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - March 2008

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