VB Interview #20 - Paul Ledak, VP at IBM (The Virtual Worlds Forum London 07)

I met quite a few people from IBM's Digital Convergence Team at the Virtual Worlds Forum last week.

It is a global team: I met people based in the UK, the US, Austria and in France.

IBM takes 3D Internet and virtual worlds seriously: they use Second Life internally extensively to foster innovation, communicate in an interactive and cost effective way, train people, urge their employees to express themselves, interact, and collaborate.

With such a big workforce, spread all over the world, it is an excellent way to engage their employees. For IBM, it is also an excellent marketing tool: it gives them a lot of exposure in the press, it helps them build a strong expertise and credibility in that space, it demonstrates that innovation is at the heart of their strategy.

The IBM team was great, and I want to address a special thanks to Lisa Smith in Marketing : despite a busy schedule, Lisa and her colleagues immediately accepted to do the video interviews. After just a couple of minutes I was sitting upstairs in the speakers area with 4 virtual worlds experts from IBM.

Interview with Paul Ledak
My first interview was with Paul Ledak, VP Development Digital Convergence. Paul was invited to speak about interoperability and share his views on how close we are to a multi-world integrated framework.

Paul is an expert in virtual worlds, and he is not directly involved in the banking industry. During my interview, we discussed about IBM's experience in Second Life, B-to-C virtual worlds versus "BTF" (Behind The Firewall) virtual worlds, and interoperability.