I agree with what Shelley and Amy say about whether you have to physically attend conferences to be in on things. It seems particularly so when sitting over here in Australia! Also in the back of my mind is the issue of plane travel being one of the contibuters to global warming. I think the time will come when people will not be able to travel by plane as freely as they do now to attend meetings (or to holiday, for that matter), and the more that can be done virtually the better.

Some businesses are already doing this, though the impetus at the moment seems more a cost cutting exercise. However, I suspect that the idea of doing business or conferencing through an avatar in a virtual world that presents like Second Life would be quite confronting to a more general population of conference goers. It's either going to take a while for people to become accustomed to that idea, or a more 'ordinary' interface would succeed better. Isn't it strange though to reflect that thats how most people thought about the internet itself ten years ago? 

On my Spirits Dancing blog: David Tench, a larger-than-life cartoon talk show host, animated in real time to a live audience.