I have wondered of late if Second Life is dying in much the same way that virtual worlds peaked and died in the 1990’s. With this in mind, I read a press release I received last week about a European project that uses a virtual world for soft skills training.
I asked Thibault Firer, from the French firm partnering on the project, who had contacted me:

Who is the intended audience?
How is your project different from Second Life and other virtual worlds?
Are there language or cultural issues that are important?

Thibault’s responses:

The SINAPSI project is a 3D platform dedicated to people who wish to learn team working skills, how to behave as an individual in a group in order to be effective, and how to maximize the efficiency of working sessions.
The main difference between Second Life and the SINAPSI platform is that the latter has a working purpose. The session builder creates all sessions. This means that only those informed of the login and password can access the session.
In other respects, cultural issues can be avoided by the use of the English language. The SINAPSI platform offers the possibility to go beyond the bounds of what is possible: there are no distances anymore, and culture isn’t a drawback but becomes rather an advantage as it allows sharing different points of view.

Thibault left me a message to follow up and ended with, “Have a nice day.” That drove home, to me, the importance of culture since it is such an American thing to say. Haven’t we all tried to fit in, make others feel comfortable, bridge a cultural gap?
I was left wondering if anyone in France ends an exchange with “Have a nice day” and, if not, what they are likely to say so that I know what to say that is culturally appropriate. Maybe I need to venture back into a virtual world to seek the answer.