Welcome to the MMOE Blog!

Welcome to the MMOE Blog and I guess that I had better start by saying exactly what an MMOE is? Well, for starters it does currently exist, but for seconders it doesn't really exist quite in the way it ought. An MMOE is a Massively Multi-participant On-line Environment.

Who am I? Until recently, I was the CEO of one the UK's leading social enterprises, providing paid work to long-term unemployed people, helping them seek work and providing them with work skills, in the main.

Ok, well why have a blog about this? And why is this blog different from the wealth of MMORPG blogs and web-sites out there? Well, I hope to use this blog to seed some ideas for developers of on-line environments. These are environments not simply for gaming and entertainment, but for other issues too. And I hope to encourage people to post here with their ideas.

For example, let's take the Stock Exchange in London, which is a very busy place which has real people buying and selling real things. Actually being there has a real benefit, although you don't actually have to be there to trade. If you want to find out about the Stock Exchange, what it's like, whether you would like to work there, find out about the people there and maybe research the type of shares that are being bought and sold and even interact with some of the people that work there, then basically it's a trip to London.

What if the Stock exchange were created lock. stock and barrel as a virtual environment? Workers logged onto their avatars to work there, discussion was either in the form of "tells" or through normal voice dialogue via the internet, with every bit of functionality that they would have by actually being there. There would be a viewing gallery for non-workers who could see exactly what was going on, hear "tells" and even interact, if the worker was allowing this. The Stock Exchange would employ "Tour guides", who would show people around in their thousands, as opposed to the limitations of the building. Hey, they could even charge for this experience, if they felt that there was a market for it.

And why would they do this? It would certainly broaden the potential customer base for UK shares, it would open up the Stock Exchange to public scrutiny and interest and it may well reduce traffic congestion with there being no need for employees to travel to work. And that's just for starters...

And are they doing this? Well I have no idea, but I suspect not. The UK is very good at stifling ideas, with barriers, whether it be health and safety legislation, bureaucracy or its pandering to commercialism. I'll save these for another day, but I hope that at least a few people see what I have to say and mould or support it...

See you tomorrow!