By mid-2008 BP executives hope to increase the use of virtual worlds, especially for collaboration, marketing public education, mentoring, learning and development and refining business processes. Other opportunities include using virtual worlds for process safety training and educating consumers in alternative energy concepts, Little said.

Catching up on coverage of the inaugural Virtual Worlds Forum Europe in London last month John Riley’s piece caught my attention. John outlines how BP, ABN AMRO and Diageo are experimenting with Virtual Worlds. BP’s Joe Little keynote declaration that the company has identified 3D interactive web and virtual worlds as the breakthrough technology for 2008 registered. We are seeing more enterprises declaring Virtual Worlds a strategic imperative for the coming year. What a difference a year makes. Interesting times indeed.