Michelin and Enterprise Architecture

My 'About Me' tells you that I am "a virtual, electronic traveller on behalf of my real, atomic self." Unlike those who, for a variety of reasons, maintain a clear separation between their electronic and atomic selves, I have been happy for the two to overlap. I don't go to great lengths to conceal my atomic identity and regular readers may therefore be aware that, in the atomic world, I work for a large global IT consulting and services company. Furthermore, I work within the Enterprise Architecture group of that company - a role I largely enjoy and that requires much beard-stroking and drawing of boxes. [ I would strongly refute the assertion that architecture is merely "testiculating" - that is: waving the hands about while talking boll*cks ]

Anyway...I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah...

Today I had the opportunity to read a new report from Forrester Research entitled "Case Study: Michelin Uses Second Life For Enterprise Architecture Training." You can now hopefully see the relevance of my preamble and understand why this would pique my interest. I don't intend to go into the report in great detail - but I hope Forrester will not mind me lifting the following quotes, which give a brief summary:

• Michelin’s EA group has launched a private two-island Second Life region designed for training IT pros on architecture concepts. Michelin doesn’t intend to replace — rather, to augment — its traditional classroom training on EA concepts.
• Starting in April 2008, the EA group at Michelin began training IT professionals in Second Life. As of this writing, about 30 IT pros had completed the training, with 170 more expected to finish during the next couple of months.
• Michelin hired French virtual world development company Community Chest to build the Second Life region. It took about two months to build and cost €50,000 to €60,000.

Although only recently launched, the early feedback has been very positive. Reading (and badly translating) the builders' blog, it would seem that attendees enjoyed the "gameplay" style of the training - and the use of such an unusual training environment made the sessions held in Second Life particularly memorable. And that can't be a Bad Thing in the context of training!

I don't have any more information about the site - but I would love to look around (*hint* *hint*) as the Forrester report contains some tantalising glimpses.