For many, the practical uses of virtual worlds are a mystery. Imagine having a solid understanding of their applications, how companies have become more productive, saved time, and saved money. Eilif Trondsen of SRIC-BI leads this panel of experts with stories from the edge of technology, and a clear message to enterprise:

'Playtime is now over.' Organizations now need to demonstrate business value. This panel will discuss how how companies are doing that and what challenges they often face and how these can be overcome.

This expert panel is made up of the true visionaries in virtual worlds who are paving the way for the rest of us in discovering how to make the technology directly benefit business.

John Boring - Accelerate

John is the founder and CEO of Accelerate. A Silicon Valley veteran, he is a highly experienced organization development executive known for his abilities to source, hire and retain great talent. His expertise lies not only in Team/Organization Development and Change Management, but also in building corporate training functions. John founded Accelerate in 2004 with the aim of providing all the outsourced services of a corporate university to our clients. He has held senior positions at Atari Games, Netscape, Portal Software and Apple/Apple University, and consulted to ChevronTexaco, AT&T, Silicon Graphics, HP and Yahoo!, to name a few.

Dan Gillette, Ed.M. - Greenleaf Medical

Dan is a design principal in behavioral medicine at Greenleaf Medical, director of the Education and Behavioral Healthcare Initiative at the Greenleaf Institute, director of virtual reality products at CFG Health Systems, and a founding member of the Innovative Technology for Autism Advisory Board at Autism Speaks/Cure Autism Now. Dan has held research and teaching positions at Stanford University (product design, engineering, assistive technology), UC Berkeley (disability studies, product design), Mills College (computer science), and CSU Monterey Bay (assistive technology, curriculum development). Additionally, Dan has extensive experience as a curriculum developer and learning specialist at the middle school, high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels, both in private practice and school settings.

Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D. - The Gronstedt Group

Anders is president of a global firm specializing in improving sales and frontline performance with consulting and custom-developed virtual worlds, simulations, podcasting, and other innovative learning approaches. A former member of the graduate Integrated Marketing Communications faculty at the University of Colorado, Dr. Gronstedt is a world-renowned management consultant, speaker and author of the book The Customer Century: Lessons from world-class companies in integrated communications. His global client list includes industry leaders such as Dell, FedEx Kinko's, Avaya, Ericsson, Jamba Juice, Electrolux, Farmers Insurance, and Volvo Cars and his articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Marketing Management, T+D Magazine, and more.

Eilif Trondsen, Ph.D. - SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (moderator)

Eilif is the Research and Program Director of the Virtual Worlds @ Work (VWW), a research consortium at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI) in Menlo Park, California. VWW consists of large multinational companies and organizations from the Asia, Europe and North America. The focus area of his research and consulting at SRIC-BI is the use of technology for business performance improvement and learning. For ten years, Eilif held the position of Research Director of the Business Intelligence Program (now the Scan program) at SRI and also led the Learning of Demand program (focused on learning technologies) for 10 years. In his tenure at SRI and SRIC-BI, Eilif has given numerous presentations on various eCommerce, eLearning and virtual worlds topics at conferences and to SRI clients around the world. Eilif has also the author and co-author of numerous publications on eCommerce, eLearning and virtual world topics.