Setting Policy on Corporate Avatars

I've blogged about 'Digital Identity" considerations for quite some time now.  In the realm of Virtual Worlds, there is a raging debate about the need for freedom of expression in Avatar representation.  The world seems to be between:

1. Those who make Star Trek references

2. Those who are Legal

3. Those who are pragmatic

Category 1: There will be adamant discussion about just how  essential it is that employees be able to attend business meetings looking like flying hamsters wearing tutus. they will argue that if they are in any way restricted in their appearance, it will yield a crushing blow to collaboration, innovation, and the general wellness of the population. they will go on to explain that any attempt to curtail avatar expression is a corporate-policy induced "assimilation by the borg", and if you disagree, that is because the "borg" already got to you.  More advanced arguments reference things like "all innovation coming from the unreasonable man, who will not adapt to surroundings"

Category 2: Legal and HR is concerned with consistency and extending physical rules into Virtual contexts. 

Category 3:  The pragmatist is looking at the bare bones essentials of what an avatar needs to be to accomplish a task.  A pragmatist will believe that a Yellow hammer can pound a nail just as well as Blue hammer.

I tend to cross all three categories as my concern is for maximizing the value of VR environments, while at the same time creating solutions that are viable for implementation.  Furthermore, I tend to rough-up the Star Trek crowd a bit because they tend to have the weakest arguments.  But what nobody is really addressing properly, are the following concerns facing Digital Incarnations, and there are two to start with:

1) Gender Identity 2) Accessibility.

I will start off by offering up a series of questions:
1. How should cross-gendered employees be represented in a corporate VR environment
2. If an employee uses a wheel-chair to transport their physical incarmation, should their virtual incarnation walk or roll?
3. If we have some users who are digitally manifested in wheelchairs, shoudl our virtual environments conform to accesibility codes? or is it ok for a virtual wheel chair to "magically" roll up stairs?
4. Some of our corporate employees are blind. How do I enable their movements in VR?
5. Some of our employees are cosmetically disfigured. How should they be represented in VR?
6. Should gender-identity, accessibility, and cosmetic enhancement be covered under a single consistent policy?

These are not frivolous questions. They are questions that we will have no choice but to address very seriously, with lawyers, HR, government etc.

I also agree.  It is a natural extension of the corporate social networking policy. 

I agree Terry.  I think avatar use can be combined with other social networking policies.

If you use a real photo.. you'll eventually run into the problem that people won't update their picture after 10yrs, and their photo won't show their real-life age. So how does HR force employees to update photos to reflect their more "distinguished" looks?

I guess even avatars will show their age -- just like logos do.  So part of the avatar policy will have to include a mandatory refresh rate.  fun!

It surely seems that some companies have made SL part of their corporate Web strategy. And for those firms, I agree that incorporating avatars as merely another outward-facing means of communication that requires alignment with corporate values is a fine way to go. But many companies aren't even using plain-Jane social networking basics.

Somebody's spending those $ P. Rosedale mentioned. My question is, Who? What big enterprises are really doing with avatars is something I am working to discover. I welcome any input from readers of this board.

Meanwhile, Terry tells me the company won't pay for me to have a green-haired angel avatar. Shucks!

I would have it missed it too, or willfully ignored it, had Philip Rosedale not mentioned during his IE Radio appearance that online buying/selling accounts for $1 million per day on Second Life (real $, not Rosedale $). So as companies push conferences and customer meetings and product rollouts to places like SL, this makes more sense and has more context than just encouraging HR and IT to get together.

It's not so much an issue that a separate policy is needed for avatars and how they're used (I think including guidelines as part of a broader policy on behavior would work), but that companies not ignore avatars when creating guidelines for online behavior and image. The idea is new enough that many companies might overlook it.

Do you really need a separate policy for avatar use? Can't it just be lumped in with blogs, Facebook profiles, and the like? "Don't do anything that would embarrass the company or yourself online; you will be terminated if anything you post is illegal or violates company policy; you may also be subject to prosecution."

Seems like a gentle reminder that acting in the best interests of the company, regardless of the medium, real life or second, ought to do the trick.

Thanks David. That's a good idea you mentioned about IT and HR working together to establish policy on these and other matters related to social networking. 

You raise some great points.  When I implemented Sharepoint a few years back we set the rule that the images on your sharepoint page had to be real photos (or no photo) but no avatars.

The idea was that pictures could be used for employees to help FIND another employee they were looking for.  At the same time, we wanted to avoid the issues you raised - the levels of inappropriateness that can easily be put into avatars.

As with a growing number of social media related topics - IT and HR need to be working together to address these issues!