According to Manpower Inc, we're going to run short of skills in the West. We'll have to find them where we can, which means further virtualisation of the workplace.

To plant its own stake in the ground, it opened Manpower Island in Second Life (SL) yesterday and got the ball rolling with a conference entitled "The World of Virtual Work".

We all turfed up expecting the usual presentations and discussions based on frantic typing. It came as an unwelcome shock to many that the conference would use audio and that audience participation could only be by typing messages to the PR company's gatekeeper.

In other words, it was not the sort of social event you'd expect (or fear) in SL. The audience was there largely to be spoonfed and it was up to the moderator, Daniel Terdiman from CNET, to try and stimulate the panellists into saying something interesting.

Of course, like all SL presences, Manpower's is partly experimental. It wants to be there - just like IBM and Cisco a while back - in part to get a gut feeling for what works and what doesn't. No doubt the conference was part of this experimentation.

A most interesting speaker, IBM's Colin Parris, had watched the internet move from a side-show to centre stage and he's sure the same will happen in virtual worlds. But more quickly. Where there's business value, it will happen. He pointed out that many companies prefer to work in private virtual worlds (or rooms) rather than the public SL. This parallels the internet/intranet divide.

He also drew attention to the diverse and mobile workforce (an issue in itself) and the location of the problems that need to be solved. If the people and issues can be gathered in a virtual world, then they can each be located anywhere yet still get together to understand the issues and collaborate quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively.

Metaversed recorded the proceedings if you're interested in the broader debate. Or you can get the  webcast from Manpower itself, after you've registered.