The Boeing Company is a multi-national corporation with well over 200,000 employees. Virtual Worlds technology has evolved to support informal communities on the internet. Can they also serve the needs of large business communities? What are the benefits and drawbacks of a "Virtual Cooperative Environment" in the corporate workplace?

Rick Wojcik has an Associate Technical Fellow in Boeing Applied Research and Technology. He has worked for Boeing since 1987 primarily as a computational linguist. His involvement with virtual worlds began in 1996, when he joined a project in Virtual Collocation to study ways in which 3-D environments could support corporate business processes. Rick holds a Ph.D. in theoretical linguistics from Ohio State University. He taught linguistics in Columbia University, Barnard College, and Hofstra University before coming to work at Boeing.