Even more change in the virtual worlds industry

I was a little surprised and saddened to hear today that Erica Driver from ThinkBalm has taken a marketing position for a software company and will no longer be serving as an analyst for the immersive technologies market. Her departure is a blow to a much needed role in the virtual worlds industry: independent data and research on the use of immersive technologies. In addition, the closing of the ThinkBalm Innovation Community leaves a gap the development of users groups and a community that can share best practices.

In any emerging market, start ups lead with ideas and as the industry matures and the market becomes established, start ups grow, fade away, or get bought up by larger companies who want to enter the market. We've been seeing these changes over the last few years in immersive technology companies, but it seems the services companies are the ones that have taken the hardest hit from the snail's pace of immersive technology adoption.

Erica is a bright star in the virtual worlds industry and I very much valued and trusted the work that she was doing on behalf of all of us to evangelize immersive technologies and virtual worlds for enterprise use. I wish her and Sam the best of luck.

And now, the onus is on us to continue the good work they were doing.