Summit Overview

Creation of the inaugural Roadmap began with an invitational Metaverse Roadmap Summit May 5-6 2006 at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA. There a diverse group of industry leaders, technologists, analysts, policy makers, academics and creatives outlined key visions, scenarios, forecasts, plans, opportunities, uncertainties, and challenges in building a next-generation 3D Web. This group was chosen to include a diversity of knowledge and views to create a solid, collaborative foresight document.

See Summit Participants for a list of inaugural attendees. All are distinguished individuals with insights in various 3D web domains who have lent their vision and passion to the creation of this first public map.

Objective 1: Metaverse Roadmap (MVR)

In the months following the Summit ASF staff and volunteer participants will produce a draft report, The Metaverse Roadmap: Pathways to the 3D Web. This report and associated data will reside at MetaverseRoadmap.org. See Roadmap 2016 for an MVR outline, and Roadmap Inputs for a preview of MVR structure.

Our first objective is to create a map of the possibility space that is interesting, insightful, and of sufficient use to a broad public constituency of today's pioneering metaverse developers and users that there is interest in doing it again, with even greater depth, in the future.

Objective 2: Metaverse ITP

Assuming the map and our mapping process merit ongoing industry support, ASF will seek to have the MVR updated biennially under the management of a Metaverse Industry Technology Partnership (Metaverse ITP), the creation of which is our second and more ambitious objective.

The Metaverse ITP would be chartered to accelerate innovation and development of the emerging metaverse industry via collaborative cross-industry roadmap projects in a variety of 3D web specialty areas. It would exist to network key players and generate specialty roadmaps to help identify and fund precompetitive R&D on current technology roadblocks, and policy proposals on economic and social-legal roadblocks.

To the extent that such R&D and policy partnerships can be established, the ITP would also seek to secure governmental and other matching funds to leverage industry resources and expertise. A worthy model to emulate in this respect can be found in the Chemical Industry's Vision 2020 Technology Partnership, which has 12 active roadmaps, numerous funded cross-industry R&D initiatives, and significant governmental matching funds for industry development.