Virtual scientific collaboration and Nonaka's Ba

Each year, at enormous expense, scientists travel to meetings to exchange knowledge. Because great value is attributed to these gatherings, more should be learned about scientific meetings in virtual places which is considerably less expensive. Scientific conferencing in virtual meeting places has been ongoing since the early 90's. Observations of people experiencing these virtual places prompted objective studies revealing that nearly 70% of them report a sense of "being there" or virtual presence. This manuscript presents further evidence corroborating these earlier studies and discusses the relationship of virtual presence to Nonaka's model of knowledge creation. Nonaka's model proposes a concept called Ba which denotes a place that promotes knowledge conversion. Ba is not limited to physical space, it includes virtual and mental spaces as well. This paper introduces the similarities between Ba and virtual presence, and discusses their relevance to improving the effectiveness of virtual scientific collaboration.