I attended the "Program for the Future Conference" this week that was held in California USA and in Second Life (SL)

At the SL site there was a huge screen where you could see and hear what was happening in California and there were systems in place to allow SL visitors to feed back their reactions and ask questions.

This is very exciting for OCTIA as it means its a real possibility that we could use this kind of technology at the conference and allow access to many more participants than are able to physically travel to the conference "real life" location.

OCTIA - Online Counselling and Therapy Online In Action

An exciting new initiative in online counselling and therapy will take place in April 2009 when Online Counselling Ltd and ACTO jointly host the first British online counselling Conference.

Online Counselling Ltd. is the the largest of the three UK organisations that currently offer online training to qualifed counsellors. ACTO, the Association for Counselling and Therapy Online, is the umbrella organisation for therapists who did their initial training in the UK and who work online.

(You can find out more about these organisations by visiting their websites in our 'Useful Links' section.)

The Conference, known as OCTIA - Online Counselling and Therapy in Action - will incorporate both terrestrial and virtual elements. In other words, either you can go there in person or, if you are unable to do so, you can take part in the proceedings via live streaming.