Say “cheese”! Or “queijo”! Or “formaggio”! - March's Inspiration Monthly Event

A crowd of people are stood listening intently. Some of them nod in agreement. Some are even jumping up and down in excitement. They shift around and jostle with each to get a better view of the whiteboard the presenter, Prof Eddie Obeng, is pointing at – despite being thousands of miles apart.

This is Inspiration Monthly, a regular event hosted by Pentacle on QUBE. Users anywhere in the world can log on to QUBE and participate fully with others as if they were actually there through their personal avatar (we call them Qubots). This month participants from the UK, Ireland, France, Italy and Brazil got together to chat and learn.

The theme this month was innovation in a risk averse culture. Try this question that Eddie asked in the session: would you rather toss a coin and get £1 million for heads and £0.5 million for tails, or toss a coin and get £20 million for heads and nothing for tails? Your answer? Well, if you chose the first one then it shows that you're risk averse; if you picked the second option then you're risk loving. Eddie then talked about the two reasons we fear taking risks, and everyone present discussed how they could overcome these fears.

Alex Higgins from Red Bee Media said that he found QUBE “really interesting”, and Leonardo Teixeira from Cata Vento said it was a “great learning environment”. One participant even said it was “almost impossible to describe. Experience is everything.”

At the end there was just time to take a virtual group photo of everyone present, which you can see above. The only tricky part was deciding what language to say “cheese” in.

If you want to take part in the next Inspiration Monthly event, which will be held on QUBE on Thursday 19 April, go to http://pentacle.co.uk/inspirationmonthlyregistration.htm