The best way to find out what business schools are really up to in the virtual world of Second Life is to create an avatar and explore for oneself. The FT's firewall presents probably insurmountable obstacles to achieving this in the office, so I downloaded the software to my Apple at home.

After dealing with the inevitable technical glitches, I was up and running - or at least walking awkwardly - through the virtual world's orientation island, learning a few basic tasks. For my avatar I had resisted the temptation to change sex or species and adopted the alter ego Opentill Latte and a "harajuku male" appearance. The surname has to be chosen from a list and the first name can be chosen at random.