A research consortium opens an international convention Saturday in cyberspace, an experiment in how to make money, find opportunities and make new contacts in virtual worlds.

The Contact Consortium's "Avatars 98: Inside Cyberspace and Everywhere" conference is scheduled for the 24 hours of Saturday, more or less, depending on your time zone.

The convention will include virtual versions of exhibitors' booths, including one for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland.

The United Nations, computer companies, research institutions and probably the Orange County Convention Center are among those who will have displays inviting people to learn more about their endeavors.

Some 20,000 people are expected to "attend" on-line, walking around in the form of an avatar, or digital body, in real time in a virtual world designed to look like a convention hall.

"We're hoping to create a convention experience on-line without getting tired feet or indigestion from hot dogs," said Bruce Damer, whose DigitalSpace Corp. in Santa Cruz, Calif., is producing the event.

Virtual worlds are three-dimen sional spaces created on a computer, similar to those found in such games as the popular Myst. In some cases, whole communities have sprung up in virtual worlds with schools, neighbors and religious groups.

The Avatars 98 program still is being put together, Damer said, much like real conventions where the work continues up to the last minute.

But the program is shaping up like this:

There will be lectures on everything from schools in cyberspace and distance learning to doing business in a virtual world. People can talk about anything they want, although they have been asked to have a cyberspace theme, he said.

A schoolboy in Holland has reserved time to talk about his experience in virtual worlds, meeting people from all around the globe.

"Anthropologists will be talking about the anthropology of virtual communities," Damer said.

Reams of information will be available at Saturday's event in the forms of links to Web sites.

In fact, the only thing that may be missing is a way to get free pens and refrigerator magnets labeled with company names into the hands of potential customers.

"Keep in mind this is a big exper iment," said Richard May, a senior research scientist at the PNNL.

May and his associate, Scott Decker, have designed a virtual booth - a three-dimensional computer model - to promote the lab, look for new clients or partners and recruit workers.

The conference is likely to attract people "involved in collaboration and new ways of thinking," the kind of worker the lab would like to have, he said.

May and Decker will staff their booth with avatars and talk to conference-goers who have questions. The avatars can move around the computer screen while information is exchanged via typed text, similar to a chat room.

"We're very excited about it to see what the potential is for getting involved in virtual worlds," May said.

The Contact Consortium is a group of individuals, corporations and institutions that believes the virtual worlds possible on the Internet are "the first steps to a powerful new medium for collaboration, play and learning," according to its Web site.