Jaime McMahon:
Hi everyone, Jamie here from the LineZero team. And today we're going to chat a little bit about meetings in the Metaverse. We've been getting some questions and comments from folks like “what is a Metaverse meeting?”, “How do I meet in the Metaverse?” and “Why would I meet in the Metaverse?” I think a couple of points may shed some light on why folks may look to invest or consider meeting in the Metaverse and what advantages it may provide. We have a couple of blogs and other articles that describe what the Metaverse is:
Related blogs:
What is the Corporate Metaverse & Why Business Leaders Should Care
How Will the Metaverse Apply to Your Business? Be Prepared!
What is the Metaverse and How do we meet in the Metaverse?
First, what may be helpful is understanding what the Metaverse is and how we would meet in the Metaverse. But as it relates to meetings, specifically corporate meetings, we're going to get together virtually with other people.
To meet in the Metaverse, first you put on a virtual reality headset. One of the advantages to meeting in the Metaverse is you're basically virtually present in the meeting. And because you have a headset on, you can look left and right and get a sense of what's around you. You can put yourself into any kind of setting you like with other people in different geographies who are also in the meeting.
Is the Metaverse like Zoom?
Meeting in the Metaverse is really no different than a meeting on Zoom or on Teams. The only difference is that it's moves from 2D to 3D. Now, why is a 3-dimensional meeting advantageous? Why would you go through the effort of putting on a headset to add another dimension?
There are two primary reasons. And the first one, is presence or a sense of location. When we're meeting on Zoom and everyone's in 2D, there's no sense of who's to my left and who's to my right. If we think about Sunday dinner with the family, we're all around the table and if somebody speaks to my left, it's only natural I will look to face that person. I'm making eye contact and everyone else is also facing that person and that person has the stage. They're speaking and when conversation occurs, we go back and forth with other people.
When we're on Zoom and Teams that doesn't occur. There's no sense of spatiality in those meetings which are all two-dimensional and we're all staring forward. There's no deviation in where we're looking. It can actually cause fatigue in our eyes, as I'm sure we've all experienced the last couple of years when needing to stare forward and be fixated in our gaze versus when we're in a physical meeting.
2 Advantages of having Meetings in the Metaverse:
First, In the Metaverse, it gives us the ability to have people participate in a meeting to our left and to our right, and to act and react with the same physical mannerisms as if we were in an in-person meeting. That just creates a much more immersive experience and a much more natural way to meet - barring the virtual glasses we have on.
The second primary reason to meet in the Metaverse has to do with customizing the virtual environment to enhance the purpose of the meeting. There are many reasons why you have meetings, right? Sometimes meetings can be information exchanges where one person is sharing information.
Other times you may have meetings where it's a collaboration and you're both working together on something. Other times it could be a training session where you're learning.
When we think about meeting before Zoom and Teams, all those sessions would be in person. Typically, each meeting scenario would have different types of meeting room configurations catered to the intended experience or outcome. A training room would look different from an all-hands town hall or a conference room which would look different from a collaboration or breakout room. The room would be set up to fit the purpose.
When everything moved to Zoom, we didn't have the ability to create a fit for the purpose of the meeting experience. Every room was the same, and regardless of the intent or the reason for the meeting. Now we can do that. One of the advantages we have in the Metaverse is when we superimpose ourselves into the virtual world, we can create whatever surrounding we would like to allow us to enhance the actual purpose for the meeting.
If it's a training session, we could have it oriented for all of the students to sit classroom style, where they're all facing forward toward the instructor. If it's a town hall, you could have one person speaking to five hundred in an arena or stadium type of setting. If it's a collaboration or breakout, you could actually create whiteboards and all sorts of things in the room to help you to achieve your objective for that meeting.
So that's the second major benefit to meeting in the Metaverse. Virtual meetings in the Metaverse can be enhanced and you can't have that same type of tangible experience using two-dimensional meetings with Teams or Zoom.
I hope that helps in terms of helping you to better understand what a Metaverse meeting is, and a couple of main reasons or objectives for why you may entertain meeting in the Metaverse versus using Teams or Zoom to do so.
If you have any questions, I would love to have a chat and explore what our team has been doing in a number of meetings in the Metaverse. It's been quite a learning experience and we'd be happy to share our experience and learnings around where we found positive benefits or value, and where there's still a bit of room to grow.
Thanks for your time and talk soon.
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