Meetings in the metaverse
The trouble with emerging technologies is that, while they may open up exciting possibilities for the future, it’s often hard to see what on earth you can use them for today. The metaverse is a great example of this: it has real practical potential, but Mark Zuckerberg makes it sound like science fiction.
I’m not here to offer yet another explanation of what the metaverse is all about. Instead, I want to share my own experiences of going live with headset-based metaverse-type technology. They’re based on six years of experiments, recently culminating in helping a financial institution take its first tentative steps into the metaverse.
The company’s goal was to facilitate stronger collaboration among remote team members, while cutting business travel costs and hopefully reducing office costs in the future – and no doubt those are things you’d like to achieve, too. So, here are seven lessons I’ve learned about making it happen.
1 It’s not “the” metaverse
Sorry Zuck – there is no single, universal metaverse just yet. What we have is lots of little miniverses. Those might one day join together to form “the” metaverse, but right now some are better than others at different things. Being clear about this is important because, along with sourcing your headsets, picking your metaverse platform is the very first order of business.
Two popular choices are Spatial () and Kazendi (), and there are good reasons to like both.). You might be put off by the perception that Rec Room is mostly aimed at kids wanting to play games but, to quote one of our execs, “most of the really important business gets done over a round of golf”. In the metaverse, nine holes of virtual golf can be squeezed into just an hour, and it’s much better for your carbon footprint than driving to Sunningdale.
