New Work in Metaverse: Experiences, application examples and potentials from three years Metaverse Business Practice

By Andreas Droste

The metaverse (no matter in which definition and sometimes even without...) is one of the most hyped topics at the moment. It can be found in all kinds of media and channels and almost everybody feels called to give his personal statement about it. However, only a few of the discussants, futurologists or authors have actually been able to gather practical experience. From a certain level of abstraction, the metaverse is so wonderfully undefined that almost anyone can express their opinion on it without it being questioned on the basis of facts.

But this is precisely where the problem lies. The metaverse is already far more concrete than it appears in the public perception. And it needs practical application scenarios in a wide variety of areas to actually become a successful concept. Together with my colleagues and external partners, I was very fortunate that we were able to work out precisely these scenarios in very concrete terms, implement them in the metaverse and test them in our daily work. This was favored by the pandemic, and the associated reduction in personal contacts.

The practical work in the different formats and industries have always made me want more and encouraged creativity. What became clear very quickly is that the metaverse can superficially be a reflection of reality, but it doesn't have to be. It follows its own laws and rules. These must be taken into account if it is to become an integral part of our daily work. This starts with the interfaces between the real and the virtual world, continues with working techniques and tools used in the metaverse and ends with the peculiarities of social interaction, such as the question of the existence of empathy in virtual worlds.

I don't pretend to have found a final answer to all these topics, but in three years of daily practice with a lot of positive but also painful lessons-learned, it's time to share the accumulated knowledge and experience. I am not specifically addressing IT specialists or other subject matter experts in the field of Virtual Reality. Quite the contrary. This book is aimed at all those who have an inkling of the potential of the Metaverse, but don't really know yet how to apply it to their daily work or business.

The metaverse is one of the most hyped topics at the moment. It is therefore necessary to recognize today where opportunities can arise in business. This is exactly what this book is about

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9783384012944

Andreas Droste

Andreas Droste studierte Elektrotechnik mit dem Schwerpunkt „Digitale Regelungstechnik / Automatisierungstechnik“ an der Universität Duisburg. Seine berufliche Laufbahn bei der Deutschen Telekom begann er 1992 im Gründungsteam der DeTeSystem. Von 1994 bis 1999 war er Werbeleiter für interaktive Medien und Direktmarketing in der Unternehmenskommunikation der Deutschen Telekom. In dieser Funktion leitete er ab 1996 alle E-Commerce-Aktivitäten des Konzerns. Von 1999 bis 2002 war er verantwortlich für den Aufbau und die Leitung des neu geschaffenen „Competence Center Internet“ der Deutschen Telekom. Zum T-Systems Innovation Center kam er 2010 durch verschiedene Beratungsfunktionen in den Bereichen Reise, Transport & Logistik (u.a. Einführung des Toll-Collect-Systems). Hier war er verantwortlich für die internationalen Innovationsaktivitäten und ausgewählte Innovationsinitiativen mit Großkunden von T-Systems. Andreas Droste arbeitet als unabhängiger Autor, Referent und konzeptioneller Berater im Umfeld technologisch innovativer Anwendungsszenarien in den Bereichen New-Work und Mental-Health.

Book preview

Introduction

The metaverse (in any definition and sometimes even without…) is one of the most hyped topics at the moment. It can be found in all kinds of media and channels, and almost everyone feels called to make their own personal statement about it. However, only a few of the discussants, futurologists or authors have actually been able to gather practical experience. From a certain level of abstraction, the metaverse is so wonderfully undefined that almost anyone can express an opinion about it without it being questioned on the basis of facts.

But therein lies the problem. The metaverse is already much more concrete than it appears in public perception. And it needs practical application scenarios in a variety of areas to actually become a successful concept. Together with my colleagues and external partners, I was very lucky to be able to work out exactly these scenarios, implement them in the metaverse and test them in our daily work. This was facilitated by the pandemic and the associated reduction in personal contacts.

The practical work in the different formats and industries has always whetted the appetite for more and encouraged creativity. It quickly became clear that the metaverse can be a superficial reflection of reality, but it doesn't have to be. It follows its own laws and rules. These must be taken into account if it is to become an integral part of our daily work. This starts with the interfaces between the real and the virtual world, continues with the working techniques and tools used in the metaverse, and ends with the specifics of social interaction, such as the question of the existence of empathy in virtual worlds.

I don't pretend to have found a final answer to all these questions, but after three years of daily practice with many positive and painful experiences, it's time to share the knowledge and experience I've accumulated. I am not specifically addressing IT specialists or other experts in the field of virtual reality. Quite the contrary. This book is for anyone who has an inkling of the potential of the metaverse, but doesn't yet know how to apply it to their daily work or business.

Reading this book will not necessarily make you a metaverse expert, but it should help you avoid first mistakes and be an inspiration for your own activities. I can only advise you, no matter what industry you are in, to not only deal with the topic theoretically, but to take your first steps quite pragmatically. This book should motivate you to do just that. And these first steps definitely don't require huge development budgets.

What you need is creativity and the courage to try something completely new. In our projects, we worked a lot with so-called on-board tools, and very little of what we did followed professional software development methods. Some of the tools and utilities we used are also presented in this book. Therefore, please do not take the procedures shown here as best practices, but at best as fast-forward practices under the premise of just do it.

Part I: Introduction to the metaverse

Chapter 1: What is it?

Answering this question is both easy and difficult. If we go by common definitions, we can find the following, for example, in the Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon, 2021:

The metaverse is a virtual space in which users move around with the help of avatars and in which they can influence and use virtual artifacts, e.g. when they put on clothes, build a house and furnish it, open a door and go out into the street to meet other players and like-minded people. Just like in the real world, people can live, work, learn, trade, have conversations, and build relationships there (Bendel, 2019)

I personally like this definition. Especially because it is intentionally non-technical. When you look at the metaverse, you quickly come to the question of the right platform, the best hardware, and many other technical questions. Questions like do I really need VR goggles, is my computer powerful enough, which platform provides the highest resolution or closest to reality, how real do the avatars look, etc.? These and other questions are important and will certainly have to be answered at some point, but they are secondary to describing what the metaverse is and what it means for my business.

Technology neutrality and persistence

For me, the metaverse is technology-neutral. It doesn't matter if I enter it in 3D with a VR headset or in 2D on a computer. A much more important criterion is that I can enter it from anywhere at any time and leave it again. It has to be persistent. In a narrower sense, in IT this means the ability to store objects or data on nonvolatile media (Siepermann, 2018). This means that it is always available and has its own timeline. Changes I make in it persist and can be seen or modified by anyone else in the same virtual space at the same time. Persistence is one of the essential requirements for commercializing the metaverse. Values created virtually persist and can be marketed. A very simple example of persistence in the metaverse is a virtual whiteboard that we used during our workshops. The content could be changed during the workshops or even afterwards and was always visible and reusable for everyone in the virtual space. I will discuss this in more detail in the context of the application scenarios.

Interaction between