Day 28 in the (Remote) Virtual Office
Total Time in VR: 2 hours and 48 minutes (across 5 VR sessions)
Use Cases: Focus Work (49% – 1 hour 22 min), Community Time (21% – 35 min), 1:1 Meetings (18% – 30 min), Team Meetings (12% – 20 min)
I drove to the remote office this morning. When it was snowing. Probably a silly choice to make, but I enjoy getting out of the house and away from the home office. But what I have found since starting this experiment is that I don’t need the escape as much as I used to need it, because the VR Office has become that “leaving the house” button that I was looking for when my friend offered me a desk and a door. I enjoy the chance to be social over lunch, and the after work happy hour doesn’t hurt either, so I’m sticking with it, just maybe not on snowy mornings!
Slight lower numbers today, but many of my meeting were in Zoom, and even though I have explored joining Zoom calls as my Meta Avatar (using Immersed software), I think that’s still a little too “out there” for some folks in the office. So for Zoom I stick with the webcam.
Here’s a short video I made today using the Quest Pro Passthrough cameras. As I enter the workspace the virtual monitors pop up and I can dive right in (after launching the app of course). It’s very cool that with the v37 update we can finally film with the passthrough cameras to make these types of videos! (and, yes, that water bottle has a Walkabout Minigolf sticker on it!)
Cup Half Empty: No red flags today. My Workrooms meetings were very stable, and no avatar freeze. Which makes me wonder if some of my issues are related to home internet bandwidth. I might need to start adding “SpeedTest” data to this experiment. The Remote Office has BLAZING speeds!
Cup Half Full: I hosted Community Time today and only one person showed up. These are the early days of VR Offices and the concept of a VR Campus still seems theoretical to many, so I sit in many empty virtual rooms hoping people show up. The guy who showed up today is one of my favorite people at work! He’s also a big fan of the VR Office, and joins Mini-Mindfulness on a very regular basis. So the chance to play a round of 18 with him was great. We talked about upcoming travel and it felt extremely normal (spoiler: he’s off to Disney next week).
#TLDR
Today I was reminded of how VR for Work isn’t supposed to always feel REVOLUTIONARY. It’s supposed to feel REAL. And today it felt very real. Sure I was playing minigolf in the Arizona dessert, and hosting a morning team stand up without legs (there’s a joke there I’m not gonna touch). But everything felt normal, and how I expect things to feel, regardless of the world being virtual versus physical. When VR fades into the background it’s true power comes forward. Because in the end the most important part of Virtual Reality is the Reality.
Till Tomorrow…
Carrier Pigeon XR 