What if we didn’t go back?
When we think about collaboration in and through our current pandemic, we hear lots of people opining for when we can ‘get back to normal’. For the days when we can spend more days travelling than we do at the event. And for the dining, drinking, and shopping experiences that come with being somewhere other than home. Our current dive into digital collaboration and digital delivery always seems premised with the sentiment that it’s only temporary and there’s no need to do more than the minimum until we can ‘get back to normal’.
One of the big criticisms of digital is that it just doesn’t provide the same experience. That that mystical in-person connection is missing. We know the experience from sitting in front of a computer screen and staring at twenty other people doing the same. It seems a bit like looking through a book of mugshots.
What we hear a lot less of is: how do we make digital (virtual) collaboration better than in-person? What would make that experience more engaging than in-person?
One answer is Virtual Reality (VR).
Imagine using our tech to meet in Hawaii, or the Alps, or Mars. As of today, you can use one of any number of apps to have a “meeting” in VR. You can walk with your counterparts, talk, interact, and do things you could never do in reality, or in places you could never go in reality. With the constraints of reality removed, how engaging could your collaboration be?
We might think that VR is for a future yet to be unleashed; that it’s still more fantasy than reality. But I have personally seen VR headsets that use your iPhone and can be used to tour development sites or real estate. There’s headsets we’ve all heard about, like Oculus, Playstation VR, and others, as well as tons of applications from games to productivity to meetings. The tech is there and it’s advancing fast.
It falls to us to ask why we should go back to the way we used to do it, when we can ask instead ‘what if’ we chose to go forward and see what we can do in an entirely digital experience?
What would your VR look like if you could design your own experience? How would you enable the creativity of collaboration in VR? Send me a note at scott.millar@collaboration-dynamics.com or leave a comment below.
Happy collaborating!
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together.
Season 2 of the Cool Collaborations podcast is here! Join Scott as he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
