For example, in a pre-pandemic office, you’ll meet colleagues and start an instant conversation about your pet, your boss, and an ongoing project throughout the day. Information will be disseminated, ideas will be exchanged, and additional meetings will be scheduled. However, in zooming, moving from one meeting to another means selecting a button to click. There is no buffer for serendipity, which reduces the chances of binding. A salesperson who stopped by to meet a client before the pandemic went through the office and greeted everyone. The next time a client needs to buy new customer relationship management software, they may not remember which product has the most security features, but remember one of the fascinating salespeople who went to their alma mater. I am. Now the salesperson needs to demo the product via zoom. You can’t get the most out of your charisma and calm because you need to share your screen. The best thing they can do to foster a relationship, post-sale marketing, is to send a follow-up email. Maybe a meme.

Prior to the pandemic, senior engineers or scholars could have expected to attend several meetings a year with others in the same field. Walk around the booths of different companies, get some logo giveaways, get the latest technology and a brief summary of paper at dinner, and finally work on your vacation for a few days. In contrast, a pandemic conference is a series of 300 zoom calls that only one person can speak at a time.

The rapid growth of many startups dedicated to addressing these telecommuting restrictions last year is a testament to Silicon Valley’s prosperity. Founded in 2019, Hopin gained momentum as thousands of academic and corporate conferences went online. Clients include the United Nations and TechCrunch Disrupt. Compared to Zoom and Gather.town, Hopin requires more preparation and setup. Clients need to decide everything from color schemes and logos to sponsors and schedules to design virtual venues. “An example I would like to give is renting a large building for the event,” says Hopin’s founder and chief executive officer, Johnny Bufferhat. “There is probably a conference room on the office floor, which is a video conferencing platform like Zoom.” “But on the ground floor of the building downstairs, there is usually a large venue, and the venue can be changed as you like. Perhaps it’s hosting a recruitment night. Maybe we Will see the meeting. Maybe they are hosting a social gathering. “

Each event begins on Hopin’s profile page. Click the “Enter” button to go to the virtual conference home page. On the right is a running group chat. On the left is the conference banner and a list of all live speaker sessions. Clicking on one of them will take you to a room like a zoom. In the room, the audience can vote for questions to ask the speaker. You can also search the comprehensive list of meeting participants and invite them to individual video chats.

Hopin’s focus is on efficiency, but there are other startups that are more willing to recreate the chance encounters in the workplace. Created by Teamflow and Branch, the virtual office has a personal desk, common areas, and a private meeting room. In Teamflow, the video appears as a bubble in the virtual office plan and you can navigate through the office by typing on the keyboard. When you want to check your colleagues, just “walk” to them. When you go to the next meeting, you may “hit” someone.

Much of the inspiration for animating the flowering of this spatial conferencing platform comes from video games. Kumospace CEO Yang Mou was a competitive StarCraft player at the university. When the blockade began to occur, he wondered why he was playing online with his friends for hours and didn’t want to stop, when only the Zoom meeting happened. Malaise. In creating Kumospace, he was particularly influenced by large multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft. “One of the jokes is that it’s a glorious chat room,” he says. “You’re playing games, you have nothing to do, you’re really just hanging out with your friends,” he adds, “it’s like going to a shopping center.”