{"id":1397,"date":"2021-05-08T05:44:26","date_gmt":"2021-05-08T03:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/08\/can-virtual-meeting-spaces-save-us-all-from-zoom-fatigue\/"},"modified":"2021-05-08T05:44:26","modified_gmt":"2021-05-08T03:44:26","slug":"can-virtual-meeting-spaces-save-us-all-from-zoom-fatigue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/08\/can-virtual-meeting-spaces-save-us-all-from-zoom-fatigue\/","title":{"rendered":"Can virtual meeting spaces save us all from Zoom fatigue?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few of us will be back in the office full time \u2013 but does that have to mean endless video calls? Meet the weird and wonderful newcomers hoping to take a piece of the action<\/p>\n

I\u2019m playing online Pictionary while chatting with five people I\u2019ve never met. This is not at all how I usually spend my Thursdays. We\u2019ve all dropped into a virtual meeting space on a site called gather.town<\/a>, which provides free customisable spaces for anyone who wants to organise a get-together without using Zoom. Gather is a virtual world and you choose an avatar before entering it: imagine a mid-80s Super Mario game in which, instead of jumping over his enemies, Mario has to go to the office. There are pixelated potted palms dotted about my screen, a couple of banks of desks and a sofa area, all rendered in that very specific 2D map style common to early computer games. I\u2019m represented by a tiny, blocky avatar: a collection of dots arranged to look a bit like a person. As I move it around with keyboard keys, I can enter and leave conversations \u2013 when I do so, a small live video of whoever I\u2019m talking to appears above the main screen.<\/p>\n

It might all sound mad, but Gather is 18 months old, has 4 million users<\/a>, and recently raised $26m in investment. Universities use it to create virtual campuses; individuals use it to host games nights; groups of friends throw parties on it \u2013 and workers are collaborating on it. It is trying, like hundreds of other new platforms, sites and apps, to provide us all with a solution to a very 2021 problem: despite being ubiquitous since early 2020, video calls aren\u2019t necessarily helping us work or stay connected effectively.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nFew of us will be back in the office full time \u2013 but does that have to mean endless video calls? Meet the weird and wonderful newcomers hoping to take a piece of the action
\nI\u2019m playing online Pictionary while chatting with five people I\u2019ve never met. This is not at all how I usually spend my Thursdays. We\u2019ve all dropped into a virtual meeting space on a site called gather.town, which provides free customisable spaces for anyone who wants to organise a get-together without using Zoom. Gather is a virtual world and you choose an avatar before entering it: imagine a mid-80s Super Mario game in which, instead of jumping over his enemies, Mario has to go to the office. There are pixelated potted palms dotted about my screen, a couple of banks of desks and a sofa area, all rendered in that very specific 2D map style common to early computer games. I\u2019m represented by a tiny, blocky avatar: a collection of dots arranged to look a bit like a person. As I move it around with keyboard keys, I can enter and leave conversations \u2013 when I do so, a small live video of whoever I\u2019m talking to appears above the main screen.
\nIt might all sound mad, but Gather is 18 months old, has 4 million users, and recently raised $26m in investment. Universities use it to create virtual campuses; individuals use it to host games nights; groups of friends throw parties on it \u2013 and workers are collaborating on it. It is trying, like hundreds of other new platforms, sites and apps, to provide us all with a solution to a very 2021 problem: despite being ubiquitous since early 2020, video calls aren\u2019t necessarily helping us work or stay connected effectively. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Few of us will be back in the office full time \u2013 but does that have to mean endless video calls? Meet the weird and wonderful newcomers hoping to take a piece of the action I\u2019m playing online Pictionary while chatting with five people I\u2019ve never met. This is not at all how I usually …<\/p>\n

Can virtual meeting spaces save us all from Zoom fatigue?<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}