Virtual offices

The Internet is increasingly penetrating our lives, connecting people from all over the world. There are new increasingly realistic, more and more perfect ways of interaction, the concept of “distance” is erased. It is becoming easier to find people with similar views and interests. The workflow in many areas of human activity is more and more an information exchange, and the more urgent is the question of transferring it to a virtual environment. And with the current level of technology, this is becoming not only relevant, but also quite possible.

I want to share with the community an idea called Virtual Offices. Its essence is to bring together developers from different parts of the world under one virtual 3D-roof. A 3D space is created on the Internet for collaboration and communication. An example session in this space may look like this: a person enters a common space (similar to a computer game), sits down at his workplace, and then his usual work environment will be displayed on the screen, he can go up to any employee and see what he does, chat, help. When tired, you can take a walk around the office, drive a car around the district (and you can do absolutely any one, for example, a scenic road along the sea!), Play a game of virtual pool with friends or beat the boss. You can “come” to work at night so that no one bothers, You can “order” your weather, time of day, employees who will work nearby. To simulate the effect of presence, the interlocutor’s voice will be transmitted to the channel of the speakers / headphones on which side the interlocutor is.

What can such offices give?

Firstly, the opportunity to realize the most daring fantasy in terms of design, to make an office for yourself. You can even change offices at least every day. Moreover, you can change the landscape near the office, and place it, for example, on the shore of a mountain lake, or overlooking the sea, or in the heart of a modern metropolis! In a word, choose for yourself the conditions that take into account individual preferences and contribute to productive work.

Secondly, it is an opportunity to unite people from different corners of the planet, to create a sense of the presence of everyone in one place. Moreover, it is possible to combine the option of remote and stationary work when stationary employees are simultaneously in a regular office and in a virtual one, and employees from other cities can connect to the virtual office of the enterprise. Here you can draw charts on a virtual board and share experiences. It is known how difficult it is to find suitable people in the immediate environment. The Internet helps solve this problem through the creation of virtual subspaces. It would be possible to find and unite specialists in a certain field of knowledge, similar in views and aspirations. These are not necessarily programmers, but, for example, designers, engineers, architects, artists. It would also be possible to invite high-quality specialists from other cities to outsource. In combination with crowdfunding, virtual offices can give a strong impetus to the development of startups.

Thirdly, it is an opportunity to model, test the future. Open space for various social studies: how does the design of the room, the mode of work on productivity. You can reorganize departments in different ways, experiment with pair programming and try many other things.

Fourth, the exchange of experience, presentations and conferences. After the report, you can discuss it with other participants, listen to someone else's conversation and join in it. In general, a more complete sense of presence is created. Visitors can be invited to the office and hold presentations and demonstrations for them. It is convenient for establishing interaction with customers.

As it turned out, the idea is not new. There are 3D exhibition halls, 3D shops, 3D conferences are held, but I have not heard about 3D offices for developers. It is interesting to know the opinion of the habrasociety on this issue. What are some interesting developments in this direction?

Several
related links: www.3d-virtual.ru
www.livebusiness.ru/news/1447
www.livebusiness.ru/news/9305
www.iemag.ru/opinions/detail.php?ID=25217