Will we soon only have virtual meetings?

LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine): Now that teleworking is becoming more and more common, we also meet more and more online. Do physical meetings still have a future or is this gradually becoming a thing of the past? And what about emerging VR technology? Fact or science fiction?

Life as it was: meeting

The traffic jam on the way to the meeting at the office, the first ‘first things first’ coffee moment at the coffee machine, the collegiate buzz just before the meeting and the shuffling in the chairs during the meeting because of the many teleworking we can sometimes no longer imagine how a physical meeting ever was.

Nevertheless, meetings are still held in the office, although it often takes place online. Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams are commonly used digital tools that make 

Digital (r)evolution

Yet online meetings are not the figurative pinnacle of the digital (r)evolution. Virtual reality is becoming more and more reality in the workplace. This technology is getting better, more user-friendly and cheaper, so that it can develop into a fully-fledged digital tool with which you can meet virtually.

In practice, this means that with a VR headset on your head, you can meet remotely via a virtual meeting platform with your colleagues who – just like you – have a personal VR avatar. All this in a self-designed meeting environment.

Science fiction? Not necessarily: Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s company that was until recently known as Facebook, is working hard on Metaverse, a digital universe where you can work in addition to shopping, socializing and relaxing.

Will we soon only have virtual meetings?

However, this does not mean that we will only meet virtually or online in the future. A study by the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab found that frequent online meetings can cause a certain fatigue that you experience less in the real world.

The solution for this is hybrid meeting , so you have the best of both worlds together and as a social animal, you can still fully enjoy physical social contact in the (corona proof) workplace.