Over the past year, there has been an endless stream of views on "what to do in the meta universe". Among them, completing online office in the virtual world is one of the fastest directions for product implementation. Taking meta quest, the global leader in VR all-in-one machine sales, as an example, the parent company meta (Facebook) has launched the first VR meta universe office space "Horizon workspaces" in 2021. Although this product and the subsequent Horizon Worlds make complaints about "semi-finished products", software vendors are still exploring the correct form of the office of the universe.
Headquartered in Shanghai, "Huadong technology" also saw the opportunity of meta universe office. It began to carry out a series of practices of "meta universe" since December last year, and officially launched the independent and open "Ark meta universe office platform" in February 2022.
"The original office of the company is located on the 7th floor of Qibao Baolong building. The lease term is 3 years. We will not renew the lease after the lease ends on June 30, 2022. At present, all employees have begun to sort out their personal belongings and will all move to the ark platform at that time." Jiang minqiu, founder and CEO of Huadong technology, told 36 krypton.
In order to better experience the office convenience brought by ark platform, 36 krypton's interview was also completed in ark.
The reporter avatar who came to the "Huadong town" virtual office of Huadong technology talked with the staff avatar on a table. When avatars meet each other (the two sides enter a certain distance), they can see the faces of avatar owners (employees) connected by personal PC and have a voice conversation. (source: 36 krypton)
After opening the laptop and entering the "Ark yuan universe office platform" page, the 11 storey virtual building of Baolong city was restored 1:1, and avatar employees wearing it hoodies, suspenders, casual clothes, formal clothes and other clothes were working. Walking into the 7th floor where Huadong technology is used, avatars in front of desks of various departments are working or holding meetings.
Limited by the popularity of VR equipment and the limitation of hardware performance, ark developed by Huadong Technology After having basic functions, the meta universe platform does not add too complex rendering effects. Thanks to this design idea, users can log in to the ark platform anytime and anywhere in the web browser environment and start working.
From the rear of avatar, you can see the employees of various teams working together. (source: 36 krypton)
In fact, since the beginning of the epidemic in 2020, many enterprises all over the world have the demand for telecommuting, but the previous telecommuting mode is difficult to build a good communication bridge between new employees, new talents and teams. Jiang minqiu said that the biggest advantage of ark is that the journey to work is shortened to 1 minute, and even telecommuting can make employees feel like they are in the office.
In addition, yuancosmic office has also helped enterprises attract high-tech talents from all over the world. Take Jin Xiaofeng, a working mother and UX designer, as an example. At first, she was attracted by "meta universe Recruitment". After attending a meta party held by Huadong on gather Town, she found a breakthrough direction in her future design work. "The future meta universe office plan of Huadong technology is very attractive to me, because it can work in parallel with childcare, and even work with excellent developers in India or other countries. Such working conditions and environment were difficult to achieve before."
Of course, there are still shortcomings in the "meta universe office" at this stage. The most representative ones are "work and personal life cannot be separated" and "a person's lunch at noon every day feels very lonely". President yuan, CTO of Huadong technology, said that if these interactive topics can be solved, colleagues will have coffee time as offline, so an atmosphere of "really working together" will be formed in the meta universe. At present, the "small talk" of casual meeting and chatting in front of the water purifier and coffee machine still cannot be realized. The relevant person in charge of product operation said: "in order to play the role of internal general affairs of the company, let members copy and have a dialogue with each other, the company plans to set up a 'shopping guide room' on the ark yuan universe office platform in February this year and arrange the corresponding 'Avatar'."
After the disappearance of the company building, employees from other first and second tier cities and even abroad have joined the company
It is understood that although Huadong technology company has abandoned the "physical company building", it has obtained more talents. In the past, only people from Shanghai where the company is located could enter the company, but now there are recruits in cities such as Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Beijing, as well as countries around the world such as South Korea, France and Japan, and realize "face-to-face" office exchanges in ark.
Communication and interaction among colleagues in ark (picture source: Huadong Technology)
In December 2021, the metauniverse job fair held by Huadong technology attracted more than 100 resumes from the world's top universities, including Harvard Carnegie, and finally talents from many famous universities, including Harvard, entered the company.
Jiang minqiu believes that generation Z young talents pursue more interesting and independent work experience, and "interesting" and "autonomy" are just the bottom ideas of the metauniverse: real immersion and Web3 0's unique value attributes can bring a new experience. "The data left by the top 1% of the world's top talents submitting resumes and participating in interview interaction through ark yuanuniverse office platform are extremely valuable; these values are monopolized by centralized companies in the traditional Internet era, which has nothing to do with the talents themselves."
It is worth mentioning that at this stage, the blockchain mechanism of ark meta universe office can encrypt and store talent data and belong to individuals alone. With the consent of talents and based on privacy computing technology, these data can be opened to enterprises that need to recruit talents to realize commercial realization; These realizations are realized through Web3.0 on the platform 0 economic system is allocated to the person who belongs to the resume.
The person in charge of personnel of Huadong technology is willing to say that ark yuanuniverse office has brought significant talent recruitment dividends, and the company will continue to expand the geographical scope of talent recruitment in the future. "Another advantage of the application of ark yuancosmos office is that the company's operating costs have been reduced by nearly 90%. The saved costs include the rental of office buildings and the cost of various office supplies such as desks, chairs and copiers. Instead, we have issued 'support fund for creating remote office environment' to each employee and leased the virtual company of ark yuancosmos office platform The business model for other companies has also begun to be implemented. "
Jiang minqiu said, "At present, we are strictly regarded as mixed office: we plan to hold 'meet up day' activities for employees to meet offline with business and interest as the center on a regular basis. In the near future, we will rent 25 flower lounges in Shanghai and set up shared offices to meet the needs of employees of different teams who need to meet offline in a small range from time to time. The space has just changed from offline to online." The core value of 'work' has not changed. "
