How This Freelance Marketplace Went From “Killing Zombies” to Creating a Thriving Virtual Corporate Culture
Forget about business as usual
It’s difficult to determine when businesses will get back to “normal” after the coronavirus pandemic ends. Even if you’re used to working remotely, staying inside your home almost 24x7 for weeks or months if your communities are basically shut down can be demoralizing and frustrating. So, how can you and your team stay sane, productive, and connected, particularly during these challenging times? What can you do to engage in a way that’s even more powerful than face-to-face in-person communications? Maybe it’s time to take out your gaming gear, start killing zombies, and see what happens next inside the virtual world.
That’s exactly what Michael Brooks did, with a little help from his long-time friend, Cameron Gordon, the CEO of Rapid Phone Center. Brooks is CEO of goLance, an online freelance marketplace with more than 532,000 global users and $79+ million in payouts. Brooks discovered how an Oculus Quest gaming headset was just the right technology to take him and his goLance team into a virtual world, which turned out to be a great environment for conducting meetings. He combined the headset with vSpatial virtual workspace technology to bring together team members in the same 3-D “meeting room” at the same time, to communicate, innovate, and have fun, without distractions and interruptions.
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The journey from playing games to gathering together in a virtual meeting room
Here’s how his adventure into the virtual world evolved:
goLance, which is based on a remote business model, recruits, screens, hires, manages and pays freelance talent worldwide. Freelancers on the goLance platform can work for clients located thousands of miles away, and their work is tracked and managed using the company’s goMeter and Work Diary. goLance and many of its clients and freelancers continue to use applications like Skype, Slack, and Zoom to stay connected, but Brooks also wanted something more powerful for meeting with a group of key team members, who were scattered throughout the world. He needed game-changing technology (pun intended) that could create an environment for greater creativity, productivity, and engagement.
Brooks was at a conference in Las Vegas and met with Gordon, just before the coronavirus-related shutdowns were happening in the United States. Gordon is also a customer with a call center that runs its entire operation on goLance. They both live in different countries, so they were only able to catch up in person at trade shows a few times a year. The coronavirus was a hot topic at the conference, and the two friends discussed how they weren’t going be attending other trade shows for a while. “After the conference, my friend sent me a gift to keep our connection going, and I had no idea at the time how it would ultimately transform my business,” says Brooks.
The gift was an Oculus Quest headset for playing virtual games. You simply put on the headset and through your avatar, you can join your friends in a virtual world. “Originally, we would kill zombies in our spare time,” says Brooks. “While we played this game, we also talked about our business, how we can help each other and what we can be doing better.”
Gordon considers Oculus as a new go-to tool for business and is on the cusp of finding new ways to leverage virtual reality capabilities. “Oculus has far-reaching business possibilities, especially in the wake of COVID-19,” he says. “We’re able to use it to work together on business ideas and have fun, all from the comfort of our own homes.”
Brooks appreciated how this technology gave him the opportunity to share more ideas with Gordon in a virtual world than when they met in person at past trade shows, and were both pressed for time. It got Brooks thinking about some of the other people he communicates with frequently globally and how he could use Oculus Quest to make meetings more enjoyable and productive.
Brooks decided to give his legal advisor, who is also a long-time friend and ping-pong connoisseur, an Oculus Quest headset and they began having virtual meetings. “We play ping pong and go over issues, terms, and conditions and all of mundane things you have to deal with and don’t want to, but at least we’re having fun,” says Brooks. “It gives us a chance talk through processes and makes our experience a lot better, even though I always lose every game.”
After killing zombies and losing at ping pong, Brooks decided to take the environment to the next level in a virtual meeting room. He purchased another Oculus headset for his operations manager and uses it together with the to creates virtual rooms designed to promote productivity, collaboration, teaming, and presenting. vSpatial refers to the app as delivering productivity on virtual steroids. “We use this virtual meeting room to review our spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and other materials,” Brooks says. “When you’re in that virtual room, you are 100% engaged in a way that is even more effective than if you were in a physical room together—you can’t even leave the meeting to look at a phone message, or mindlessly check your email, without taking off your headset.”
goLance uses this technology regularly for meetings with its global team and has accomplished some amazing results. Each meeting participant has an avatar. “One of the key things to using avatars is it's a more bandwidth-friendly feature than traditional video conferencing, as we only need to send the audio and the avatar movements,” says Daniel Platt, director of product for vSpatial. This gives goLance a great international tool where we can have immersive and personable collaboration without the high bandwidth needs of traditional video conferencing,” Brooks added.
When you’re wearing the goggles in a virtual world, it’s new and exciting. “This cosmically unique environment of virtual meeting rooms brings people closer together without distractions and facilitates creativity, productivity, and innovation,” Brooks says.
What’s next
Brooks has met with three people simultaneously in the same virtual room and intends to increase that to eight, which includes his department heads. “These meetings represent one of biggest steps we can take to bring people together worldwide to maximize the benefits of a powerful and effective virtual corporate culture,” he says. “When you’re in a virtual meeting room together and are engaged, you can feel a connection that’s even greater than you can with other platforms, because you’re all in the same place.”
The world has changed but the need to connect hasn’t. “This technology is great for morale, and whenever you can enjoy what you’re doing, especially in times like these, you’re winning,” Brooks says. “It gamifies corporate meetings and makes the work that we do fun and more productive.”
Looking ahead, virtual reality, augmented reality (with digital elements added to a live view), mixed reality (where you merge real and alternate worlds), and extended reality (which includes all of these worlds) will enhance the human experience. That’s critical to leading a business like goLance, which has embraced innovative new technologies to support a global remote workforce. “The companies that are familiarizing themselves with these technologies today will be the ones that lead us into the future, while those that wait will be left behind,” says Platt.
