How Somnium Space can transform your business meetings and conferences

Being able to connect and collaborate across functional and geographical boundaries is extremely important for many businesses. And for obvious reasons. Their teams are often multi-office and even multi-continent entities.

Text messaging, video conferencing, screen sharing, it’s daily routine for many of us. But whatever tool or method we use, most people will agree that personal, face-to-face meetings allow for clearer communication. Despite our love for social networking, in-person interactions are superior when it comes to building relationships, both personally and professionally.

But meeting in person has been challenged due to the current COVID-19 (Corona) virus outbreak. And face-to-face meetings are costly. Apart from staff travel and hospitality costs, having remote employees travel for in-person meetings can also induce stress and affect their well-being. They’re away from their families and they may worry about work responsibilities that are piling up during their travels. The impact on their mental health is often underestimated.

Bottom line: In-person meetings are preferred in many cases, but they are costly. And even impossible or discouraged in some cases. Again, think COVID-19.

Virtual Reality allows us to combine the convenience of online meetings with the interactivity of face-to-face meetings. When you meet colleagues in VR it feels like you are together in the same spatial environment, which can be an office or an open, persistent VR world such as Somnium Space.

Virtual reality is no longer a gimmick. It is becoming mainstream technology. And already today it is entirely possible to organize truly powerful meetings, allowing participants to discuss, present, review, brainstorm, prototype and have various team-building activities.

Somnium Space appears destined to be the place where businesses will find that they not only can have meetings and even entire conferences in this VR world, but also cross boundary team-building events. Want to play bowling with colleagues on the other side of the globe? Somnium Space has a solution for that.

Office created by users of Somnium Space

For meetings and conferences there are many options in Somnium Space. A large venue is the Somnium Space Amphitheater, which has already been the venue of preference for a whole series of live events. The venue can host a large crowd in an amphitheater style setting and has been equipped with a big screen for crystal clear presentations. Microphones can be used for a perfect audio experience.

The Somnium Space Amphitheatre, here used by Artur Sychov, founder and CEO of Somnium Space, during one of the many community sessions.

The Somnium Space Amphitheater was recently used for the final event of the Educators in VR conference.

For more tailored and even custom build venues, the Somnium Space user community can easily help out and work with you to create your very own virtual and branded office space. If this sounds intriguing, you can reach out to the community on Discord and they will guide you.

Somnium Space is available for PC and can be used in VR and 2D mode (without headsets). It’s fully compatible with all PC VR headsets including the portable headset Oculus Quest with Link (Oculus Link lets you explore Oculus Rift content – including Somnium Space – when connected to a PC). It allows 300+ people in one location, large video screens, PDF presentations and the use of microphones for perfect sound.

Reducing costs and still have personal, interactive meetings is one of the strongest arguments for using VR technology in businesses. But there are other arguments. Less flights, smaller carbon footprint for example. Or, once again, what about the argument that in-person meetings may be impossible at times?

The current COVID-19 (Corona) virus outbreak is a stark reminder of that risk.

Meeting and conference venues in Somnium Space

Here’s a list with some user created meeting and conference venues that exist today in Somnium Space.

Bay Tree Convention Centre

Owner: @snakeniteuk (Discord).

The Bay Tree Convention Center is a multi story venue offering various great meeting spaces for your company. It’s just a minute walk south of Somnium Waypoint and right at the shores of the Deep Oasis Lake.

Tri-Arena

Owner: @ispira (Discord)

Tri-Arena is a great looking and conveniently located conference center just west of Somnium Waypoint. It has a big stage, plenty of seats and enough space to walk around and mingle in between meetings.

VR Education

Owner: @Meet_Fact (Discord).

VR Education is a striking structure close to Somnium Waypoint. It focuses on corporate meetings, events and conferences. It has two main rooms: The first room is a ground floor level conference hall for larger crowds, the second is on the top floor almost 50 meters high. It’s for private meetings for up to 5 people and offers stunning views of Somnium. Within only one minute walk from Somnium Waypoint, so easy to reach.