So AltspaceVR has integrated with Slack but what else do they do?
So AltspaceVR has integrated with Slack but what else do they do?
Recently AltspaceVR announced they integrated with Slack. Though I feel like a Slacker for just now getting to post this it is because CatsAndVR.com is not my day job. I was actually bombarded by Slack messages in my “real world” gig. I am a big fan of Slack as it has helped increase productivity at my day job in quantifiable ways. I use Slack for my day job and to interact with the MettaVR community.
Exit Scene/Cut to Future:
A good majority of the modern American tech workforce need an escape from the mundane day to day spreadsheet salesforce customer service existence we call a day job. Monotony is our first world brain torture. VR offers us an escape into immersive worlds where we can forget our worries, disabilities, and troubled state of consciousness.
What AltspaceVR offers is to bring us back together as a social unit during that momentary escape.
During SVVR 2016 I had the time to chat with the AltspaceVR team and do a #VRcall in a 80’s/90’s era phone booth. Just using a mobile device and a Gear VR I was able to visit an island dance party in honor of the recently departed Prince. This gathering of people showed my point whether likeminded or not, there are more commonalities than differences in the world. Everyone was there for a common interest in both Prince and VR.
The picture told of VR sometimes is that is a lonely isolationist experience. Hell at a point people looked that way at videogames. That is actually counterintuitive of the historical precedent of Mankind itself and the way technology has shaped shows this. World Of Warcraft was popular not because of being a good game but for it’s social value. The term Social Media has been ingrained in our modern technologic vernacular.
I get the marketing angle that with AltspaceVR and Slack conference calls and meetings will never be the same again.Well that angle is how you get funding and VentureBeat articles. Now mass scale adoption is different and that angle about AltspaceVR is what intrigues me about them.
My first interaction with AltspaceVR was a few years ago when I saw a random person on the street carrying an Oculus Dev kit. Though it was brief I got to share my intrigue of the modern VR movement and get some quick insights. Only recently I realized that person was Bruce Wooden.
For many people the fear of walking up to someone in the real world and having a conversation ends up creating a limited world view. AltspaceVR looks to solve this by having a virtual safe space to interact and communicate. The thing that really got me intrigued with AltspaceVR is the open mic and comedy events they host. Many people myself included want to get on stage and perform but can have a level of fear that is hard to overcome. In fact I only did my standup act once and it was random at Burning Man. A place I consider safe for me to truly be myself.
By having a virtual community people can become singers and poets in a space that is more akin to a real world environment than Youtube. When I spoke to Debbie Shepard she said she was so caught up in the energy and excitement of a recent event she decided to recite Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
I have to thank the AltspaceVR team for giving me some time to get a better idea of what they are doing.
I want to give a special thanks to Gerald Gottheil for taking the additional time to ask me what does AltspaceVR mean in the perspective of Cats And VR. I look at AltspaceVR as a place where pet owners as a whole can find out they have way more in common than they might have thought. I also look at people with disabilities having the opportunity to go to a virtual dog park. If I would request something in AltspaceVR it would be intuitive pet avatars, sometimes you may just want to wander around a virtual social world with your dog buddy.
I hope this turned out to be a good read, the original was actually deleted this morning due to WiFi issues and user error. Ok well now back to that AR Slack channel I'm living my real reality in, unfortunately the AR stands for Accounts Receivable not Augmented Reality.
