Three-dimensional virtual worlds where people can interact, do business, and forge social connections through their virtual avatars are gaining traction. BEAM asks MCI Group’s Chief Strategy Officer, Oscar Cerezales, about the potential of metaverse in events and entertainment.
Ever since Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Meta (formerly Facebook), linked the new brand name to his strategic plan to create a metaverse — a virtual world in which consumers spend increasing parts of their lives, based on AI and virtual reality (VR) technology, many have questioned how the metaverse might implicate social interactions, the way companies design their organisations, market themselves and manage an increasingly distributed workforce.
A metaverse is a digital platform that allows the creation and sharing of virtual experiences with anyone, anywhere in the world. The technology can be used to boost employee engagement and company culture by removing the remoteness of home-based work.
In May this year, virtual event platform EventX purchased the virtual land of the blockchain sandbox game “The Sandbox”, and launched a metaverse event technical support plan to help event organisers grasp the general trend of Web3 and the metaverse.
Epic Games and LEGO Group raised USD2 billion to further build their future metaverse platforms. The funding will be used to create new experiences and applications for users of these platforms, as well as expand the reach of the existing ones. The companies said that this investment will help them “continue building a more seamless experience across devices and bring gaming to even more people around the world.”
Before the business events industry can normalise the use of metaverse in their environment, Cerezales says the industry first needs to make sense of the technology and get people comfortable with the metaverse terms. He also believes the event professionals need to identify the players involved, map out the landscape, its definitions and the rules of engagement.
Cerezales adds, “Instead of paying attention to the technology, think about why you need it. Is it to build a bigger community, save money, go faster or become more efficient?” He encourages everyone to figure out the why before the what (platform) and pay attention to what is happening in the other industries and the players mastering the art of omnichannel.
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