My first-hand experience with Oculus Quest and meeting Camille Donegan, one of the independent VR producers from the country of Ireland.
First, let me give you a comprehensive context into the read.
This story is a remembrance from the year 2019. The time when I was working as a restaurant in charge of one of the fanciable restaurants in the south of Dublin, Ireland managing daily operations, leading the team on busy days, accommodating customers daily.
Needless to say that my role was well-rounded. I used to work mostly five days a week and at times more, from 4 in the evening to 11 pm till night. I was a post-graduate in computer science who have enjoyed working in the restaurant domain. Moreover, it took me almost five years to ladder up in the organization. Along with the joy of being promoted up the ladder, there was also a little anxiety to perform flawlessly at the highest level.
First and foremost, the role itself was a learning experience, with an opportunity to garner insights while being encountered with new challenges every day. On top of that, I kept myself engaged with learning and understanding modern-day business development practices from everywhere else, including social media.
If you manage people or lead a team, always remember that ‘you’ work for your team and not the other way around.
This one piece of advice I came across on the internet made so much sense. If you are the manager, it’s your job to look after your team’s well-being. With that being said, I also understood that being good at the role requires having common sense, be well-informed, and live around the corners of opportunities. The more I understood my role as in charge, the more I started attending events in Dublin.
At that point, my singular agenda was to meet as many new people as I can in networking events, and pay attention to where the world is moving. Moreover, I have already made the decision to use my free time in knowing where the opportunities are, and what skill sets are required, so that I could go back to my workplace and be the guide and mentor for my team. In fact, learning how to do my job right did put me in the edges and in the action.
During that period, I made myself accept the changes and undertake plenty of creative hobbies. Hobbies such as seeking knowledge, meeting new people, attending events, listening to podcasts, going on vacations, working persistently, nurturing my body. Along with that, I somehow made myself stay young and relevant to all the colleagues for the most part.
In my opinion,
People in senior-level roles must always be able to accommodate their team. Having a vision for their subordinates is the most important thing the leaders can focus on. If the managers aren’t creating a sustainable environment for their talent pool, they will lose. It is as simple as that.
And being a computing graduate and listening to the best of the ideologies such as the above helped me stay curious about having a vision for the people who work with me.
The things I put my head around at that time were simple,
Work for the logo and your team.
Happy teams achieve more.
Mental health is important.
Learning is exhausting and underrated so be the best example you can ever be.
Be on the edge, stay on the lookout for what is working in the industry and everywhere else.
Encourage hobbies such as reading, listening, speaking, and writing.
Act like a superhero whenever possible, because sometimes all they need is hope.
Be okay with failing.
Forgiving myself for the mistakes was fundamental throughout the process. I have been to events such as book launches, business conferences, language exchange meets, job expos, art festivals, and I travelled too. Gathering information, meeting new people, learning new crafts, figuring out the future of work.
The world in Dublin is exuberant. From musicals and historicals to technological advancements there are plenty of opportunities for everyone to indulge in. Thanks to social media and the internet, finding these events is immensely easy. One fine day I was glancing through the list of events that are happening in the coming week and saw these pop up on my Facebook page. My initial reaction was, oh people here are talking VR passport? It sounded super cool already and then there was more. Firstly, I personally know plenty of kids who would love to own a VR headset, now I have this opportunity to experience it. In addition, they’re also talking about Technology Immersion in Businesses and that itself compelled me in deciding to spend few hours of my Tuesday (Day off) with the Digital Hub Ireland.
Reached Digital Hub’s cluster at around 11:45 pm. There were 2 kids alongside me, we together navigated ourselves into the building and reached the office space. There was a 1200 square feet gaming lounge specially designed for VR tryouts. You can sense how I felt being with the 11-year-olds for this event called VR passport. We were given the headsets and explained what we can do with them. There were gaming apps installed and we have given the controllers and assurance to try out everything we like and could.
I remember there are games like beat saber, and apps like YouTube VR, and Google Maps VR and so many more. It was the first time I tried VR and it was awesome. I was so busy enjoying the experience and they actually let me be there for 2 hours, it was supposed to be an hour thing.
The induction started off with an explanation about what is majorly happening in the virtual reality space, all over the globe with regard to business success. As soon as I walked into the room, I remember there was a lady waiting in the room. We had a casual conversation for few minutes till the point where I got to know who the person I was talking to was. She was none other than Camille Donegan, General Manager and a producer of the company Virtual Reality Ireland. Camille was a very well-known individual in the virtual reality world, especially in Ireland. She has excelled parallelly in the Information Technology domain as well as in the literature & arts discipline.
Fun Fact:
Above all, it was a free event & I haven’t paid a cent to be there. Just so you know, learning doesn’t always need to be expensive. There are plenty of worthy events that are happening in the world for free and it was one of those.
Camille and the team of Digital Hub impacted us the technology & business enthusiasts, by demonstrating how VR can transform the way we do things, especially in business. We have been explained about the wide range of areas where Virtual Reality can come in handy in the near future. A couple of examples I remember were, how patients and the elderly can use VR services to feel safe, and how countries can use them for security forces, and how businesses and even doctors can help people sustain well in the upcoming technology-centric world. Basically, they have illustrated to us how it is being done in a realistic way, deciphering the tech trend to generalists like myself. Camille came up with slideshows that demonstrate a couple of the case studies they have previously worked on.
For instance, they helped us understand it by letting us experience a first-person view of their work for an insurance company called FBD Insurance and another for a plumbing company called Woodies. According to those case studies, ‘’VR for training’’ is already a successful execution. As I mentioned earlier, by participating in their induction event, I have gained the opportunity to experience the actuality behind the concept of ‘’VR for Training’’. When these two companies, FBD Insurance and Woodies experienced problems with their employees needing reassurance for their lack of knowledge about the customer queries and operations, the Virtual Reality of Ireland has trained the employees by using VR on how to use the products.
I was blown away by the fact that people who received training in virtual reality for their company and customers have achieved a lot more confidence and accuracy while performing in their roles. In fact, As a part of the event, we were all given the same training that the employees undertook. We all wore the newly released Oculus Quest at the time and received first-person training on how to do the work in hand respectively. I have to tell you, I was never familiar with any sort of plumbing work my whole life but that VR experience made me feel like, I can actually do it without any more training. It took me approximately 10 minutes to feel immensely confident about plumbing.
We have put on the VR headsets two times and gained two different experiences. One was taking a customer inquiry call for FBD Insurance company, and the other one is fixing a tap for Woodies. It was surreal, I just felt like I was in the physical space of FBD insurance company, reporting, addressing, and solving a complex customer query. I called that experience surreal because, until that point, I was only looking at VR from a gaming standpoint as a wannabe gamer.
Moreover, on both of these occasions, the people who were trained in VR experienced growth in their confidence while selling their products and speaking to their customers, answering queries and complaints. The practical experience about how to use the products they sell in a virtual reality environment helped the employees worked more efficiently according to the companies. One of the most significant advantages of using VR for training according to what I learned from was employees will gain practical knowledge, they will obtain their training in a safer place without having any time constraints.
If you are interested in knowing more about this, Virtual Reality Ireland has their case studies on VR for Marketing, VR for Tourism, VR for events, and more on their website. They’re on fleek and after gaining some first-person experience, these things make a lot of sense to me and the event itself has given all of us an idea about the future of work from a better perspective.
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