This is how Bill Gates sees the future of meetings and telecommuting: give two years for a momentous change

Bill Gates usually publishes an article annually on his blog in which he compiles a kind of balance of the year. He has called 2021 the “most unusual and difficult year”, due to the very situation of COVID and on a personal level also his divorce.

But in it the billionaire also looked to 2022 and beyond with no little optimism. In it, he reflects on what he believes will be the future of work, and especially the virtual meetings that have spread so much since the start of the pandemic.

Two years for the metaverse to enter our meetings

In a year-end post on Gates’ personal blog, the Microsoft co-founder included a prediction about the future of work, and how could it change with the rise of the metaverse, the virtual worlds that technology companies such as Meta (formerly Facebook) and Microsoft are building, where users will be able to work, play and socialize.

Gates notes that the Covid-19 pandemic has already “revolutionized” the workplace, with more companies than ever offering flexibility to employees who want to telecommute. “These changes will only intensify in the coming years”writes Gates, and claims that telecommuting will only attract more people to the metaverse.

“Within the next two to three years, I predict that most virtual meetings will shift from 2D camera image grids … to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars,” Gates writes on his blog.

That two-dimensional and squared vision that Gates describes is the one that is obtained today with most of video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Meanwhile, in the metaverse, each user or worker would have a 3D avatar that could attend meetings in a virtual office or other destination, where they could interact with the avatars of your coworkers.

“The idea is that, over time, you use your avatar to meet people in a virtual space that reproduces the feeling of being in a real room with them,” Gates writes. However, Gates says that users will have to wear virtual reality headsets or glasses to do so.

“There is still work to do”, but it won’t be long before the metaverse makes remote work feel a little less remote, “says Gates.