for W3c validation

Friday Faves is our weekly blog series highlighting a few select pieces from the REG team’s reading lists. You can catch up on past Friday Faves on the archive. 

Meetings suck. Can we make them more fun?

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Anne says: Jakkii introduced Facebook’s new “metaverse” meeting environment in virtual reality a couple of weeks ago in our Friday Faves. This article covers much of the same in the beginning (you can watch a short video with Mark Zuckerberg demonstrating it), then expands the topic into a review of other virtual reality meeting platforms.

My initial reaction to the title was: do we need more fun? (I had goosebumps remembering “fun” meetings from the 90’s – tree-hugging, jumping off cliffs, shoulder massages by colleagues… ewww). If meetings suck, shouldn’t we be asking: why are we meeting? What’s the purpose?

However, there’s some compelling research and arguments in the article that highlight why we need some fun – and they weren’t the ones you might expect! Beyond the Facebook entrant, there are a number of others – these seem to be funky tech ideas looking to engage young gamers. But, perhaps there’s something in that approach. While calling out Zoom fatigue as one of the problems to be solved, the underlying concept of using Zoom for specific types of meetings (and we can still do that a lot better), but accepting that the limitations are not enabling deeper connections and other ways of collaborating. Here’s the market potential for these new approaches.

There’s still some drawbacks, including one of the biggest challenges of VR, “wonky perception”, as the article refers to it. This took me back to a moment in a conference I attended in Second Life – it was super engaging, until I started to feel queazy and needed to excuse myself!!

As we grapple with hybrid workplaces and distributed teams, it’s encouraging to see the type of research being conducted into the challenges with meetings. How can we combine different technologies, different theories of interactions and collaboration to solve our current challenges with video conferencing? It’s not going to be easy, but we have to explore new ways of connecting to avoid the fatigue of always-on video conferencing. If you’re trialling anything like this in your workplace, we’d love to hear about your experiences.

Read: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/08/1035081/facebook-horizons-oculus-zoom-fatigue/

And a bit of a Nudge

Anne says: Further to my Friday Fave on Nudge, you can now watch a recent conversation with Richard Thaler and our colleagues at University of Sydney, Sydney Business Insights that was recorded 24 August.

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR8ev2jzzX0

Let’s redefine “productivity” for the hybrid era

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Jakkii says: The headline of this piece caught my eye quickly this week, as it’s such an important consideration in this mid-pandemic – and into our eventual post-pandemic – world: what does productivity really mean in 2021? What does it look like in the era of remote work, distributed teams, hybrid work? Does it, should it, include space for the intersection of our non-work lives, for caring responsibilities, for hobbies, for self-development and education, for time just to think?

This HBR article was authored by Jaime Teevan, chief scientist at Microsoft, who provides some context and background for the hows and whys of looking at redefining productivity from the Microsoft perspective, based on their own workforce as well as their broader research. From the article:

While it may be tempting to equate high levels of employee activity with success, doing so misses the factors that drive long-term, sustainable innovation. We must expand the way we think about productivity to focus on well-being, social connections, and collaboration and the innovation they bring to drive business success. (emphasis added)

I think it’s particularly interesting to see wellbeing and connections called out here, but when we think of these as factors involved not only in individual performance and in team performance but also more broadly in employee engagement and overall organisational culture, they start to seem kind of obvious as things we should be focused on when we’re assessing productivity.

The article then goes on to talk about “working” with this new definition, and offers some suggestions such as exploring with individual team members when, where, and how they feel most productivity and most able to complete their work and achieve their goals.

What the article doesn’t do, however, is discuss or explore how you might choose to measure productivity in the context of this proposed new definition. As the old saying goes, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. There are, of course, ways to measure employee wellbeing such as through pulse surveys and one-on-ones between leaders and direct reports, and use of technologies in the digital workplace such as enterprise social networks can even make it easier to measure things such as social connections through social network analysis based on platform use and analytics.

Overall, the suggestion for how we should expand our thinking about productivity seems logical and reasonable to me. But I’d love to hear from you – what do you think? Let me know in the comments here or on social media.

Read: https://hbr.org/2021/09/lets-redefine-productivity-for-the-hybrid-era

At home

World: To have a successful WFH day, start your day with a shower, coffee, go outside, get some exercise. Have a nice morning and treat it like a normal workday.

Me: Wakes up 4 minutes before my first call.

— Jack Altman (@jaltma) March 11, 2020

Jakkii says: NSW might be backing away from their daily covid press conferences, but we’re not backing away from our weekly round-up of a few things to watch or do at home this week! Stay safe and stay sane!

• Find out why ‘Final Girls’ make the best horror movie heroes in this episode of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

• Get your mashup on over on http://rave.dj, starting with one of my favourites: Style Guy – Billie Eilish and Psy

• Read the oral history of Idiocracy, Mike Judge’s time travel triumph

• Browse the entries from the winners & finalists in the 2021 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

• While away the minutes by drawing a line, which Land Lines will then match to a place on Earth

• Pick up a new hobby with these astrophotography tips for beginners on how to shoot the night sky

• Relax with your own mix of white noise

• Finally get into bread making (or get back into it!) with these 30 crusty, chewy, buttery bread recipes

• YSK: Jane Fonda’s blog is one of the internet’s greatest treasures

Friday Fives

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Hybrid workplace and the future of work

• Welcome to the era of the Great Office Unknowing

• Security and culture biggest challenges of shift to hybrid work

• Workers want hybrid work not daily commutes, says new research

• Hybrid working: how to make it a success

• The key role of dynamic talent allocation in shaping the future of work

Remote work and the digital workplace

• Bosses turn to ‘tattleware’ to keep tabs on employees working from home

• Remote working – does it make us more or less productive?

• Microsoft Teams is getting more improvements, and so is Google Workspace

• How to help a remote coworker through a tough time

• 5 steps to avoid micromanagement in remote work

Communication, collaboration, engagement, and culture

• Hybrid workforce: culture isn’t exclusive to being onsite

• Goodbye to the ‘office mum’

• Neurodiversity can be a workplace strength, if we make room for it

• 5 steps you must take to make new hires feel like a valued part of the organization

• The art and science of changing company culture

Community management, moderation and misinformation

• Could the wisdom of crowds help fix social media’s trust problem?

• Misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during the 2020 US election, study says

• Why brands should build online communities

• In Kenya, influencers are hired to spread disinformation

• Wikipedia is trying to transcend the limits of human language

Privacy and data

• 20 years after 9/11, surveillance has become a way of life

• The Other Sara Morrisons are ruining my inbox

• UK now expects compliance with children’s privacy design code

• WhatsApp moderators can read your messages

• Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop

Big Tech, tech and regulation

• El Salvador becomes first country to adopt bitcoin as national currency, though it got off to a rocky start

• Facebook apologises after its AI labels black men as ‘primates’

• Texas prepares to enact law that lets people sue Facebook, Twitter

• How Australia’s tech-savvy COVID-19 response is leaving CALD communities behind

• Singapore sends out robots to search for ‘undesirable’ public behaviour, like smoking or breaking COVID-19 rules

Bonus: Facebook announces launch of Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses

Social media

• High Court finds media outlets are responsible for Facebook comments in Dylan Voller defamation case

• They watched a YouTuber with Tourette’s—then adopted his tics, and doctors are concerned

• The Taliban embrace social media: ‘We too want to change perceptions’

• Twitter takes on Facebook Groups with invite-only Communities, and how Communities could bring context back

• YouTube halves the number of subscribers you need to unlock Community posting

Extras

How QR codes are made http://pic.twitter.com/oanBjUxZIu

— mc.fly (@mcflyhh) September 6, 2021

This is interesting: Minnesota’s ‘root beer lady’ lived alone in a million-acre wilderness

Things that make you go hmmm: Rain boots, turning tides, and the search for a missing boy

Space: The long-term quest to build a ‘galactic civilisation’

Podcast: Debunking UX research myths with Zach Schendel of DoorDash

Friday playlist: Take a trip to Estonia with this playlist of Estonian Folk