ERGO invites its staff to the Metaverse

For the 100th edition of digital.mornings, ERGO CDO Mark Klein and the team led by Matthias Nawrocki, ERGO's Head of Metaverse, came up with something very special: They invited their colleagues to the “Metaverse”.  

At first glance, new technologies often seem like magic. A smartphone can call up information from all over the world in a matter of seconds, an autonomous vehicle can navigate safely through traffic on its own, artificial intelligence can understand and respond to human speech. At first glance, these capabilities often seem magical, as they are beyond our imagination as to how they work.

To give ERGO employees a look behind the scenes, ERGO Chief Digital Officer Mark Klein has been organising digital.morning for more than seven years. This internal format offers the opportunity to regularly find out about the latest technologies and trends. Colleagues from ERGO provide insights into their areas of activity, such as artificial intelligence, robotics and process mining. In this way, digital.morning aims to create a better understanding of technological innovations and allay any fears of contact. On the other hand, participants will learn more about how the applications can help them in their everyday work at ERGO.

For the 100th edition of digital.mornings, Mark Klein and the team led by Matthias Nawrocki, ERGO's Head of Metaverse, came up with something very special: They invited their colleagues to the “Metaverse”.

Digital event location with self-designed avatars

The metaverse is a virtual 3D world in which people can move freely with their avatars. The vision of the metaverse is that it will one day offer completely new opportunities for communication, education, collaboration and social interaction. From a technological perspective, the metaverse is primarily based on basic technologies such as virtual, augmented or mixed reality, blockchain and artificial intelligence. Their combination will create a digital space that will become an integral part of our lives.

The 330 cross-location colleagues who attended the anniversary edition of digital.morning learnt what this could look like. They were able to join us in a virtual event location with self-designed avatars.

The virtual world was realised by the service provider Rave.Space. The provider specialises in the creation of interactive, browser-based virtual worlds with multi-user functionality. This means that users have a wide range of options and functions at their disposal, such as real-time communication, content sharing and interactive information panels. Thanks to Rave.Space's state-of-the-art 3D game engine, every user can seamlessly enter the digital world. No VR glasses or additional software are required. Rave-Space offers the “metaverse to go”, so to speak.

This is made possible via the browser's WebGL interface. Using JavaScript, the 3D graphics hardware acceleration of the end device is used to calculate the 3D world. The Rave.Space systems, which are hosted in the AWS cloud, synchronise the data and all clients. This offers the advantage of flexible scaling depending on data traffic.

In total, the platform can host events with up to 1,000 people at the same time, which are divided into groups for performance reasons. For its 100th digital.morning, ERGO decided to divide all users into groups of 20 people; the event took place in real time. However, users were able to switch between the individual groups in order to talk to other participants. 

All in all, the production time for the virtual digital.morning took around one and a half months. This is a very short production time compared to the regular creation time of virtual worlds for training courses, simulations or marketing campaigns. This usually takes between six months and a year. Medium-sized projects such as virtual platforms for social interaction can take two to five years to realise. Large-scale projects such as fully functional virtual worlds can take up to several years to create.

ERGO is planning to use the Rave.Space platform to realise further internal events in the future, as well as external customer events if necessary. VR capability is also planned for future events. When the time comes, ERGO employees will once again have the opportunity to test these themselves. All in the name of understanding and demystifying technology. 

Text: Sabine Saeidy-Nory, Robert Alexander Heinrich