Virtual reality allied to social living, with limitless spaces that allow everyone to meet, have fun, learn and be informed. This is the essence of DrimCity, an experience also lived by the Italian AVIXA Women’s Council professionals on 8 March. Here are their impressions!
How did the meeting in the central square of DrimCity go? We asked some of the women present, who also appreciated this innovative approach to professional meetings. “It was important to be able to meet in the same place without limits,” explains Valeria Rapa, Program Coordinator, Europe at AVIXA. “Participating in more engaging remote events, thanks to an experiential virtual reality set-up, is the ideal solution for all groups of people who often struggle to travel, and therefore to experience face-to-face meetings, due to physical, financial or time constraints”.
Thus, a positive use of virtual reality environments emerges as a tool to improve the aggregation of many people who still have limited opportunities to participate. This contributes to advancing the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion ideals of the AVIXA Women’s Council. And it represents, at the same time, a professional opportunity to be seized for an even more technological and inclusive future.
Virtual city, real experiences
Giuliana Geronimo, COO of Streamcolors points out interesting practical aspects. “Each of us entered DrimCity with our own avatar: it was interesting to see how, based on personality, we customised this virtual projection,” she says. “Within the space it is easy to move around, with just a few buttons and easily memorised moves. Instead of standing still and smiling in front of a webcam, we were finally able to express ourselves through body movement as well: sitting, jumping, dancing… The customisation of the avatar and the actions performed helped me to understand something more about each of my colleagues and now I feel like I know them better”.
She is echoed by Antonella Terrasi, Multimedia Presales Manager, who appreciates the experimentation of this form of interaction and meeting. “We embarked, together, on a ‘real open journey’ within a smart social city, in the exploration of locations, common spaces with services offered by inhabitant organisations, amphitheatres where we could sit and share thoughts, exhibition spaces to learn about new content, open places where we could walk around. In short, a city of the future made smart and inclined to a new social impact,” adds the professional. “This highlights the potential of game design to encourage a sympathetically active and collective participation, even if sitting at a PC, and generate virtual but real change”.
This article is part of the column produced in collaboration with the Italian Group of the AVIXA Women’s Council. One of the main objectives of the Council is to give visibility to professional women in the AV world in Italy and to the activities dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion in the Italian STEM sector.
