There is a new game to play while clinging on to what remains of the Corona disrupted corporate ladder. It’s called Virtual Presence.

This new game requires you to show up, right on time, suitably focused and ‘dressed-down’, but with a witty virtual background and some well-prepared smarts about the new “paradigm” you/your family/your industry/the world, is facing. Locked at home you have few legitimate excuses to not attend, so you amuse yourself swapping gallery views, screen sharing, getting lost in breakout rooms. You remain bemused that the “touch up my appearance” setting on Zoom does, erm, nothing that helps. But as always, some clues to navigating the new chores of a disrupted future lie in the inspirational heroes of the past.

In 2013 a software developer called “Bob” made global headlines, demonstrating a level of commercial ingenuity that still inspires many to this day. Bob earned over $100,000 a year, spending his workdays at Verizon surfing the web, watching videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay, while he “outsourced” his day job to someone in Shenyang, China to actually do the role for him. His bosses were happy to see his extraordinary productivity and the long hours he committed to his role. Using nothing more sophisticated than a VPN connection and a healthy dose of imagination, Bob reportedly paid just a fifth of his six-figure salary for someone else to write his code. He continued the ruse for several years before an IT audit stumbled upon his “workaround” and his hero status amongst software developers was firmly secured.

Just this week in a Corona-disrupted world of lockdowns, social distancing and virtual meetings, a new hero has emerged to build on Bob’s legacy. For about a week the business world collectively embraced Zoom as a smart way of staying connected with work, but then it morphed into something else. Employers started bombarding workers with non-stop video meetings, or “check-ins”, then virtual happy hours, speed networking, collaborative yoga and quiz nights. Exhausted by having to virtually “show-up”, Matt Reid a technologist in Nashville, came up with a brilliant workaround, building a "Zoombot" to double as his doppelgänger on Zoom.

In just one morning, Reid recorded himself in Quicktime, looking quizzical, confused, opening his mouth, and smiling, and took some screenshots. When these images cycle through, it almost looks like Reed has a poor connection—and he programmed his bot to say as much. His AI doppelgänger is a little slow to respond, it doesn't really blink, and it uses an open source voice response system similar to Siri or Alexa, so Reid now sounds British! While out for a walk, or taking an afternoon nap, he can still be seen to be virtually joining Zoom using a piece of software that sets up a virtual webcam rather than an actual live feed coming through the lens. Better still, his innovation is open source on GitHub and other developers around the world are busy developing and refining the solution.

Even Bob and his colleague in Shenyang would be impressed.

Matt Reid story, originally sourced from “Popular Mechanics”, April 2020 written by Courtney Linder