On April 23, 2005, ‘Me at the Zoo’ was the first video ever uploaded to a then little-known site called Youtube. This moment was an inflection point that precipitated the explosions of video-first social media services over the next 15 years: TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Moreover, it was a harbinger of much broader changes to come.
COVID-19 altered the world in many ways; being locked in our homes forced us to rethink how we communicate, work, and socialize. It has also led to a tectonic shift in how businesses operate. COVID has been the accelerant that has led to the decentralization of the global workforce.
This is not a discrete or temporary event. As the pandemic recedes and the world begins to regain an air of normalcy, many businesses have been compelled by their employees to rethink the very concept of ‘the office.’ The ideas put forth by managers for generations—such as productivity tied to the physical place of work—have now been debunked as relics of the industrial age. This shift did not transpire out of some charitable concern for employee welfare but, instead, driven by sheer economics and by employees refusing to work in conditions that negatively affect their lives without clear benefits to the productivity of their employers.
Robotic process automation is the early precursor of this ethos. With the automation of basic digital workflows and no-code environments, the automated back-office tasks increase productivity and free employees of time-consuming, remedial tasks. Companies such as UI-Path, Automation Anywhere, and others have trailblazed no-code automation tools that enable workers to automate their daily tasks. Much like the wheel or the steam engine, these tools shift the burden of work off of people onto machines. However, while videos have become ever more present in work, leveraging the information trapped within them has not been possible until recently.
The rapid development of machine vision and similar technologies propelled by the expansion of deep learning systems has primed the world for automations that use video as a proxy for many tasks that otherwise would be impossible to capture.
From sales information in Zoom presentations to quality control on semiconductor manufacturing lines, video data is ripe with hooks that can be used as proxies for automation.
Utilizing video data has never been more relevant. COVID-19 not only reframed the way we work but also the way we consume information on a day-to-day basis. Being quarantined in our homes forced us to consume our news, connect with the world, and seek entertainment not through the lens of personal interaction but primarily through videos broadcasted live and published on social media.
This drastic change in information consumption has led to a media landscape ripe for “disinformation” to propagate and pass into our society completely unchecked. Through a combination of state-sponsored misinformation and individual bad actors, it’s become incredibly difficult to understand what is true and what is not, and video is the most compelling piece of many disinformation arcs. It’s becoming increasingly easy for a maligned actor to edit a piece of video, remove valuable context, or share a video post from an entirely separate location with a leading caption and have their post go viral.
To address this type of disinformation, the ability to attribute provenance at scale is crucial. Consequently, the ability to collect live, social, and archival content is necessary for anyone attempting to validate whether or not a piece of content is original, manipulated, or has appeared across other channels. Finally, there is a need for automated tools to analyze and uncover strategies, patterns, and methods used by these actors in their narratives.
Large platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have already begun developing in-house tools for tackling things like DeepFakes. Smaller organizations, however, are lagging behind in this effort, as they lack the expertise required to develop such systems.
For example, we developed a solution for the Association for Securing Democracy’s Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard to analyze large amounts of media content—both text and video—to comprehensively look at the information landscape created by state-sponsored media outlets. These types of technologies are the first step in a long journey towards a robust understanding of the current media landscape.
These are the problems that we at Vidrovr are focused on solving. We build AI tools for unlocking insights trapped in unstructured multimedia and video to drive data visibility, understand the video information landscape, and enable business automations. Learn more about our solutions at https://vidrovr.com.
We’re always looking for partners to help on this journey, so please reach out to our team at contact@vidrovr.com. Plus, we’re hiring for our marketing, sales, and engineering teams! If you think you might be a good fit or want to learn more about our vision for the future, we’d love to hear from you.
As we lap the one-year anniversary of the global shutdown and shift to working from home, companies are evaluating the long-term pros and cons of employing a distributed workforce, and according to Chris Herd, “Remote work isn’t going anywhere.” As the founder of Firstbase, a startup helping companies manage remote employees, Herd reports that even during lockdowns and while juggling homeschooling kids, 80-90% of people have reported that they never want to work in an office full-time again, and 46% of people want to work from home at least part-time. And he predicts those numbers are likely to grow further once the benefits of remote work post-COVID are fully realized. Since remote work is here to stay, we must figure out how to make it work for all of us.
Though many prefer WFH to an office commute, the transition has had unforeseen impacts on how we work individually and as teams. The research Microsoft began at the beginning of the pandemic shows that most of their new remote workers reported a lack of physical cues, body language, and ability to gauge emotional responses in remote communication methods as significant hurdles to productive disagreement and decision-making. Likewise, a recent analysis by TINYpulse also found that employees onboarded remotely mid-pandemic were not absorbing their new workplaces’ culture and values, attributing it to those onboarded after COVID-19 being less connected with their teammates. According to a report released by employee experience company Limeade, the culmination of these factors leads to increased burnout levels: 72% reported experiencing burnout—up from 42% in a similar survey before the pandemic.
“We are all right now participants in a giant, natural, uncontrolled remote work experiment from which [we] must learn.”
— Microsoft
With 1 in 4 Americans set to continue WFH in 2021, there will be an even stronger call for the development of innovative tech in order to battle growing burnout and isolation rates. Here are Remoter’s top five cultural aspects that “challenge” an enjoyable remote day to day that they recommend company leaders work to address:
Teams communicating exclusively through digital mediums must adapt to incorporate meaningful interactions between team members and recreate the ease and clarity of in-person idea-sharing in our new virtual workplaces. Here are a few tools to get the ball rolling with your remote team.
How do we adapt our remote work processes to recreate the ease and clarity of in-person idea sharing in our virtual workspaces? We’ve included some of our favorite tools for collaborating virtually that help to minimize the top challenges for enjoyable remote work.
With Loom, you can record your camera, microphone, and desktop simultaneously. Your video is then immediately available to share through Loom’s patented technology like the video to the right.
Loom’s technology is excellent for all your asynchronous communication needs, like nailing a virtual pitch (looking at you, founders!), sharing project updates with your team, and troubleshooting technical issues. Not every update needs to be a video conference, and, frankly, operating that way can be a colossal waste of time and energy. One of our remote workforce’s top requests is for fewer video meetings, so embrace the asynchronicity and send a Loom instead!
Through collaborative pre-meeting agendas and calendar syncing, Notiv ensures all attendees are prepped and ready for a meeting before it begins. When Notiv joins your video or phone meeting, the application automatically records the meeting’s content and highlights important decisions, action items, and insights. After hanging up, Notiv creates a searchable transcript from the audio recording, which can be shared and reviewed quickly to get the full context behind all your team’s decisions.
Notiv’s technology not only makes pre-meeting planning and collaboration simple, it also frees your team up to be fully present mid-meeting by alleviating the need to take detailed notes. Plus, with Notiv’s searchable transcript and assignable action-items, your team will always be on the same page.
Complete with brainstorming rooms, focus areas, meeting rooms, and, of course, a kitchen for coffee breaks and office banter, each virtual office is fully customizable to accommodate your company’s, team’s, and individual needs.
Teemyco’s virtual office replicates co-worker interactions and the team presence of working in the same building, like popping into your favorite coworker’s office to chat without the back-and-forth scheduling and meeting links. Your team appears as icons that can move from room to room based on their workstyle mood. Shift your icon to a quiet zone when you need to concentrate without people trying to ping you, then move over to the kitchen when you’re in need of some fresh office banter.
This free Slack app allows you to schedule messages into the future both out of courtesy for working hours and as a way to schedule reminders for your team meeting in advance. The developers created this app for “bosses who like to constantly ask for stuff, but want to minimize complaints about work/life balance,” but we also love it for scheduling reminders from yourself to yourself to take a break or submit that credit card statement on time!
After adding the app to your Slack workspace, simply type /schedule followed by the message and the date and time you want the message to be sent. For example, type /schedule Hello @channel! Reminder that our monthly virtual happy hour starts in 15 minutes! 4:45 pm and press enter. You can also use natural language like /schedule Do you wanna make a call? in 5 minutes or simply send /schedule and a window will open where you can compose your message, choose the date, time, and destination within Slack.
How do we cultivate company culture over tools like Slack and Zoom? Long-term remote worker productivity is directly related to camaraderie and positive company culture, so we’ve included some tools that help foster company culture via automated daily interactions, plus our suggestion for a fun, engaging virtual happy hour.
Whether you opt for virtual coffee roulette between coworkers or a virtual watercooler channel to spark team-wide discussions, Donut will automate the team-building activities for you.
With goals like “Banish Social Isolation” and “Take the Watercooler Virtual,” Donut helps combat burnout by encouraging socializing across time zones and departments with prompts that inspire thoughtful conversations—and even the occasional friendly debate. Although remote teams might not be together in an office, serendipitous social interactions are still meaningful and help build happier, more productive teams. Add @donut to your Slack workspace and watch the connections blossom over virtual coffees and lunches!
DailBot keeps remote teams aligned and facilitates deep work by reducing the need for meetings via automated daily standups, team check-ins, and periodic surveys (read: fewer video calls!). To help build camaraderie in your virtual team, DailyBot allows teammates to send and receive kudos, earn rewards for their outstanding work, and track overall team motivation.
After adding DailyBot to your Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Hangouts, team members will be automatically prompted to submit updates covering their recent achievements, plans for the workday, and where they may be getting stuck. It will also ask how they are feeling and if they need any assistance. Through kudos leaderboards with optional rewards or fun games, DailyBot automates the celebration of wins and creates a culture of recognition and continuous improvement for a more productive and connected remote team.
By adding BirthdayBot to your Slack Workspace, you can automate the celebration of every team member’s birthday or work anniversary without lifting a finger. Since we can’t all gather around the break room and sing to you over cupcakes, this little bot is a thoughtful and easy way to make your team feel appreciated and connected to one another.
With video meetings dominating work hours, the last thing your team needs or wants is another video meeting in the name of team-building. By adding Lounge to your Slack workspace, you’ve handled the next virtual happy hour’s RSVPs and event reminders, as well as leveling up the event with in-Slack games like Codenames, Werewolf, Pictionary, WTF—What The Facts?!, and Alien Invasion.
One of remote workers’ top requests is to stop making everything a video call—this includes fun events! Lounge lets you connect from your phone or desktop in a virtual space with built-in audio, quirky avatars, and more. Plus, you don’t even have to play to join in on the fun! Hop around game rooms to chat with your team, spectate, or join the ongoing game.
As we lap the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 quarantine and the massive, global shift to remote work, Outlander VC’s team dynamic has become the new normal: an entirely virtual team working from homes around the world.
We encourage company leaders to invest in making this new normal as seamless and positive an experience as possible for their teams by prioritizing services that foster meaningful connection and simplify collaboration. The productivity of both in-person and remote work is influenced by the same key factor: positive company culture. Workplaces that prioritize strong company culture can have high employee productivity no matter where their desks may be.