The metaverse is more than a buzz word and cannot be ignored. Organisations across the world are spending billions in developing the technology. Could this be the next big thing? It certainly has the potential.
At Rythmik, we don’t wait to find out and it’s certainly the right time for companies to act. Here is how we supported Europa Group as they begin their metaverse journey to unlock future ways of working with their clients and employees.
Together with Rythmik we landed a world class event! They are an experienced team who are professional and a pleasure to work with. Their level of understanding of the future of working, particularly regarding the metaverse helped us to think about and envisage the many opportunities we have as an organisation. Without their support, it would have been very difficult to deliver a session which inspired, engaged and excited our people in the way that it did. We have learned so much and look forward to continue working with them as we navigate the future of working. Marc Doncieux CEO, Europa Group
Introducing Europa Group
Europa Group is a 35-year old organisation based in France and composed of eight interrelated entities across Europe which provide support services for scientific and medical communities, which includes:
the organisation of physical and digital conferences and congresses;
the provision of digital and publishing services;
eLearning offerings; and
the creation of information platforms for medical communities worldwide
Today, Europa Group has over 300 employees dedicated to organizing over 200 events for their customers and clients each year as well as publishing more than 30 journals every month.
A unique opportunity
For the first time in its 35-year history, Europa Group organised its own internal conference – a 3-day offsite in Barcelona for all its employees.
The objective of the offsite was simply to:
bring employees closer together, breaking silos across the organisation; and
explore the current and future-state of the organisation through technology, culture and ways of working
In partnership with Rythmik, Europa Group sought to unleash their own creativity to design an inspirational keynote event focussed on “the future of bringing people together” through technology, culture and ways of working.
The Rythmik effect
Our number one priority was to deliver an event that inspired, engaged and sparked curiosity to prepare the Europa Group for the future.
To successfully deliver on this, it was important that we:
provided Europa Group with a glimpse of what bringing people together in the future through technology could look like;
showcased that by having an innovative mindset around the ways of working, we can create better experiences for colleagues, customers and clients; and
reinforced that through co-creation, collaboration and willingness to discover and learn, we can re-define the culture of how we work
At Rythmik, we believe that work can be done from anywhere, most of the time. With Europa Group, our collaborative effort came from a team of 8 people, across 6 different countries – only meeting face-to-face for the delivery of the event.
Together we co-created the event through an iterative and agile approach – we met regularly, shared our expertise and listened to one another.
We wanted to help Europa Group unleash their creative and innovative mindset to build ideas in a way that was tailored to the needs of their organization.
Through several design and ideation workshops with Europa Group, the question we posed was:
“How can we inspire, engage, drive curiosity and prepare the employees of Europa Group for the future of bringing people together?”
We determined that the keynote event would be a live exploration of meeting in the metaverse.
Why? We appreciated that Europa Group is dedicated to bringing people together and the metaverse is a futuristic space that bridges the virtual world with the physical world and opens up great opportunity to bring more people together in many different ways – connecting technology, ways of working and culture.
Practically, the live exploration lasted 1.5 hours and involved the delivery of a combination of elements, including:
showcasing and educating the audience on the metaverse – its meaning and ecosystem, market demand, key players, limitations and opportunities;
taking the audience on an immersive experience by having a conversation in the metaverse with four senior leaders from Europa Group, through Virtual Reality (VR) headsets; and
running a practical exercise with the audience to help unleash an innovation mindset through empathy
The result
A curious, excited and inspired audience, who understand that to stay relevant in today’s world, we must continue to innovate and adapt to the challenges and opportunities we face.