The avatar looks quite similar to Fabian Rücker. Brown hair, square glasses, three-day beard. The Rücker avatar makes the same movements as the real Rücker, pointing his fingers at the screen, nodding, tilting his head. However, unlike the real 30-year-old, the avatar has no legs. The Metaverse isn’t very good at legs yet, explains Rücker. The sensors on the data glasses that he is wearing on his nose in real life at this moment can record everything and translate it into digital data except for his legs. They’re just too far down, the sensors can’t see them.
If you want to talk to Rücker, you can do so not only face to face, by phone or with the usual video call providers Zoom or Teams, but also in the Metaverse, more precisely: in Horizon Workrooms, the online software tool for virtual conference rooms from Facebook , which is now officially called Meta. “If everyone had glasses on, it feels like you’re really in the same room,” says Rücker. It’s much better than the usual poorly lit video calls, where you keep interrupting each other or being strangely silent. If Rücker had his way, conferences would always be held in the Metaverse. Then the future of work would lie in the 3D Internet.
That’s what Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dreams of. Probably the world’s biggest fan of the Metaverse has now renamed his entire group to Meta. This Tuesday he invites the world to the big Meta Connect conference, where he wants to explain why the Metaverse is more than a bubble that is about to burst. If Zuckerberg is to be believed, the Metaverse is the next big thing, an evolution of the internet that will revolutionize how we all live and work. It’s supposed to be a kind of three-dimensional internet that integrates with the real world. Each user then marches through the metaverse with special glasses on their nose and represented by an avatar and operates the websites, which will then no longer be boring sites but their own interconnected worlds, by voice command or by waving their hands.
It’s still not working at all or only partially. And many of the attempts to present the Metaverse as a big deal are mostly met with malice, because of the general leglessness and because the avatars and virtual worlds look more like mediocre comics. But the consulting firm McKinsey sees potential in the metaverse up to five trillion euros in “value creation” by 2030. Many companies have already invested, not only Facebook and other tech and video game companies, but also Nike, Walmart, the dating app Tinder, the German eyewear chain Mr. Spex, where you can try on glasses virtually, or Ikea, where you can already provide your own rooms with virtual Billy shelves. And so there are job opportunities.
Job opportunities not only for employees of large corporations, but also for brand and communication consultants, for programmers, designers and other freelancers like Rücker. He’s not one to cheer the Metaverse up himself, not just because of the leg thing or because a lot of people get seasick when they wear data glasses like that and feel like their brains are riding a roller coaster. “We’re still at the very beginning of development,” says Rücker. “But in my opinion it is an absolute future technology. If you deal with it early on, you will find a green meadow that you can shape.” This is true even if part of the Metaverse turns out to be hype. After all, there have to be people who explain everything that doesn’t work.
More than a quarter of the self-employed expect new job prospects in the Metaverse
Almost 50 percent of all self-employed people from the tech industry in Germany, Austria and Switzerland want to continue their education for the Metaverse future, according to a survey by Freelancermap, a platform for the placement of freelancers. More than a quarter expect new job prospects in the Metaverse. “Right now, the term metaverse still seems very abstract, it is mainly used for marketing,” says Freelancermap boss Thomas Maas. “But big corporations have already spent so many billions that there is no turning back.” However, the company Freelancermap is not yet investing in the metaverse, for example in virtual 3D rooms for job interviews, it is still too early for that and the niche is too small. “But now is a good time for self-employed people to become self-employed First mover It remains to be seen which specific jobs will result from the first hardware and software developer jobs, for example in IT security, says Maas. “If you know your way around before the corporations know their way around, they have to spend real money on freelancer fees, all the more because of the shortage of skilled workers.”
Fabian Rücker has become self-employed as a Metaverse consultant.
(Photo: Gregor Schuster)
Rücker is someone who values companies. The 30-year-old is a nerd with a specialty virtual reality and augmented reality When the first data glasses came onto the market, he immediately got one and formed groups with like-minded people on the Internet who are experimenting with VR and AR. He has been researching and doing his doctorate on the subject at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research since 2016. Last year he became self-employed as a Metaverse consultant. Since then, he has been showing industrial customers, for example, how plant planning can be improved by using augmented or virtual reality could already look at before the systems exist. Or he gives employee workshops in companies that are beginning to deal with the topic but have not yet built up much of their own expertise. “There are still huge technical challenges for which we don’t even begin to have a solution,” he says. “But as time goes on, this technique will become more commonplace and the term metaverse will seem less wishy-washy to us.”
The Germans are more reserved than the Americans, says Rücker
Rücker likes the role of tech explainer and future advisor, the “pioneering work,” he says. And at least by now most people in business have heard of the term metaverse. “In Germany we are very conservative,” says Rücker. “Of course there are some technology enthusiasts, but most are very skeptical.” In the US, the Oculus Quest data glasses were one of the most popular Christmas gifts last year. The glasses are more on the wish list of video game fans than of people who see business opportunities in them. But the more people have one, the more normal it would be to use it at work too. “Everything is adapted much more slowly in Germany,” says Rücker. One of the first objections he almost always hears at workshops: nobody wants to spend so much time in the Metaverse with its cartoon-like avatars. Rücker always counters the same: Many people look at a two-dimensional screen twelve hours a day, although theoretically nobody wants to. It’s better to integrate virtual elements into reality.
Nevertheless, he notices that a lot has happened in the past year and that curiosity is growing, especially because German business leaders have also noticed how optimistic Mark Zuckerberg is – and after all, he has often had the right nose for major Internet developments. “Many don’t want to lose touch,” observed Rücker. That brings freelance jobs. “Bigger companies are easier to get your foot in the door than small ones because they have bigger budgets to try innovations.” In order to book a freelancer like him, you only have to overcome a comparatively low threshold. He has been fully booked for months, and on the LinkedIn social network he regularly receives inquiries from companies that would like to hire him permanently.
By the way, if you want to talk to Rücker, you don’t have to meet him in a boring virtual conference room. You can also play mini golf with him in a virtual reality. Through the data glasses, it then looks as if you actually have a golf club in your hand. “It feels really real,” says Rücker. “And it’s such a cliché that the most important shops on the golf course are closed.”