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                                  <ul><li>I toured a virtual 3D office created by Katmai. The company hopes to make remote work better.</li><li>Video feeds of workers make the virtual office feel more like a real one by letting you see others.</li><li>Founder and CEO Erik Braund says hanging out on webcam allows for spontaneous conversations.</li></ul><div data-acq-source="careersinlinesignup" data-component-type="inline-newsletter-module" data-event-label="insider_today" data-newsletter-id="1" data-newsletter-title="Insider Today" id="formContainer">
                        
                        
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                        </div><p>I entered the lobby but didn't see the man I was supposed to be meeting.</p><p>The office was modern — with glass walls and lots of open space. And it was virtual.</p><p>Sitting at the desk in my home office, I dragged my fingers across <a data-analytics-product-module="body_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/what-is-a-trackpad" rel="" target="_blank"><u>my computer's trackpad</u></a> to turn and look around the 3D space. I could see circular video feeds of real people in virtual offices.</p><p><span></span><span><p>I moved toward an office to ask about the man's whereabouts. Then I realized the office door was closed. I should probably look elsewhere, I thought. Besides, I didn't know how to knock.</p><p>That's when Erik Braund, founder and CEO of Katmai, appeared. He apologized for being a couple minutes late. Not a problem, I said. I'd had a chance to poke around.</p><p>I could see Braund and he could see me. There were no avatars. Just us in the virtual office with video feeds of our faces.</p><p>The office was the headquarters of <a data-analytics-product-module="body_link" href="https://www.katmaitech.com/" rel=" nofollow" target="_blank">Katmai</a> and a demo space. Braund, who for years worked as an audio-visual consultant, hopes companies will pay $15 a month per user to let people work from wherever and spend their time on camera much of the day, gathered in a virtual office.</p><p>The thought of that much on-screen time might make some of us wince. Yet Braund thinks days in a virtual office, under the gaze of a webcam, can fix what some critics say is wrong with remote work: lack of <a data-analytics-product-module="body_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/working-remote-challenges-work-from-home-2019-10#communication-with-coworkers-or-clients-can-easily-be-misconstrued-7" rel="" target="_blank"><u>spontaneous chatter with colleagues</u></a>.</p><h2><strong>My door is open</strong></h2><p>Braund told me that being visible while working makes it easier for someone to stop by. He gave the example of someone on his team: The two of them only have a single scheduled meeting a week. Then there are the impromptu convos. "I probably talk to him like 30 or 40 times a week in one-to-10-minute bursts," Braund said.</p><p>Braund suggested we move to a conference room to continue our conversation. I maneuvered into the room off the lobby where we'd been chatting. Once inside, Braund showed me how he could close the door to the room — a universal sign for "don't bother me" — and one I'd abided by earlier when I'd seen someone engrossed in work behind a door.</p><p>Now, with the door to the glass-walled room shut, we had privacy. Braund pointed to a list of participants on a corner of the screen; that confirmed it was only the two of us. "That means only you and I can hear each other and now no one else can join. So we're effectively in a meeting," Braund said.</p><figure data-e2e-name="image-figure-image" data-media-container="image" data-type="img" itemscope="" itemtype="https://schema.org/ImageObject">
                          
                          
                          
                            <p><img alt="Video feeds of people seated around a virtual conference room" data-content-type="image/png" data-srcs="{&quot;https://i.insider.com/6569fa9547f9ecb37d890cec&quot;:{&quot;contentType&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;aspectRatioW&quot;:2259,&quot;aspectRatioH&quot;:1194}}" itemprop="contentUrl" src="data:image/svg+xml,%3C%3Fxml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'%3F%3E%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' width='1' height='1'/%3E"></img>
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                                  The conference room setup lets workers look side to side to see others.
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                          Courtesy Katmai
                          
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                          </figure><p>Clicking on a lightning bolt button on the screen snaps everyone in the room into a circle around a table — something that would likely come in handy with more than a couple of us in the room.</p><p>"You're in a circle. It's natural. It's like a left-right cadence," he said. "You have a neck and you're used to kind of looking."</p><h2><strong>Being there, without literally being there</strong></h2><p>Peering beyond the walls of the conference room, Braund saw a Katmai employee over my shoulder. "It is a reminder — and happens spontaneously all the time of like, 'Oh, I owe him feedback. Oh, I've gotta grab him.'"</p><p>Braund said meeting IRL would be best but often that's not practical. He said he's worked side-by-side with a software engineer in Katmai since June 2020 even though the man is in the Netherlands.</p><p>"We've now met twice in person. And the only thing I didn't know about him was he's like practically seven feet tall," Braund quipped.</p><p>The hope with Katmai, which is named after a volcano in Alaska, where Braund grew up, is that it can help companies that don't want to spring for an office — or that have people in different places — find ways to overcome geography, Braund said.</p><div><p>It's a concept some investors believe in. Katmai was able to raise $22 million in early 2022, Braund said. Part of the reason, he said, is because having a simple webcam share a feed of you working is easier than strapping on a VR headset or more realistic than showing up as an avatar. In those cases, "we're not our actual selves. We're a version of ourselves," he said.</p><p>Seeing each other in a virtual room did feel more personal than sitting on a traditional video call facing what Braund refers to as "<a data-analytics-product-module="body_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/brady-bunch-house-on-the-market-price-million-renovations-2023-6" rel="" target="_blank">Brady Bunch</a>" squares. There's "impromptu peer connection," he said.</p></div><p>For its own workers, Katmai doesn't mandate that people leave the camera on all the time. People duck out for lunch or to walk the dog. Braund steps out of his virtual office every day to take his kids to school, he said. Working virtually — while together — is the next best thing to being alongside each other in the same place all the time, he told me. But even in-person work has its downsides. This way, he can achieve a better balance, Braund said.</p><p>"I missed the first two years of my first kid's life. I didn't miss the first two years of my second kid's life," he said.</p></span></p>
                          
                        
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