I tried working in a never-ending Zoom call that's like a 'virtual WeWork,' and it made my day more social while maintaining my productivity

edit party zoom — Zoom screen of Edit.Party
Cache Bunny

Edit.Party, a viral virtual work meeting, helped fill people's social need after COVID took it away.
The zoom call hosts 50 people on average at a given time from 72 countries around the world.
The "party" was not distracting — it actually helped me feel more productive at times.

In the thrust of the COVID pandemic, many remote workers sat at home, configuring their homes into office spaces and struggling to recapture the feel of working in-person.

As offices plan to reopen for in-person work, workers across industries have pushed to remain remote to stay "flexible." According to a report from BambooHR, one-in-three workers who are sent back to in-person work in August with highly-restrictive social settings feel worse than they did at the height of COVID quarantine. A survey from PwC in August showed that 41% of remote workers wouldn't want to go back to the office at all.

I felt largely in the same boat as most remote workers, except with an eagerness to be social and work in-office. Recently, I stumbled across a Tik Tok showing a Zoom call titled, "Edit.Party," whose express goal was providing the social element of working in an office to remote workers.

So I decided to try it out for a few days to see if this zoom gathering was a sustainable place to work.

I've spent the last 4 months of my workdays working from home in Southern California for a company based in New York.

As a sociable person, I found it hard adjusting to working in a room by myself. Sometimes, I would even long for team meetings just to inject my day with some social variety.

For Cache Bunny, a Los Angeles video director and visual effects artist, COVID quarantine effectively killed the creative inspiration and human connection that came with working physically alongside other people.

Cache Bunny originally started streaming her editing work on Twitch, but felt the five to eight hour streams were unsustainable.

She found a way to repurpose Zoom, the video communications app, into a thriving co-working social community.

"I realized I don't want to be showing my work necessarily. I don't want to be talking at all. I really just want to like be alongside people while they're also focused," Cache Bunny told Insider. "So then that's where I kind of came up with the idea for the format."

Upon entering, Edit.Party looked like any other Zoom call. I went on grid-mode to fully take in the experience of seeing everyone, and it was definitely strange to be sharing my name, social handles, and face to dozens of strangers.

edit party welcome — Cache Bunny (center) welcomes me (top left) on the edit.party for the first time.
Francis Agustin

Cache bunny said many of those on the call are from a range of professional backgrounds – from musicians, to video editors, coders, and analysts — and are not part of a particular company.

Mics are silenced for all users to minimize potential distractions as a mix of EDM, Lo Fi, and indie tracks play in the background, but there is an ongoing chat on the sidebar so people can talk and interact.

People use the chat box to share more about themselves, their hobbies, interests, or what they're doing that day. Users immediately jumped in the chat to say hello to me.

I even got to join what are called "Focused Sprint" sessions, where people completely mute their computers and concentrate on a project for a given time.

edit party focus sprint — Cache Bunny/edit.party

It forced me to hold myself accountable for the time I was spending on work while having the support of others who were doing it too. It also got my creative juices flowing and I was able to do more writing, researching, making phone calls, sending emails, and organizing my schedule as a result.

Edit.Party has evolved over the past year-and-a-half, developing its own sense of workplace culture and quirks.

Much of the cultural characteristics of the zoom call are built around their artistic backgrounds, with members talking about or sharing their work with other members. Meanwhile, occasional glances at the screen showed people eating lunch, chatting with housemates, and wrangling their kids or pets.

During the work day, one of the Edit.Party house creators, Collin O'Malley, showcased a drone flyby of the house for all of the zoom call attendees, getting to share his creative passions with his community.

—francis agustin (@francisnagustin) November 22, 2021

O'Malley, an early user of Edit.Party who piloted the drone, quit his IT job and moved to LA to join Edit.Party members to pursue FPV drone piloting.

edit party collin — "It would be safe to say that edit.party has completely changed my life," O'Malley (left) told Insider.
Cache Bunny/edit.party

He told Insider he now runs part of the back-end of Edit.Party, finding an appreciation for the community.

The relationships forged were so unique and unlike anything they had experienced, several Zoom attendees told Insider. A few original members would even move in together in a house in LA.

edit party irl meet — Members met up for the first time since the pandemic began in Los Angeles, CA in July 2021.
Cache Bunny/edit.party

"I have all my friends with me and they're also being productive," Cache Bunny said. "So it just sort of turns something that was once the least social activity in the world into this fully social activity."

"It felt so nice to be able come into a 24/7 open space full of amazing creators and just have people to edit with or hang out," said Jacob Rodier, a video content creator I met on the Zoom. "We even had a meetup recently where I met some of them in real life."

edit party group huddle — New York Edit.Party members meet in October 2021
Edit.Party

According to Cache Bunny, the call hosts users from over 72 countries around the world, who plan meetups in their respective countries, including Morocco, Colombia, and Belgium.

edit party belgium — Edit.Party members meet up in Antwerp, Belgium in November 2021.
Edit.Party

[This experiment] is absent any of the political intrigue of an organization and the kind of competition for resources that you typically find in organizational settings," said Stewart Friedman, a professor at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

A man with a moustache sits at a computer in Facebook's office in Berlin in front of a wall with graffiti on. — A staff members sits at his work station in Facebook's office at the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany, 17 February 2016.
Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images

"It creates a whole different template for the kinds of relationships people can develop that are among the many real benefits that people gain from the social affiliations that they have through work," Friedman added."

Woman in meeting with coworkers — Personalizing a virtual goodbye party to the individual will make the event will make it less awkward and more memorable.
Morsa Images/Getty Images

Some firms, like PayPal and Citrix, have recently tested virtual headquarters or workspaces for their employees in an attempt to meet those social needs.

avatars look at charts inside Facebook's Horizon Workrooms metaverse — Workers using Facebook's Horizon Workrooms, an early version of a metaverse workplace.
Facebook

Meta, formerly Facebook, has also made big strides in the virtual space, redirecting focus and investment into building a "metaverse" workplace for employees to interact with each other.

It might be tricky for the easily distracted, but the welcoming vibe and inherent kinship made for a stimulating work experience. It surprised me that this type of community existed out there.

Edit.Party is evidence of this unique overlap of people with a demand for a hybrid workspace — people who want to experience the camaraderie of the office from home. I remain uncertain on whether a forum like Edit.Party could be the future of the workplace, but from what I've gathered using it, it's proved to be an entertaining and productive place to spend my workday.

Read the original article on Business Insider