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A plain room\nwith a table, a few chairs, and a whiteboard has never sounded\nso\u2026futuristic! But that\u2019s one way to describe the technology behind\nmeetingRoom, a VR space, where colleagues from around the world can\ngather and discuss business as if they were all in the same, plain\nol\u2019 multi-purpose room! \n\n\n\n\nmeetingRoom CEO\nJonny Cosgrove does a better job of describing it, so take a listen!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Today\u2019s guest is Jonny\nCosgrove, founder and CEO at meetingRoom.io. Jonny is responsible for\ncreating a new collaboration platform that allows anybody from\nmultiple devices to be in one room and collaborate together. Jonny\nstarted his career volunteering and doing activism, before moving\ninto events, marketing, and technology, operating in Dublin and\nBoston. He completed his MBA at Trinity College, Dublin, and began\nbuilding the future of work, with a focus on sustainability,\ncollaboration, and emerging technologies. You can learn more about\nJonny and his team at meetingRoom.io. \n\n\n\n\nJonny, welcome to the show.\n\n\n\nJonny: Thanks for having me.\n\n\n\nAlan: Oh, it\u2019s my absolute\npleasure, Jonny. We\u2019ve known each other quite a long time, through\nthe VR/AR Association and through great calls like this. We\u2019ve met in\nmeetingRoom, and I\u2019m really, really excited to share with the world\nwhat you guys are working on, because the work that you guys are\ndoing is really pioneering how people will meet in the future \u2014 in\nnow, not even in the future, but right now \u2014 how people are meeting\nand collaborating. And I think, as we move to a world where we start\nto really think about travel \u2014 not just international travel \u2014 but\ntravel to and from work, having people drive two hours to work, back\nand forth every day. It\u2019s really inefficient, and it\u2019s a real time\nsuck for everybody. Not to mention, creating disastrous effects for\nthe environment, as well. So let\u2019s dive into this. Explain who you\nare, and your company, and what does meetingRoom do?\n\n\n\nJonny: No problem at all. So I\nagree. Pollution sucks. Unnecessary commutes absolutely suck. What\nwe\u2019re trying to do is make sure the collaboration is easier. One\nthing we found everyone can agree on is that collaboration is easier\nand more effective when teams work together in the same place. So,\nmeetingRoom is a service that allows people to work with each other,\nusing familiar meeting room facilities \u2014 like whiteboards \u2014 in a\nvirtual environment, from anywhere. We\u2019ve made this accessible from\nanywhere. We made it secure, and we\u2019ve made these places in the\nspaces persistent. So, when you write in a whiteboard and you return\nnext week, it\u2019s still there, just like in real life. And what we\nfound is, that it allows employees to feel a higher level of\nimmersive engagement with what\u2019s happening in the actual meeting. It\nkeeps you focused in that time \u2014 in that moment \u2014 and lets you have\nmore effective meetings. Even though employees are spread all over\nthe world.\n\n\n\nAlan: You mentioned something\u2026\nheh heh, I thought it was funny because as you said, \u201cOh, yeah,\nyou know, you put all your notes on the whiteboard and just like the\nreal world, they\u2019re there when you come back.\u201d I was thinking,\nno, that\u2019s exactly the opposite of the real world!\n\n\n\nJonny: [laughs]\n\n\n\nAlan: Somebody\u2019s erased all your\nnotes, and you\u2019re like, \u201cno! I didn\u2019t take a picture of it!\u201d\n\n\n\nJonny: Thank you for helping me\nexplain it. So, one of the thingsthat\nactually happens a lot is that exact issue. That\u2019s one of our own\ninternal metrics; we\u2019re working to get this through this\npoint, \u201chow are you using their internal rooms ex