Should we stay, or should we go? The post-pandemic return to work is fast becoming a controversial and complex issue for leaders to navigate. Everyone has an opinion on the subject. Some are desperate to escape months of Zoom fatigue, while others see little point in commuting for an hour to sit in front of another screen. If that seems like a tough choice, it is because it is a false one. The real issue is not remote vs. office work - it is how do we reinvent the workplace for a new era of AI-powered competition?

Now that we are in the midst of the world's largest remote work experiment, it's worth asking: what does it take to run a good virtual meeting? It is all too easy to just focus on what can be controlled and configured: security, bandwidth, platforms or devices. However, when it comes to successfully managing a distributed workforce, even more important than meeting connectivity, is having the right meeting culture.

There was a time when the coolest office you could hope for was no office at all. Remote work was all the rage. Why commute when you could stay at home? Well, one good reason, turned out to be collaboration. Even tech companies discovered that the right kind of work environment helped build old-fashioned analogue connections between people. And, even more ironically, that the best way to do just that, was to use algorithms.

The 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to a group of scientists for the creation of molecular machines with potential application from drug delivery to smart materials and even artificial life. By linking molecules together to design everything from miniature motors to tiny muscles, they opened the way to an even bigger idea — building structures one atom at a time.

I hadn’t planned on watching the Oculus Connect 3 keynote — but half way through my lunch, when the live stream turned up on Facebook, I was hooked.