Remo Brings Center ICE Together in a Virtual Office

June 29, 2020

Remo Layout
A view of the Center ICE Remo layout shows the small offices, breakout rooms, larger meeting rooms and an auditorium. Screenshot by Zachary Mason.

UAF OIPC and Alaska Center ICE have begun using a new virtual office platform called Remo for both day-to-day office activities as well as their Students2Startups summer internship program.

 Remo is a video-conferencing platform that functions similar to Zoom, but with some significant differences.

 One of the drawbacks that OIPC recognized with Zoom is the lack of organic interactions. Every meeting needs to be planned in advance and join details need to be distributed. With Remo, all one has to do is look at who is currently in their “office” and knock on the “door” to join them in a video call. Each office in the space functions as a separate video call (like breakout rooms in Zoom).

 “As our Students2Startups program was gaining momentum, we realized the need for a larger space within the standard Remo platform,” says Remo project lead, Zachary Mason. “We realized that Remo did not yet have any design interface to create a tailored office space.”

 Mason worked with the Remo designers directly to build a new layout that would fit their specifications. The new space was targeted at being a collaborative makerspace. Individual offices were done away with in favor of a more open-concept office design.

 “So far Remo has proved to be an invaluable resource for both our staff and interns, and the interaction and collaboration it has created have been immeasurably helpful as we navigate this distanced new reality we are working in,” says Mason.