The last 12 months or so have seen the biggest shift in working practices in many generations, the restrictions imposed around the world because of COVID has forced us all to look at the way we operate as both businesses and people. A key part of our ability to survive the last 12 months was, of course, technology, collaboration tools particularly have had a significant role to play, allowing us to easily communicate with each other and our customers, to share information and data, to meet up in daily online meetings to ensure we still had some level of “face to face” communications. Without those tools, the challenges of day-to-day operations would have been much harder. Collaboration technology of course is not something that businesses just consume, there are vendors who build the tools that have allowed so many of us to adapt during this time of massive change. What has the last 12 months looked like for them? What have they learned? What does that mean for us and the future of work moving forward? Joining me this week is Michael Peachey is Vice President, User Experience, at collaboration giants RingCentral and I get the chance to find out from him what the global collaboration picture has looked like over the last 12 months, the changes they’ve seen and what they envision for the future of work. We discuss. • The 12-month experiment. • What RingCentral have learned as a business. • Accelerating change. • Surprises! • Online fatigue. • Cultural changes. • Replicating the “human experience”. • What happens when half the world goes back to the office and the other doesn’t? • Check out RingCentral. I enjoyed this chat with Michael, the future of work is not set in stone for either businesses or those building the tools we are going to rely on, but what is clear, is there is real enthusiasm and innovation not just about how the technology should work, but how the human experience should be improved and that can only be a good thing. If you have an idea for a show or would like to appear as a guest drop a line to podcast@techstringy.com. To catch the next episode then subscribe on all good homes of podcasts or YouTube. Until next time, thanks for listening. For full show notes visit https://wp.me/p4IvtA-1QM