Alan is back in the podcasting saddle — alongside his partner in life and business Julie Smithson, plus colleague and marketing expert Alex Colgan — to take a look back at the last year of happenings in the XR metaverse. 2021 was quite a strange year, but there were several promising updates in the XR industry to make 2022 something to look forward to, and our panel discusses just a few; NFTs, Facebook, the Metaverse, and much more. (more…)

Labster CEO Michael Jensen was on XR for Learning not-too-long ago, talking about how XR can teach kids science in the classroom. Now he explains to Alan how that same technology is making professional training safer and more cost-effective. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here. Today we're speaking with Michael Jensen, CEO of Labster, a venture backed, award winning company that focuses on revolutionizing the way science and safety is taught at companies, universities, colleges, and high schools all over the world. They started with creating multimillion dollar science labs in a VR headset. And now they're ready to take on the enterprise training world. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Michael, welcome to the show. Michael: Hey, Alan, thanks so much, honored to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure to have you. I know you were on my partner and wife Julie's podcast, XR for Learning. And I learned all about how Labster is revolutionizing how we teach science, and making it more exciting, gamified, but also bringing the opportunity to create multi-million dollar science labs for the cost of a cup of coffee. So let's unpack that. Michael, how did you get into this? Michael: Yeah, so that actually started about nine years ago, when my co-founder and I saw an opportunity to create much more engaging online learning content for students and learners around the world. Basically, most people were learning in very boring, non-engaging formats as we saw it. And at the same time, we saw these billions of dollars being invested into the gaming industry to create really engaging games. And we thought, why not find a way to combine and merge the learning world and the gaming world in a more engaging way, so that we can engage learners in the content, make them more excited about the topics, but also use these mechanisms to help them understand some of these more complex concepts in a much better way. Alan: Walk people through what a typical Labster lab looks like, and why this is exciting. Michael: There's two main components that we really looked at. One is engagement -- as I just talked about -- and the other one is timesaving, cost savings. And so what we looked at was, how can we best address some of the biggest challenges in the industry by presently creating virtual training -- similar to a flight simulator that was revolutionizing pilot training -- and then create, for instance, virtual laboratories to simulate dangerous experiments or dangerous scenarios -- like safety training -- and then that way help the universities, in our case as well as high schools -- but now also corporates -- dramatically reduce their cost and saving, as well as the time spent on this training. And we did a huge research project now -- about two years ago -- a $6-million research project involving hundreds and hundreds of employees around the world in large pharma companies, to really analyze and understand, does this really help? Is there a way for us to create better, more engaging content? And if so, does that really help students or learners understand it better? And does it also help save costs? And the results were quite overwhelmingly positive, was published and peer reviewed -- among others -- in Nature magazine, where we saw more than a doubling of the learning outcomes, as well as engagement for learners, compared to -- for instance -- standard online e-learning training, or even personal one-on-one training. So even compared to a personal one-on-one trainer, we found that this virtual immersive training format can be far superior, both in costs, as...

Today’s guest Sean Hurwitz started his journey to the XR field in the realm of game development. But as the years went on, more and more he saw the value of putting game engines to work training professionals instead of hunting zombies. He talks about how PIXO VR achieves this. Alan: Hey, everyone, it’s Alan Smithson here with the XR for Business podcast. Today we’re speaking with Sean Hurwitz, founder and CEO of PIXO VR, a Detroit based company focused on VR software for training on processes, safety, and emergency response. Much like myself, Sean believes that extended reality — or XR — technologies can unlock human potential, and realize limitless possibilities. He’s assembled an all-star team of game changing VR and AR engineers, and we’re going to talk about how this translates directly into safety and training across all different industries. All that and more on the XR for Business podcast. Sean, welcome to the show, my friend. Sean: Hi, Alan. Thanks for having me. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. I’m really, really excited. I’ve been kind of using your VR training video that you did. It was in a basement, and you’re training gas meter people on how to how to — I guess –use a gas meter. But I’ve been using that video to show the diverse range of things that can be done within VR. Tell us about that. Tell us about PIXO VR. Sean: Yes, I am definitely onboard with the way that XR and training will definitely change the ecosystem, make people’s lives safer and more effective, and hopefully make more money too, at the end. So yeah, the example that you give is a replication of a basement, where technicians were in the traditional way of training, driving around, mirroring or shadowing older technicians as the evolving workforce and the younger generation coming in. And they were training the new employees, the new trainees, and they were looking for a way to do this training that would be close to real life, rather than drive around for weeks or months on end. And they couldn’t show– the problem was they couldn’t really identify or show all the variances in the gas meters in these basements. So we did a multi-user randomized scenario of millions of different setups and scenarios of what these gas meters would look like, and really expedited the training timeline. So PIXO, that’s sort of the– using your video as an example. But we started as a traditional console video game company, moving quickly into mobile and enterprise, and then even quicker in 2016 into getting the first Oculus DK and starting to build enterprise VR training, from that point forward. Going from making games, because I just interviewed Arash Keshmirian from Extality, and he was doing the same thing. They were making virtual or augmented reality games for phones. And now they’re making enterprise solutions. How did you make that shift from going to making games to enterprise? And was it simply a way of making money or just– what is the precipitating factor of going from making games to basements full of gas fitting technology? Sean: Well, money certainly plays a role, but really the mission to make people’s lives better, to help improve the planet that we live on, being able to utilize the skill set that we’ve spent combined dozens of years, used the same skill set, even the same game engine as to develop interactive games — which is really what this training is — to be able to replicate things that you either were too expensive to do otherwise or just too risky to do. So, once we figured out that we were able to create the scenarios in the field — or in a basement, like you said earlier — and then actually make money doing it served the purpose and the mission, and also getting paid for solving problems rather than developing games and hoping someone...

Most of the world is stuck indoors as the Coronavirus situation looms. Alan has a few words of encouragement for our listeners, and talks briefly about the power XR has to help keep us productive while we flatten the curve. For more information, check out our past episodes on virtual meeting spaces: Jacob Loewenstein – Spatial Jonny Cosgrove – meetingRoom Gabe Paez – The Wild Kalle Saarikannas – Glue Michael C. Cohen – UgoVirtual

Code is a big part of what makes XR work, of course. But for most businesses, knowing the DNA of the technology will be less important than knowing how to best use it. XR Bootcamp co-founder Ferhan Ozkan is enabling businesses interested in XR to enable themselves. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we’re speaking with Ferhan Ozkan, the co-founder of XR Bootcamp, a platform to teach professionals how to create VR and AR applications, and support companies to bridge their skills gap in XR development through an intensive onsite program, cutting edge curriculum, and industry renowned lecturers with a focus on industry portfolio projects. I am personally very, very honored to be on the advisory board of XR Bootcamp and helping them really develop the future of how organizations will train their staff on how to build XR technologies. And so with that, I’d love to welcome Ferhan to the show. Ferhan, welcome to the show, my friend. Ferhan: Hi, Alan. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting. Alan: It’s absolutely my pleasure. I just want to give you a little bit of history about you. XR Bootcamp started from VR First, which was an organization bringing VR labs into universities and colleges around the world. Is that correct? Ferhan: Yes. Yes. Back then — almost four years ago — we started as VR First. The main mission was to democratize VR and AR around the world. And you also supported us on these times, because it was hard to find headsets as a developer, as a startup. And we actually tried to tackle this problem with the help of major headset manufacturers – Oculus, HTC, Leap Motion, Intel — and they supported us to create VR/AR labs around the world. And we are quite happy with the impact being created now, these labs are actually really become big and creating amazing projects. And we are actually proud to have this network and enable this network. Yeah, we are now actually around 800 university that we can reach and over 400 startup clusters. But as a lab that we have supported and seeded — as in equipment and other support — we reach to almost 52 labs. And now we see that these labs become actually quite impactful in their own region to create a regional VR/AR development scene, and VR/AR startup and clusters, and they are even creating VR/AR programs — academic programs — and industrial based trainings. Alan: Ferhan, when did you guys realize that bringing this type of knowledge into the enterprise was the next step? Ferhan: It is quite interesting, because we talk with institutions not only in educational, but government institutions. They reach to us after hearing about VR/AR. “Can we educate the people in our health institutions? Can we train the people, the employees that is actually working in the– airport workers, like on the aviation industry?” And we understood that there is actually already an initiative happening on different parts of the world, on different industries based on each government’s or each region’s industry focus. And then we decided, “OK, what we can do first of all to start the VR/AR innovation in each key destination?” So as I mentioned, seeding the equipment was the first one. I remember in the beginning of 2017, we had some kind of survey, and unfortunately for every 51 developer, there was only one headset in any institution or in a startup cluster. So think of like you want to create something, but you cannot even access the VR headset, which is a shame for this region. So we first of all started this seed equipment program, and then training programs come afterwards. And the biggest supporters or beneficiaries were actually the top enterprises in this local area, from manufacturing to automotive, from aviation to defense industry. An...

Today’s guest — UgoVirtual’s Michael Cohen — describes the hospitality industry like a snowflake – add a little heat and, well, you can imagine. Hotels and cruises rely on proven practices to keep guests happy. Luckily, XR doesn’t have to disrupt those practices; they can build on top of them.  Alan: Coming up next on the XR for Business podcast, we have Michael Cohen from UgoVirtual. We’re going to be talking about how virtual/augmented/mixed reality solutions — or XR solutions — can be used for front-of-house for customer facing activations, from AR to VR. Pre-experiences, what is it like to book this hotel, looking all around you? And also the back-of-house: how do we use this technology to give the best possible training for the staff, so that the customer experience is flawless across the board? All that and more coming up, on the XR for Business podcast, coming up next. Michael, welcome to the show, my friend. Michael: Thank you very much. Really appreciate it, Alan. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. It’s been a long time coming. We’ve been kind of doing the dance, watching each other grow. And I’m really excited to learn about what you guys are doing in the hospitality field. It feels like it’s a greenfield opportunity in hospitality, from travel/tourism. A bunch of companies started with, “We’re going to put a 360 camera and let you have a virtual tour.” But explain to us, what are you doing at UgoVirtual, and what is the response so far in the hospitality industry? Michael: Well, first of all, timing is everything, as we know. [chuckles] And the global travel and hospitality industry is absolutely a greenfield opportunity. It’s primed for scale and expansion in regards to XR. The reason being is that there have been investments and there have been initiatives, both on the brand and enterprise level of hospitality and travel companies, but also in startups and larger companies who have enabled, let’s call it a slice of VR or a slice of AR. Or as you mentioned, enabled OK 360 hotel tours that were maybe derivative out of the real estate market and that sort of scenario. Now, the opportunity is very, very serious for UgoVirtual, because we are the travel and hospitality virtual solutions company, very myopically focused to both consult to the major travel and hospitality brands to help them navigate and make investments and strategic decisions for the next three, four, five years on what XR will be for them. And also from our perspective, we have a portfolio of XR oriented solutions that are very focused and linear to the travel and hospitality space. So we’re not taking generic solutions and trying to overlay them on travel and hospitality. The group that’s involved with UgoVirtual — who I’m a strategic advisor to — we’re all 15-20 year veterans on hospitality technology commercialization for the front-of the house, which is guest facing solutions and the back-of-the-house, which is employees and staff. So when you overlay that kind of multi-decade experience on how to get technology efficiently deployed, efficiently commercialized, exceed the demands or the needs of travel and hospitality brands, with these now slowly maturing VR/AR/XR opportunities, it’s a wonderful fit for UgoVirtual right now. Alan: So give us an example. You talked about front-of-house, customer facing solutions. Let’s start with front-of-house and then we’ll go back-of-house. Because I don’t know if you know this, but I actually met my wife working at Delta Hotels in Toronto. Michael: [chuckles] That’s perfect. Alan: Yeah. Michael: Yeah. Alan: I was a bartender, and she was the night manager– Michael: That sounds like a great n...

Today’s guest, location-based VR expert Bob Cooney, has been in the XR space since the early 1990s. He drops by the show to give Alan an update on all the newest tech advances he saw at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo, and explains how today is the most exciting time to be working in this industry. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is always on the bleeding edge of technology. He’s able to predict both tech and business trends. Bob Cooney is widely considered one of the world’s foremost experts on location based virtual reality, and the author of the book “Real Money from Virtual Reality.” I’m really super excited to introduce my good friend and colleague, Bob Cooney to the show. Welcome, Bob. Bob: Oh, dude, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Alan. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. It’s been a long time coming, this interview. But we’re here. We’re excited. And we just are coming off the heels of *the* major North American show, IAAPA — which for those of you listening and you haven’t been there — it’s basically Disney World for VR, AR, and out-of-home experiences. You were there. Let’s talk about what you saw, and what are the trends coming in out-of-home entertainment. Bob: Yeah, it’s an amazing show. I’ve been going this– I think this is my 27th IAAPA or something like that. And my first one was 1991. And over the last four or five years we’ve seen VR every year just grow in not only the number of companies bringing VR/AR solutions into the market — mostly VR at this point — but the quality is every year measurably increasing. And that’s the thing I think that has me so excited is three or four years ago there was just a literally handful of things that you would even remotely consider as an operator. And last year there was confusion now, because there was– you were starting to see a lot of good stuff and this year it was just overwhelming. And so, yeah, we’ve seen real quality come into the market. Alan: You’ve seen pretty much everything there is out there. What’s one thing that blew your mind this year? Bob: Good question. The rise of unattended virtual reality systems. There was a company called LAI Games, which has been around for decades. They’re based out of Asia. They build arcade games. And a couple of years ago, they took a license from Ubisoft: Raving Rabbids, which is a really popular IP. They merged it with a D-Box motion base and they created a VR ride for family entertainment centers, arcades, and theme parks. It’s a two player ride. It was fairly cost effective, but they recommended it be operated without an attendant, and it was the first VR attraction that came out where you didn’t need to staff it. And the profitability of that really made a big difference for operators. And now this year there was another company called VRsenal, that had an arcade game cabinet with– that was a VR based that was unattended, and it was running Beat Saber, which is obviously one of the most popular games out there. And so we’re starting to see companies realize that maybe we don’t need attendants. Maybe people are smarter than we give them credit for. Maybe they can figure out how to put a headset on their face. Maybe they will clean it by themselves if they care about that. And so I talk about a lot about the four-minute mile, once it was broken. People thought was impossible, people thought if you try to run a four-minute mile, you would die. And once it was proven that it could be done, hundreds of people have done it since. And I think this notion of unattended VR is similar to that. And we’re going to start seeing more companies give more credit to consumers, that they’re smarter than we think they are....

Using VR in the classroom is a no-brainer. It’s immersive tech, and can teach kids in new, innovative ways. But if the people developing the technology don’t understand how kids’ brains learn, it’s not going to take, no matter how innovative. VirtualiTeach’s Steve Bambury drops by to explain how he’s trying to bridge that gap. Alan: Hey, everyone, my name’s Alan Smithson. Coming up next on the XR for Business podcast, we have Steve Bambury, founder of VirtualiTeach. We’re gonna be talking about digital literacy, the virtual/augmented reality platforms, and the question on everybody’s mind: What are the key barriers to adopting VR and AR in schools and how to overcome them? All this and more, coming up next on the XR for Business Podcast. Welcome to the show, Steve. How are you? Steve: I’m good, man. It’s good to speak to you. Alan: It’s really great. The last time we saw each other, we were in Dubai — where you live — and you took me to the Dubai Mall, and we went in and we went to the VR Park, the giant VR Park. And I was just blown away by how big and ostentatious everything was. And it was a really great experience. I can’t thank you enough for your warm hospitality in Dubai. But today it’s all about you. So let’s talk about what you’re doing, and how did you get into this? And what are you doing now? Steve: I’ve been in Dubai for 11 years. And for those 11 years, I’ve always worked at the same school. I was working a school group here known as GESS — which is the acronym for Jumeirah English Speaking School — also broadly referred to as GESS Dubai now. GESS is one of the leading schools in the Middle East. It’s a very old school, at least in terms of international schools in this region. It’s only, I think four years or three years younger than the UAE as a country. So it is very well established. And yeah, so I worked there for 11 years. I worked as a class teacher in one of the primary schools, and curriculum leader. Eventually become head of computing at the primary school. So I was teaching digital literacy and computer science content to four year olds, 3 to 11 year olds. And I ended up in that role primarily because of all the work I’ve been doing to integrate the iPads in the classroom. From 2011, we were one of the first schools in the Middle East to to roll out iPads in the classroom. And then three years ago, I moved into a role that was created for me, which was the head of digital learning and innovation, working underneath the new director, Mark Steed, who’d just come in from the UK. Mark had the pedigree in terms of digital learning from what he’d done at this very, very prestigious school in the UK called Berkhamsted. He’d also chaired the Independent Digital Strategy Group for eight years there. And so Mark created this role and this role took me out of the classroom most of the time. A lot of it involved training with staff. It also involved going back into departments and helping them with enrichment projects. And it was kind of in parallel to that. I mean, part of the reason that my work with virtual reality really took off is because I moved into this new role, and had this freedom to innovate and to explore new technologies. My first VR headset was just a [garbled] headset I imported from the States in 2014. But it was not long after I started this new role as head of digital learning at GESS that I got my first Vive. I took that Vive into the school and started looking for ways to integrate it into different curriculum areas. In actual fact, I’ve just recently started writing a series of guest posts for Vive on the Vive blog. You can go into Google, like “HTC Vive blog Steve Bambury” or something, you’ll probably find them. But I’ve been writing a series of blogs about my journey using and integrating the HTC Vive headsets at GESS. T...

You may not immediately think of XR technologies when you think of Nestlé, who are more likely to conjure the idea of milk chocolate and bottled water. But their immersive technology lead Richard Hess drops by to explain how even a food company like Nestlé can benefit from embracing emerging tech, on the 100th episode of the XR for Business podcast. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here with the XR for Business Podcast. Today, we’re speaking with Richard Hess, the immersive experience lead at the massive multi-national Nestlé, making a billion products a year. A day, he said, but I don’t know, a lot of products. You have them on your shelf, you have them in your fridge. We’re gonna be speaking with Rich about Nestlé’s VR and AR efforts in marketing, sales, enterprise solutions, and training. All that and more on the XR for Business Podcast. Rich, welcome to the show, my friend. Richard: Hey, Alan. Thanks for having me. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. You and I have spent a lot of time kind of talking over the phone, but also spending some time on a panel at AWB. Richard: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, we’ve crossed paths a few times. I’m just happy to be here, to talk a little bit about what we’re doing at Nestlé. Alan: We’re super excited. Why don’t you make an introduction to you, and what you’re doing in XR with Nestlé? Richard: Sure. So for myself, I’ve been with Nestlé for about 10 years now. First based out of the US, working for our waters division there. Mostly supporting digital marketing on the technology side. If you go back 10 years ago, the mobile phone was becoming big, people were starting looking at social media as a way to communicate. Through that journey around three years ago, spent about a year in San Francisco, starting with our innovation outpost that we have out there, looking at emerging technologies. And that’s kind of where I gained a passion for augmented/virtual reality, mixed reality, extended reality, whatever kind of acronym comes in the space there. Alan: Realities? All the Rs? Richard: All the realities. Yeah. [laughs] Alan: I actually wrote an article — you can find it on LinkedIn — it’s called “The ABCs of R”. Richard: Oh yeah, there we go. That’s good, I got to take a look at that. But yeah, that’s when I started getting a bit more hands on from my under the organization of getting “Okay, I’ve seen a lot of tangible use cases.” And around a little more than two years ago I came over here to Barcelona, where Nestlé has set up this global digital hub, that was mostly — at the time — looking more marketing and sales focused on how do we build centralized global platforms, and products, and services that can serve all of our markets and brands across the world, but now is more holistic across all different use cases, whether it’s in the factories, supply chain, HR etc. It’s kind of looking across the whole spectrum. So the past two to three years or so, I’ve been looking at augmented/virtual reality in that way of how do we take all these little different one-off experiences that we’ve done. And when we see a lot of tangible value in leveraging these technologies, we try to bring them to scale in something that is a full industrialized product, that the rest of the organization can take advantage of. Alan: Let’s give an example of one that you did a pilot, you realized the success of it and now you’re going– Richard: Well, I think a really good example — and when you think about, it’s a very simple one — but what we used for augmented reality within a sales organization was using AR as a tool in the sales person’s toolbox. So we have a brand called Nestlé Pro...

Verizon’s XR development lead, TJ Vitolo, dreams of a day where he can download an entire TV series in an instant, or visualize info about the entire world with AR glasses, even living in a connectivity dead zone by the beach. In his position, he’s able to work to make that dream a forthcoming reality by developing the technology that will make 5G possible. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, I’ve got an amazing guest, TJ Vitolo. He is the director and head of XR Technology Development at Verizon. Today, he leads the commercial strategy and product execution behind Verizon’s VR, AR and 360 organization environment. Recently, TJ and his team launched AR Designer, the world’s first streaming-based AR tool kit that allows brands and developers to quickly and easily create augmented reality experiences, with no technical expertise. You can visit Verizon.com or envrmnt.com. I want to welcome TJ to the show. Welcome. TJ: Hey, thanks for having me, Alan. Alan: Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure. I’m so excited to have you on the show. This is like– all the things you guys are doing, from working with the accessibility team at Cornell Tech, to your acquisition of Riot, to working with the Sacramento Kings, Yahoo! News. There is so much going on at Verizon. You want to just give us a high level summary of what you do, and what the plan is at Verizon for introducing 5G and XR? TJ: It’s quite dynamic here. You know, the VR space is ever evolving. Teams that do a number of things within VR here. But specifically you mentioned Riot. Between our team and Riot, we manage both of the content and creative end of XR, and that’s Riot. And our team manages the technical– technology side of virtual reality. So really, my team is focused on building tools and enablers, systems, platforms on the 5G network, sort of the underlying side of XR, to help accelerate and grow the adoption of the technology. On the other side, Riot’s all about the product and the creative storytelling around VR, which really brings these things to life for people. Alan: So you’ve got both the technical side and then the creative. And this is something that I’ve been harping on with customers as well, and just the industry at large: that this industry is no longer about just making products. And you look at the VC investments and they’re investing in platforms and products, but you still need people to create the content. And I think you guys have found that balance with Riot. What do you see as kind of the future of how we create this content, is it going to be user generated versus studio content, or a mixture of both? TJ: It’s going to be a mixture of both. User generation is quite difficult today. One of the products you mentioned, we launched was AR Designer. And really the foundation for that was to put the power of augmented reality and virtual reality into the hands of even the most common user of technology. We built this platform initially with the mindset that schoolteachers– and not by any means that they’re simpletons, but the fact of the matter is they’re teaching students, young children, and they’ve got to have a very effective way to do that, efficient way to do that. And so when we were building this tool, we baseline on children as the audience, schoolteachers as the user of the tool, to produce something that’s really effective. So I think you’re going to see as VR/AR becomes more ubiquitous, access is going to be much greater, and more in the hands of users. At the end of the day, there’s always going to be the community outside of the content or the UGC community producing content. And I think those are the folks who are...

Macy’s has been in the news a lot this week, and many are worried about what the latest round of store closures mean for the long-running retailer, and the future of in-person shopping in general. But Macy’s resident XR guru Mohamed Rajani came by our podcast a little while back to suggest that the future of retail exists in the virtual world. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Mohamed Rajani, responsible for VR and AR initiatives at Macy’s. Mohamed is part of the new Business Development and Innovation team at Macy’s, and is responsible for driving change through the development of new retail concepts and partnerships amidst an evolving retail landscape. “Mo” also leads Macy’s immersive technology initiatives, including VR and AR in furniture, which is removing key friction points for the customer, enabling an AR view in-room capabilities on the Macy’s mobile app. To learn more about the work he’s doing, you can visit macys.com. Mohamed, welcome to the show. Mohamed: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Alan. Happy to be here. Alan: We had the opportunity to to have a few calls prior to Augmented World Expo. We were on a panel together, and you were talking about the amazing work that you’re doing at Macy’s. So let’s start unpacking that. Mo, tell us about what you guys are doing at Macy’s. Mohamed: So just a little bit of context that our team does. Our team’s about two and half years old. I’ve been with the company for over eight years, across a variety of different functions. But about two and a half years ago, as a company, we decided to establish a dedicated team that’s purely focused on what’s new, what’s next. That’s focused on the emerging consumer landscape, the emerging technology landscape, and making sure that the Macy’s brand continues to be relevant not only today, but 10, 20, 30 years from now. So as a team, we’re purely focused on looking at new business models, new concepts, emerging technologies, but then really tying those to our strategic businesses. We want to make sure that any new innovation that we bring into the organization has a lasting impact. But more importantly, a meaningful impact that is actually moving the needle. So if we think about from that context of how we ended up playing in virtual reality and augmented reality, in our business we have a strategic business fillers, and furniture is one of them. It is a business that is high touch, a high margin business, so it’s margin accretive, more profitable to the company, and it’s destination business for us. We’re top of mind for the customer when they’re thinking about furniture. And if you’ve had any experience in buying furniture, it is not a very easy process. It’s one of the few businesses that’s still overwhelmingly physical purchases. More business happens in-store than online, and by a higher margin. And part of it is just the friction involved in it. You don’t know how it’s going to look, how it’s going to fit. And it’s a business that we, as a company, need to fortify. It’s a business that if we want to remain relevant for the next five, 20 years, we want to make sure that we’re not only fortifying the business, but growing and capturing market share. So is that context, whereas we came across emerging technologies as part of our job, we were navigating the landscape and looking at what’s coming out. This was 2016, into 2017. We started seeing virtual reality technologies, especially in the furniture space, and we started exploring and we wanted to make sure that there was a practical application to a business there. A couple of things that align. One was here is a technology that had a practical application and here is a business that was a strategic priority for the company. So our jo...

This week’s episode goes all the way back to last year’s Curiosity Camp, when Alan shared a ride with Unity Lab’s Timoni West and Vapor IO CEO Cole Crawford, recording a podcast along the way. The three discuss the challenges that will arise as AI begins to replace human workers. Alan: In a very special episode of the XR for Business Podcast, we’re driving in a car with Timoni West, head of XR… Research? Timoni: Director of XR in Unity Labs. Alan: Director of XR at Unity Labs, and Cole Crawford, CEO of Vapor IO. So we’re driving on our way up to Curiosity Camp through these beautiful winding roads, and we decided that we would record a podcast, because Cole, in his incredible company building the infrastructure of cloud computing, they built an AR app to help service that. And I thought, what a cool way to use this technology and this time on this beautiful drive. Wow. Look at the size of those trees. Timoni: They are enormous. Alan: Oh, my God. Wow. Well, anyway. Timoni, how are you doing? Timoni: Excellently. And I’m also enjoying the view. Yeah. Yeah, actually, Cole, I’m really interested to hear more about why you chose to go with that, and what the process was like. My team is working on tools for mixed reality. So for Unity itself, that’s used to make, I think, 90 percent of all Hololens applications right now. Century is using Unity for that. But the tools that we’re making today are allowing, I think, for you to more easily make robust, distributed applications that can work across various devices and for various users. Cole: And that’s very needed. First off, Alan, I just want to say, you sound like you should be a podcast DJ. Timoni: So it’s cool that you are. Cole: Well done. But yeah, I mean, the issue for us when we started down this journey was very much a question of, how robust can we make an experience, about how widely could we make that experience? And the vertical integrated solutions that you had to choose from in the early days of AR/VR, I think, are primed for disruption. I’m super glad to hear that Unity is working on the open APIs, etc., needed to bring this technology to more users, as I’ll quote — maybe a little cliché being where we are and where we’re going — but– Timoni: Yeah, I want to hear it. What is the problem you company solves? Cole: Yeah. So we have to think about not four, but 40,000 different data centers; we’re an edge computing/edge data center infrastructure company. And with that means you can’t Mechanical Turk what was originally done in data centers. It works with four buildings. It doesn’t work with 40,000. So we had to build autonomy into every aspect of our business, in every aspect of the infrastructure. And that means building really simple interfaces for what would otherwise be really complex problems. And at scale, from a logistics supply chain — remote hand, smart hands, all the things that you do in data centers — what that means is your FedEx guy, your U.P.S. guy, a contracting company that otherwise would need specialized training, now it’s visually assisted capabilities for what would otherwise be a job that you would train for and then go work in a data center. We simplify that. Alan: So basically what you’re saying is that you’ve given real-time tools to anybody to be an expert on the field, in the field. Cole: It’s fair to say that the software is the exper, and what you need are opposable thumbs,. Alan: Haha! Which democratizes the whole need for training. Timoni: You know, it’s funny; I was just getting drinks with someone from Open AI. He is wo...

We pick up where we left off, with Part 2 of Alan’s interview with Kent Bye, host of the Voices of VR Podcast. In this half, the two VR podcast hosts discuss the ethics of XR, building a strong economic ecosystem for emerging technologies, the AR Cloud, and more. Alan: Coming up next on the XR for Business Podcast, we have part 2 of the interview with Kent Bye from the Voices Of VR podcast, the podcast that got me started in this industry. I’m actually one of the founding members of the Open Air Cloud Group and Kronos Group is is really kind of trying to pull together these standards for 3D, as well for e-commerce. I know there’s a group right now trying to standardize 3D objects for e-commerce and retail because right now it’s a dog’s breakfast. Facebook accepts glTFs, Hololens is FBX models, VR is usually OBJs. So you have all these different 3D file formats. None of them really work well together and you can’t– it’s not easy to convert one to the other. And then of course, Apple came along and created USDZ. Or in Canada, USDZed. It’s crazy right now to think that there’s fifteen different 3D model types and it’s kind of like we need to settle on the JPG of 3D, whatever that happens to be, which in my opinion is probably glTF. But I think we need to standardize that and just pick, it so that– can imagine trying to send a photo to somebody and you send it in one format. And we saw this 10 years ago on the Web, just– it was 10 different ways to send a photo in different formats. Your camera would take one format, and it wouldn’t work with your MacBook. I think the tolerance for interoperability, I think the world just demands interoperability now. And if you’re not building for that, well, then you’re going to end up like Facebook and get broken apart. Kent: Yeah. And I published a podcast with the managing director of Open AR Cloud, and one of the other founding members. And yeah, they were talking a lot about these various different issues. So, yeah, it’s something that you don’t see necessarily a lot of news on, until– unless you’re sort of deep into the weeds of helping design these protocols. But I did go to the Decentralized Web Summit last year, and one of the things that I saw was that there’s kind of like this pendulum that swings back and forth between the centralized systems and the decentralized systems. And I’d say that with cryptocurrency, with the containers being able take different aspects of a server and be able to push it out to the edge. We have it self-contained within either Kubernetes or Docker containers. And just in general, it’s kind of a movement away from centralized systems into more decentralized architectures. That’s a interesting trend that I think that paying attention to the rise of the decentralized web and what that is going to afford. I feel like it’s a lot more about open protocols and collaboration and having people collaborate in different ways. And that’s something that I’d say has been a little bit lacking within the VR and AR industry. I mean, there’s been a certain amount of not sharing of knowledge, but in terms of like real meaningful collaboration. There’s been a few things like OpenXR and WebXR are of the big standouts, as well as probably the Chromium browsers that a lot of different companies are working on. But in terms of specific things to grow an ecosystem, it’s been difficult for companies to figure out what does it mean to grow community and what it mean to grow an entire ecosystem that you may be a part of. And I feel like the cryptocurrency world has had to deal with that a little bit, in the sense that they’re creating these open protocols, and they have to prove that there’s a buy-in to people participating in these different protocols, and are going to be able to have these different use cases. And so I feel like there’s this metaphor of a blue ocean and a red ocean,...

One of Alan’s biggest inspirations to start XR for Business was the prolific catalogue of Kent Bye, who has released 884 recordings for his VR-centric podcast, Voices of VR. Alan has Kent on the show for a chat that was too big for one episode! Check out Part 2 later this week. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here, the XR for Business Podcast. Coming up next, we have part one of a two part series, with the one and only Kent Bye from Voices Of VR. Kent Bye is a truly revolutionary person and he has recorded over 1,100 episodes of the Voices Of VR podcast. And we are really lucky to have him on the show. And this is two parts, because it goes on and on. Welcome to Part 1 of the XR for Business Podcast, with Kent Bye from the Voices Of VR podcast. Kent has been able to speak peer to peer with VR developers, cultivating an audience of leading VR creators who consider the Voices Of VR podcast a must listen, and I have to agree. He’s currently working on a book answering the question he closes with every interview he does, “What is the ultimate potential of VR?” To learn more about the Voices Of VR and sign up for the podcast. it’s voicesofVR.com. And with that, I want to welcome an instrumental person to my knowledge and information of this industry. Mr. Kent Buy, it’s really a pleasure to have you on the show. Kent: Hey, Alan. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. Alan: Oh, thank you so much. I listen to probably the first two or three hundred episodes of your podcast, and I went from knowing literally nothing about this industry to knowing a lot. And it’s those insights that you’re able to pull out from the industry that’s just amazing. So thank you for being the voice of this industry. Kent: Yeah. And when I started the podcast, I wanted to learn about what was happening in the industry. And so I felt like one of the best ways to do that was to go to these different conferences, and to talk to the people who were on the front lines of creating these different experiences. And so at this point, I think I’ve recorded over 1,100 different interviews and have published over 760 of them so far. So it’s about for every two interviews I publish, I have like another interview that I haven’t. So I just feel like it’s important to be on the front lines, going to these gatherings where the community’s coming together and to just be talking to people and see what they’re saying. See what the power of this new medium is. Alan: I had the honor of being interviewed by you at one of these conferences. I don’t know if it ever got published, but it was an honor anyway just to speak with you on the subject. But you get to talk to literally everybody, anybody who’s anybody in this industry. And it’s really an amazing experience to listen to these podcasts. And you really go deep into the technology of it, the listeners of this podcast are more maybe in the business, maybe they’re not really into VR. What are some of the business use cases that you’ve seen from these people that you’ve been interviewing that made you go, “Wow, this is incredible?” Kent: Well, first of all, virtual and augmented reality as a medium is a new paradigm of computing: spatial computing. And I think one metaphor to think about is how we usually enter into the computer is by pushing buttons and moving a mouse around. And it’s almost like we have to translate our thoughts into a very linear interface in order to interact with computing. And it’s usually also in a 2D space, so a lot of times interacting and designing for 3D spaces. And so there’s kind of like this weird translation that you have to do all these abstractions in order to do computing. So I feel like one of the big trends that’s happening right now is that with spatial computing...

The VR experience Firing Barry by Talespin is getting a lot of press lately, and on the surface, it may look like a slightly uncanny valley way to train someone how to give an old fella the can. But Talespin CEO Kyle Jackson tells Alan it’s more than that; it’s a tool to help humans flex their core competencies in everything from leadership skills to confidence-building.  Alan: Hey, everybody, Alan Smithson here, the XR for Business Podcast. Coming up next, Kyle Jackson, founder of Talespin. You may have seen Barry the virtual human that you can fire in real life. We’ll be talking to them about their enterprise software solutions that leverage immersive technology to transform the way global workforces, learn, work,, and collaborate. We’ll also be discussing how you can use immersive technologies as an assessment tool to better prepare your workforce for exponential growth. All that and more on the XR for Business Podcast. Kyle, welcome to the show, my friend. Kyle: Hey. Thanks, Alan. Thanks for having me. Alan: Oh, it’s so exciting. Ever since I saw the video that popped up of Barry, the lovable older gentleman avatar that you can fire. How did that come about? Tell us about Talespin, and how did you get here, where you are now? Kyle: Yeah, Barry became famous very quickly, because it’s such an ironic idea. And that’s really what I think caught people’s attention; the idea that you could use virtual humans for soft skills training was something that just seemed sci-fi and ironic. But then once you started to peel back the layers of it, it just starts to make a lot of sense.So how we got there, was we started looking at all of the future skills gaps, surveys, research, everything that was surfacing from the Shift Commission, to the World Economic Forum, to McKinsey Global Institute. And we just kept seeing — obviously opposite AI and automation and robotics, all the things that are going on one side of technology — that there was this increasing index toward soft skills for some of the most underserved areas for businesses going forward. We’re building this platform which is supposed to help transfer skills and really align us to the future of work. And every single survey says soft skills is one of the things we should be looking at. And we went, “Wow, is there anything we can do there?” The thing that was most important for us in thinking about that was we have to hit emotional realism to do this. This isn’t like a point-and-click replacement. It needs to be something that when I’m sitting in there and I’m opposite Barry or any other virtual human now, that I believe the emotions and the frustration and all the things that are thrown at me. And to do that kind of at scale. From both an assessment standpoint, content, and deployment to large companies. Alan: So how did you guys overcome the Uncanny Valley of Barry? I’ve seen so many human avatars that are almost there, but they got that creepy feeling. And if you’re going for emotional realism, creepy is not what you want on the delivery side. Kyle: No. Well, we kind of pulled up short in our opinion. So we were pushing further than where we landed. And you can get to even more photo-real than Barry is. But soon as you do, you start to push over that ledge and it starts to really be creepy. We’re kind of right in the sweet spot of north of Pixar, but not hitting realism. And that seems to work. We focused a lot on micro-expressions and figuring out like a programmatic way to add a lot of micro-expression to the silent moments too, because I think one of the things that technologists immediately do is we had to figure out how to do animation systems, lip sync systems and things like that for when people are talking, but especially in soft skills, a good majority of the hairy stuff is the unspoken. And so we w...

Upskilling things like floor management or assembly time, that’s easy in XR. But soft skills, like understanding and empathy? A bit more challenging — but importantly, not impossible. Cortney Harding talks with Alan about how emerging tech, like VR and 360 video, can help us all be a little kinder to one another. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we’re speaking with Cortney Harding, founder and CEO of Friends with Holograms, about their full service VR and AR agency, that focuses on soft skills training and best practices for creating powerful content that delivers results. All that and more on the XR for Business Podcast.Welcome to the show, Cortney. Cortney: Oh, thanks for having me. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. I’m so excited to have you on the show. You guys have done some incredible things and you’ve been a pioneer in this industry for quite some time. But I’ll let you talk to everybody about how you got into this and where you are now and where you’re going. Cortney: Yeah, great. So I got into VR about almost five years ago now, which is crazy to think about. I have a background in the music business and specifically I was a journalist.I wrote for Billboard. I was an editor there for quite a while. I then went into the music tech space right around the time Spotify launched in the US. It was a great music and tech ecosystem. Alan: You and I have a very similar background. Cortney: Oh, funny. Alan: I was a DJ for 20 years and then created the Emulator, the DJ touchscreen. Cortney: Oh, cool. Alan: Yeah. And then I got into VR. I was like, “What?” Go on. I didn’t mean to cut you off. I was like, “Wow, this is great.” Cortney: No, it’s great. Yeah. So anyway, so I did music tech stuff for several years. I was– I lead business development, and strategy, and partnerships for a couple different startups. And then I saw this VR piece at an art museum about five years ago, and it really broke something open for me. And I was fascinated by it. So I spent about a year — I was still on contract with a music tech company — and I was still writing at the time. So I wrote about VR, I learned about VR, I met a lot of people. And in 2016, at South by Southwest, I did a panel on music and virtual reality. And one of my other panelists was this guy, Kevin Cornish, who’s starting a VR production company, he’s a VR director. And he and I had a really nice conversation, we hit it off. And I joined his VR production company, leading business development strategy. I worked there for about a year and a half. I learned a tremendous amount. It was a very, very intense experience and a very gratifying one.And then I split off to do my own thing. And so Friends With Holograms has been around for about two years now, sort of in its current incarnation. And in those couple of years, we’ve done a lot of different projects, which I’m really proud of. Sort of our our best known project is the Accenture Avenues Project. So we worked on that with Accenture. And the backstory behind that is pretty fascinating. So Accenture came to us, I believe, right about two years ago now, right when we’re first starting and said “We have this idea, we want to do this really amazing social work training project. And would you like to bid for it?” And we, of course, said yes. So we bid for it and we were awarded it in the spring of last year. And then everything kind of went quiet for a while. And we were working on some other projects. And I just kind of in the back of my head thought, “OK, it got cancelled or it got changed around or somebody left.” As a bunch of a bummer as it is, that stuff happens. And t...

The average concert is a tour de force for one’s sense of sound (and, if the bass is decent, one’s sense of their bones vibrating). But Anne McKinnon from The Boolean isn’t interested in “average” concerts. She wants to use XR to make concerts a sensation for all the senses. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Anne McKinnon from The Boolean. Anne is a VR and AR consultant and writer. She is an editor and contributor to Charlie Fink’s book “Convergence.” Charlie, as you may remember, was one of the very first episodes we had. Her consulting bridges the gap between entertainment and technology. As an advisor, Anne grows and curates a community of digital artists to leverage new and emerging technologies. Anne is actively engaged in the entertainment industry at the intersection of music, arts, gaming, and tech. You can learn more about the great work that Anne and her team are doing at theboolean.io. Anne, welcome to the show. Anne: Thank you, Alan. I’m really excited to speak with you today, and also cannot wait to speak to a lot of the listeners. Alan: Yes, it’s been a while. We’ve known each other quite some time, and you do some work with VR Days and they’ve been on the show as well. And it feels like a family, like a network of people that are all just kind of coming together. So how did you get into this crazy world of technology? Anne: Actually, VR Days was one of the major events I went to and I started working in tech. And it was as a blogger and just kind of looking at how can we solve problems in VR, what can we use it for, and how can we make improvements to every aspect of our lives? And VR Days was one of the best conferences that bridged the gap between technology and arts, and also brought together everyone from military to education to healthcare, and also the creatives to drive that innovation. So that way, I guess I met some of the teams that I work with now and we’re looking at how to solve all these problems and to bring it to audiences around the world. Alan: Let’s unpack that. What are some of the problems that you’re working on solving? Anne: I want you talk a lot today about one of the projects we’re working on for almost two years, and that’s with Miro Shot. So Miro Shot is a band and we’re touring a virtual reality live concert around the world. So to kind of put in detail about what that looks like, is that the audience is physically present and the band as also physically present. And when the audience enters, they have VR headsets on and they are immersed in dreamscape visuals, and the pass-through camera’s a big part of what we do to connect the realities, and to experience music in a new way. And one of the problems that a lot of VR experiences have is how do you reach audiences around the world with live performance, and also how do you reach a large scale audience? A lot of what we’re focusing in business is how do you grow experiences from live to at home. And this is something we’re doing with the band, with up to 30 people at a time for live concert. Alan: People simultaneously in VR? Anne: Simultaneously in VR. So a lot of it is based around the concepts of gaming. So we’re really looking at VR as something that’s not contained, taking from classical genres, from theater and cinema and gaming. So everything starts in a gaming lobby. And they start the experience together and depending on where they look, they’ll be able to experience different parts of the world of the music. And they’re also because of the live performance, they’re really tied to the real world, experiencing it in a new way. Alan: Are they at home when– or is this at a physic...

It’s been said on this show before; XR doesn’t have a technology problem, it has an adoption problem. In Dan Lejerskar’s experience, everyone from universities to governments see the value of XR — they just lack the content to make it a worthwhile, everyday tool. He and Alan explore how EON Reality is addressing this discrepancy.  Alan: Hi, it’s Alan Smithson here. Today we’re speaking with Dan Lejeskar, founder and chairman of EON Reality, a world leader in virtual/augmented reality based knowledge transfer for industry and education. They believe that knowledge is a human right and it’s their goal to make knowledge available, affordable, and accessible for every human on the planet. We’re going to find out how, in the next XR for Business Podcast. Dan, welcome to the show, my friend. Dan: Thank you so much. Alan: I’m really, really excited. I know you guys have been working– well, you specifically have been working in the 3D virtual space for many years now. How did you get involved in VR and learning? Dan: In my past, I used to work with simulators — big aircraft simulators, etc. — and I got really excited about seeing the effect it has on pilots and soldiers, and I always thought that it would be useful to do the same, but for normal people, nurses, etc. But obviously these people couldn’t afford a $50-million simulator. So I had to be patient and wait until the computers follow Moore’s Law; become cheaper, faster, better. And by ’99, the hardware was there, so you can start running this on PCs. So we were very early adopters of virtual reality already in that period. Alan: We’re talking 20 years. Most people know VR and AR as if kind of something in the last five years. But what was it like kind of going through these growing pains of going from a million dollar simulator — millions of dollars simulator — to now we can buy an Oculus Quest for 500 bucks? Dan: It’s been an interesting journey, with a lot of ups and downs. And very much VR has been like AI. I’m sure you’ve read about the “AI Winter”, when things didn’t go that well. We’ve had quite a few ups and downs in virtual reality. ’99 was fantastic, because that was the era of dot-coms. And we started with something called Web3D, so you can do 3D on the web. It had actually millions of users. Then we had a hard landing 2001. Remember when dot-com crashed? And we had to move our business from industry and education to defence because we had September 11th. So that was kind of what saved our business, doing homeland security centers and the like. And then slowly and surely, we picked up the business up to 2007, 2008. And during this period, there were several iterations. There was something called people avatars and virtual worlds, that was very popular around 2007. That raised and crashed also, pretty tough. But we managed to navigate those water until I would say 2011, 2012, when the hardware became available for mobile devices. So this was before Oculus. Already then we could see where the industry was going. Alan: Oh, you guys, you never lost your path. You’ve veered a little bit from military, to industry and education, back to military, and then back to industry and education. Obviously, the passion is in the industry, knowledge transfer and education. What are some of the projects that you guys have done in the last few years that really just made you go, “Wow, this really is something that, quote unquote, normal people can use?” Dan: So, you’re right. We realized quickly that the biggest value has to do with knowledge transfer. And we started thinking how can this technology be used to solve big problems? And we identified three areas. One is government. We have an initiative that I’m happy to t...

Getting future workers excited for the jobs they might have tomorrow can be challenging, especially when many young workers tend to enjoy challenging themselves with new tasks. Dr. Björn Schwerdtfeger says that AR training can allow those workers to qualify themselves for all sorts of tasks, and have fun doing it, to boot. [Transcript coming shortly] Alan: Hey, everybody, and thanks for joining in on the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. I’m really excited today. I have Dr. Björn Schwerdtfeger from Germany. He has more than 15 years experience in augmented reality. Together with the German industry, he’s evaluated almost every idea for AR in applications in the industry. He’s been a co-inventor of Pick-By-Vision at TU Munich. And during that time — when computers for AR glasses were still carried in large backpacks — Björn holds a PhD in industrial augmented reality as a serial entrepreneur. And among other things, his company, AR Experts, is advising about a third of Germany’s most important production companies, and is shaping their augmented reality roadmaps. You can learn more about them at ar-experts.de. And they have another product that they’re gonna be talking about today. It’s ar-giri.com. Björn, welcome to the show, my friend. Björn: Yeah. Welcome, Alan. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you online. I’m looking forward to this podcast. Alan: It’s so exciting. The work that you’ve been doing over the last few years — like a decade and a half — is really starting to come to fruition now. I mean, all of the hard work that you and your team have done to evangelize a technology that — let’s be honest — 15 years ago, the technology really wasn’t ready for the market. Tell us, how did you get into this, into AR? Björn: It was actually quite funny, while still studying at the university, computer science, and then somewhere else, augmented reality which popped up. And someone had a demonstrator, where someone took some glasses and glued a webcam — we had external webcams earlier — just hot-glued to some glasses and using some [unclear] stuff and highlighting it. I think it was just a cube. A virtual cube… And it was so fascinating that you can bring this computer interface into the real world. Quite a long time ago. But it was really nice. Alan: Björn, did you say there was a webcam hot-glued to a pair of glasses? Björn: Exactly. That’s how we did augmented reality 15, 20 years ago. Alan: Amazing. You are one of the OG, the originals of this industry. You’ve been building and advising brands and companies around their strategy for production. What is the one thing in augmented reality right now that you’ve seen the most ROI? Björn: It’s probably… we’ve seen a lot of companies trying to do everything. Basically every single one of us have tried to out, in the last three decades, and failed with it. And we’re figuring out what is actually the core of augmented reality. And the core of augmented reality is not– it’s not a measurement tool, it’s not a tool for everything. It looks like a display, and it is a good display. But where its core is, where it’s so good in, is in communication. It displays communication and augmented reality is big. It’s so much more close to your reality, that perception is getting much better. So what you tried to communicate with exosheets, nice PowerPoints; it’s getting so closer to the user with augmented reality. And they figured out that the communication got so much better using augmented reality — using *good* implemented augemnted reality, it’s quite important — you can do a lot of mistakes there. But this is helping so much. And that’s why you’re seeing currently augmented reality mainly in marketing, because marketing is a form of co...

Regular listeners will know that podcast host Alan Smithson is no stranger to the conference circuit, and is often asked to present or speak at the big XR expos. In a special episode of XR for Business, you’ll get to hear Alan in his element, as we present his opening remarks at this year’s VRX Conference. “Well, thank you guys for joining. Again, welcome to the Blue Room at VRX 2019. My name’s Alan Smithson, and we’re gonna be talking today about the transformation of education using XR. I want to just quickly talk about MetaVRse. We’re building a platform for future-proof learning. And what that means to us is as more spatial computing technologies come on board, what we want to do is make sure that organizations — from training and enterprise, and also schools and organizations in high schools and universities — all have access to not only the content, but the platforms to let them make their own content. So what we’re building is a platform marketplace for technologies and content to grow. We’re entering into the exponential age of humanity. We’re hitting the point at which all of these technologies converge together. So in the next 10 years, more wealth will be created than all of previous human history. We’re entering into an inflection point, where education systems are going to be stretched beyond our wildest imaginations. Over the next 10 years, more wealth can be created, but right now — currently — we’re building a city the size of Manhattan around the world globally, every single month. Yeah. We’re going to experience massive changes, from environmental changes, to job force changes, to educational changes, all of these changes are happening to us at a pace that we’ve never had before. It’s happening faster and faster. And somebody said this to me the other day. They said “Today is the slowest it will ever be.” It’s terrifying, it’s so fast. But learning is required at every level, whether it’s skilled trades, unskilled trades, whether it is retirees. We’re working on technologies that will make people live to 150 years old. What are they going to do? We need to rethink learning from a ground-up level. All types of learning, whether it’s at work or at school, all of these things that need a complete rethink. Here’s a crazy stat: 75 percent of the global workforce will be millennials by 2023. Who else is terrified by that fact? Right? 120 million people need to be reskill, retrained, and upskilled due to AI and automation in the next three years. We don’t have the systems in place to deal with this. Two trillion dollars, that is the global impact that VR and AR will make over the next 10 years, by 2030. And this is an estimate by PWC. So why is now the perfect time to get into virtual and augmented reality for learning? So over the last three decades we saw the rise of the personal computer and it took 20 years — 30 years, almost — to get everybody onto the personal computer. And then we saw the rise of mobile, and that took about 20 years. XR is going to take about 10 years to go to global mass. So by 2030, we’re gonna be wearing glasses around and those glasses will be inexpensive. They’ll be running on the cloud, so the compute power won’t be on your phone or on your glasses. It’ll be in the cloud, it’ll be all edge computing. So we’re gonna see this massive growth. And right now, we’re past the hype cycle. We’ve already seen proven business use cases. We’re seeing real ROI being driven. And if you look at the compounded annual growth rate of this industry, it’s unprecedented. The only other industry that’s growing as fast is AI. And it perfectly correlates with the global education market. This is all of education, this is corporate training, this is K to 12. This is all education. We’ll hit ten trillion dollars by 2030. It’s six trillion now. “Teach me and I will forget....