XR for Business

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…)

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…)

2020's been a hell of a year, huh? Not just in XR, but for everyone around the world. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the year's other trials have definitely left their mark on the Metaverse (and MetaVRse), for good and ill. Alan chats with Julie, and VP of Marketing Alex Colgan, about all the biggest changes the XR sector saw this year in our 150th broadcast. Alex: That's one way to start a podcast. Alan: Well, I figured since we're about to end 2020, and I also figure that since this is our 150th episode, I would crack a beer while we record this episode, because what a year we have had. It has been awesome and awful all at the same time. This year has seen the demise of many companies. It has seen the birth of new companies. It has seen explosive growth of others. And wow, what a year. All I can say is, yeah, cheers to everybody who made it through this year unscathed. Even if you happen to be caught in the crossfire, lose your job, whatever the circumstances, know that as a community, we will get through this. We're all in this together. And I want to just say to all of you, thank you for the effort and the work you've put into the XR industry. It is wonderful. And on behalf of everybody in this industry, we're here for you. We're here to help each and every one of us get through this together. So I want to just start with that. And moving on, I want to say that 2021 is looking pretty damn amazing to begin with for the XR world. We saw a world go into lockdown. We saw teachers try to teach online. We saw the entire economy move online instantly. And we're not going back to the old world, the way it was. So the virtual worlds that we know are now serving us in ways of gaming, which they always have. But now expanding that, that whole gaming idea and bringing it into retail. Balenciaga just did this amazing 3D retail experience. We're also bringing it into our concerts. We had massive concerts this year by Marshmallow and others, who attracted millions and millions of viewers. And not just viewers, but participants. And this is something that I think is really, really cool, because people were actively engaged. We saw Burning Man go online this year. And together as an XR community, there's no better time than right now to blow this up. Our VP of Marketing and Strategy, Alex Colgan, will turn the tables and interview me on what happened in 2020 and what we can expect from 2021. So, Alex, welcome to the show. Alex: Hey, thanks for having me on once again. It's yeah, it's been a hell of a year, definitely the sort of year that could drive one to drink. But I think we're all looking forward to 2021, and what it's going to mean for all of us. I wanted to take this opportunity to look back not just at the industry, but also at MetaVRse over the past year, it's been a bit of a rocky road, an exciting road. We've closed a number of different projects. We've made some really major advances on some of the core features. I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about that before we start looking at the big stories of the year. Alan: Certainly. I think the biggest thing for us is that in June this year, we launched the MetaVRse engine and it was something that we were super proud of. But at the same time, when you look back, if you're not embarrassed by your first release of your product, you released too late. Well, I can say that in the last nine months we have come leaps and bounds. We have a full universal system now, that it works on every browser, every device, it works everywhere. And we pushed an update that allows you to do that, without having to code. Of course, we've always had the JavaScript editor on there and you can wrap code in five different languages into this. But the ability for non-programmers to participate in the 3D revolution, I think is the biggest accomplishment we

2020's been a hell of a year, huh? Not just in XR, but for everyone around the world. But the COVID-19 pandemic and the year's other trials have definitely left their mark on the Metaverse (and MetaVRse), for good and ill. Alan chats with Julie, and VP of Marketing Alex Colgan, about all the biggest changes the XR sector saw this year in our 150th broadcast. Alex: That's one way to start a podcast. Alan: Well, I figured since we're about to end 2020, and I also figure that since this is our 150th episode, I would crack a beer while we record this episode, because what a year we have had. It has been awesome and awful all at the same time. This year has seen the demise of many companies. It has seen the birth of new companies. It has seen explosive growth of others. And wow, what a year. All I can say is, yeah, cheers to everybody who made it through this year unscathed. Even if you happen to be caught in the crossfire, lose your job, whatever the circumstances, know that as a community, we will get through this. We're all in this together. And I want to just say to all of you, thank you for the effort and the work you've put into the XR industry. It is wonderful. And on behalf of everybody in this industry, we're here for you. We're here to help each and every one of us get through this together. So I want to just start with that. And moving on, I want to say that 2021 is looking pretty damn amazing to begin with for the XR world. We saw a world go into lockdown. We saw teachers try to teach online. We saw the entire economy move online instantly. And we're not going back to the old world, the way it was. So the virtual worlds that we know are now serving us in ways of gaming, which they always have. But now expanding that, that whole gaming idea and bringing it into retail. Balenciaga just did this amazing 3D retail experience. We're also bringing it into our concerts. We had massive concerts this year by Marshmallow and others, who attracted millions and millions of viewers. And not just viewers, but participants. And this is something that I think is really, really cool, because people were actively engaged. We saw Burning Man go online this year. And together as an XR community, there's no better time than right now to blow this up. Our VP of Marketing and Strategy, Alex Colgan, will turn the tables and interview me on what happened in 2020 and what we can expect from 2021. So, Alex, welcome to the show. Alex: Hey, thanks for having me on once again. It's yeah, it's been a hell of a year, definitely the sort of year that could drive one to drink. But I think we're all looking forward to 2021, and what it's going to mean for all of us. I wanted to take this opportunity to look back not just at the industry, but also at MetaVRse over the past year, it's been a bit of a rocky road, an exciting road. We've closed a number of different projects. We've made some really major advances on some of the core features. I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about that before we start looking at the big stories of the year. Alan: Certainly. I think the biggest thing for us is that in June this year, we launched the MetaVRse engine and it was something that we were super proud of. But at the same time, when you look back, if you're not embarrassed by your first release of your product, you released too late. Well, I can say that in the last nine months we have come leaps and bounds. We have a full universal system now, that it works on every browser, every device, it works everywhere. And we pushed an update that allows you to do that, without having to code. Of course, we've always had the JavaScript editor on there and you can wrap code in five different languages into this. But the ability for non-programmers to participate in the 3D revolution, I think is the biggest accomplishment we

The world received a gift three years ago, in the form of AR technology from the likes of Google and Apple - ARKit and ARCore. But most businesses had no one on-staff at-hand to take advantage of this gift without some extensive upskilling to do. John Martin shares how BundlAR makes AR easy for everyone, and what is needed for wider adoption. Alan: Hey, everyone, I'm Alan Smithson, and today we're speaking with John Martin, the CEO and co-founder of BUNDLR, an augmented reality platform company empowering training, learning, and development innovators with on-demand and mobile immersive experiences. John and I met at the VR/AR Association Chicago meetup, and would become amazing friends as we built the future of communications together. In this interview, we will discuss one of the largest barriers to the widespread adoption of AR and what organizations need to do in order to deploy AR experiences instantly and on a global scale. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. John, it has been a pleasure to get to know you over these years, and I'm super excited to have you on the show. Welcome to the show. John: Thank you, Alan. And I'm looking forward to a great conversation with you, as always. Alan: It's been a couple of years since we got to know each other. I stayed at your house in Chicago. That was very lovely of you, I got to meet your family. And I've watched your platform go from kind of the infancy stages to being a global phenomenon, now. Let's-- I want you to have the stage to really tell people what BUNDLAR is all about and what you guys are doing. John: Well, BUNDLAR, we had a pretty clear mission about a year and a half ago. We were very fortunate to be working with some of the world's great innovators on what I'd call augmented reality projects. It could have been a prospective student tour at Arizona State University. Google gave a grant to the DuSable Museum in Chicago, so they wanted to reboot the Mayor Harold Washington exhibit. Proctor & Gamble had projects at upcoming conventions and shows. Remember when we used to have those? And from all of these engagements-- Alan: In real shows, like IRL, in real life? Like in--? John: Yeah, like in person, back in the good old days. Oh, do I miss that! But at any rate, what we realized was when Google and Apple gave this gift of AR to the world just three summers ago, saying they were all-in with AR, meaning that the hardware was going to work, it was like, wow. Most corporate IT or marketing teams really didn't have anybody on board their staffs that could take advantage of this amazing capability of the mobile device. So at any rate, for us, there's was like, well, what if we could take all of these engagements that we had created, and put them into a repeatable self-serve augmented reality content management system and platform? So it was a very big idea, but we thought one that was worth the journey. So we started to build out a team of 12 really focused AR professionals on the development side to build out this platform. Alan: Well, I know your CTO, Matt [Wren]. I mean, his whole experience in life was creating content management systems for massive corporations, so-- John: Exactly. So it started with Matt and Gareth [Davies], who's on the product side, but really knows AR. We were so blessed to find literally the man that wrote the book on Unity [chuckles] Joe Hocking, to join the team. And Lewis Gardner on our CMS. So we were very fortunate to have a great team come together. And we shared a vision, which is, let's build out an augmented reality platform that would make it super easy and affordable for businesses and organizations to weave in augmented reality c

The world received a gift three years ago, in the form of AR technology from the likes of Google and Apple - ARKit and ARCore. But most businesses had no one on-staff at-hand to take advantage of this gift without some extensive upskilling to do. John Martin shares how BundlAR makes AR easy for everyone, and what is needed for wider adoption. Alan: Hey, everyone, I'm Alan Smithson, and today we're speaking with John Martin, the CEO and co-founder of BUNDLR, an augmented reality platform company empowering training, learning, and development innovators with on-demand and mobile immersive experiences. John and I met at the VR/AR Association Chicago meetup, and would become amazing friends as we built the future of communications together. In this interview, we will discuss one of the largest barriers to the widespread adoption of AR and what organizations need to do in order to deploy AR experiences instantly and on a global scale. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. John, it has been a pleasure to get to know you over these years, and I'm super excited to have you on the show. Welcome to the show. John: Thank you, Alan. And I'm looking forward to a great conversation with you, as always. Alan: It's been a couple of years since we got to know each other. I stayed at your house in Chicago. That was very lovely of you, I got to meet your family. And I've watched your platform go from kind of the infancy stages to being a global phenomenon, now. Let's-- I want you to have the stage to really tell people what BUNDLAR is all about and what you guys are doing. John: Well, BUNDLAR, we had a pretty clear mission about a year and a half ago. We were very fortunate to be working with some of the world's great innovators on what I'd call augmented reality projects. It could have been a prospective student tour at Arizona State University. Google gave a grant to the DuSable Museum in Chicago, so they wanted to reboot the Mayor Harold Washington exhibit. Proctor & Gamble had projects at upcoming conventions and shows. Remember when we used to have those? And from all of these engagements-- Alan: In real shows, like IRL, in real life? Like in--? John: Yeah, like in person, back in the good old days. Oh, do I miss that! But at any rate, what we realized was when Google and Apple gave this gift of AR to the world just three summers ago, saying they were all-in with AR, meaning that the hardware was going to work, it was like, wow. Most corporate IT or marketing teams really didn't have anybody on board their staffs that could take advantage of this amazing capability of the mobile device. So at any rate, for us, there's was like, well, what if we could take all of these engagements that we had created, and put them into a repeatable self-serve augmented reality content management system and platform? So it was a very big idea, but we thought one that was worth the journey. So we started to build out a team of 12 really focused AR professionals on the development side to build out this platform. Alan: Well, I know your CTO, Matt [Wren]. I mean, his whole experience in life was creating content management systems for massive corporations, so-- John: Exactly. So it started with Matt and Gareth [Davies], who's on the product side, but really knows AR. We were so blessed to find literally the man that wrote the book on Unity [chuckles] Joe Hocking, to join the team. And Lewis Gardner on our CMS. So we were very fortunate to have a great team come together. And we shared a vision, which is, let's build out an augmented reality platform that would make it super easy and affordable for businesses and organizations to weave in augmented reality c

Plumbing a problem for developers in Germany, where old pipe systems can make renovating any structure a challenge. Holo-Light's Florian Haspinger wants to help with problems like this using XR technologies, to enable an XR economy. Alan: Good morning, everyone, it's Alan Smithson here, the host of the XR for Business podcast. And today we have a very special guest, Florian Haspinger, CEO and one of the founders of Holo-Light. And today we're going to be learning how Holo-Light is redefining engineering across automotive, manufacturing, chemical, and myriad other industries using XR technologies. So with that, thank you and welcome to the XR for Business podcast. Florian, how are you, my friend? Florian: Hi, Alan. Thanks, I'm fine. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you very much for having me. Alan: It's so great to have you on the show. And I'm really excited. But for people who don't know, why don't you just kind of tell us a little bit about what is Holo-Light and how did you get into it? Florian: Sure, of course. Let me take a bit of time and I will tell you how things started. We have a few stories back in the beginning of everything. This would explain a little bit better how the story would end up. So good stories should start with something like "Once upon a time, there was a big economy and The Problem," and so on. Or "It was a cold, dark winter night in the mountains back in 2015, snow was falling down and you saw the light of the lantern outside flickering inside an old house." But honestly, that's not how it started. Alan: [laughs] I was all-- you had me on the edge of my seat! "Once upon a time, it's snowing." I could picture it! Florian: [laughs] Alan: [laughs] Alright, so carry on. Florian: We were really frustrated students. We studied theoretical physics in Tyrol. And as a theoretical study -- especially on physics -- also, the study is extremely theoretical. And also the funder. And we sat together in my old child's room. So it was a 2015, around in the beginning. And we were overthinking our life decisions. And just to notice, we were just 24 years old and we thought about how we can invest our lifetime in something, something makes a difference in the world outside. There we thought about how can we make things easier or better in matters of industry and engineering, because also our background was a little bit in engineering. And later and after some silence and after a few questions, Alex [Werlberger] -- our CTO -- came up with the idea to think about augmented and virtual reality. And then we started to talk about how this kind of technology would be able to drive digitization, revolutionize industries, and change the way we consume content in the future. Alan: What was that, to put a timeframe on this? Florian: It was in January-February 2015. To be honest, it was really a little bit snowy out there. Alan: So here you are in the beautiful mountains of Tyrol, probably doing some skiing. Snow's glistening, your CTO says "Aha! I think it's going to be XR!" Then what? Florian: [chuckles] Exactly. And after this, this brilliant thought about AR and VR we just said, "Okay, yes, let's do it." And we founded a company in April 2015. And after founding the company we sat together and said, "Okay, now we have a company. But what about the business idea and the business model?" So first we had the idea to drive digitization with XR, then we founded the company, and then afterwards we had to build up the business model. So it was a little bit funny in the beginning. But in-- I remember it was later 2015 when we were able to get t

Plumbing a problem for developers in Germany, where old pipe systems can make renovating any structure a challenge. Holo-Light’s Florian Haspinger wants to help with problems like this using XR technologies, to enable an XR economy. Alan: Good morning, everyone, it's Alan Smithson here, the host of the XR for Business podcast. And today we have a very special guest, Florian Haspinger, CEO and one of the founders of Holo-Light. And today we're going to be learning how Holo-Light is redefining engineering across automotive, manufacturing, chemical, and myriad other industries using XR technologies. So with that, thank you and welcome to the XR for Business podcast. Florian, how are you, my friend? Florian: Hi, Alan. Thanks, I'm fine. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you very much for having me. Alan: It's so great to have you on the show. And I'm really excited. But for people who don't know, why don't you just kind of tell us a little bit about what is Holo-Light and how did you get into it? Florian: Sure, of course. Let me take a bit of time and I will tell you how things started. We have a few stories back in the beginning of everything. This would explain a little bit better how the story would end up. So good stories should start with something like "Once upon a time, there was a big economy and The Problem," and so on. Or "It was a cold, dark winter night in the mountains back in 2015, snow was falling down and you saw the light of the lantern outside flickering inside an old house." But honestly, that's not how it started. Alan: [laughs] I was all-- you had me on the edge of my seat! "Once upon a time, it's snowing." I could picture it! Florian: [laughs] Alan: [laughs] Alright, so carry on. Florian: We were really frustrated students. We studied theoretical physics in Tyrol. And as a theoretical study -- especially on physics -- also, the study is extremely theoretical. And also the funder. And we sat together in my old child's room. So it was a 2015, around in the beginning. And we were overthinking our life decisions. And just to notice, we were just 24 years old and we thought about how we can invest our lifetime in something, something makes a difference in the world outside. There we thought about how can we make things easier or better in matters of industry and engineering, because also our background was a little bit in engineering. And later and after some silence and after a few questions, Alex [Werlberger] -- our CTO -- came up with the idea to think about augmented and virtual reality. And then we started to talk about how this kind of technology would be able to drive digitization, revolutionize industries, and change the way we consume content in the future. Alan: What was that, to put a timeframe on this? Florian: It was in January-February 2015. To be honest, it was really a little bit snowy out there. Alan: So here you are in the beautiful mountains of Tyrol, probably doing some skiing. Snow's glistening, your CTO says "Aha! I think it's going to be XR!" Then what? Florian: [chuckles] Exactly. And after this, this brilliant thought about AR and VR we just said, "Okay, yes, let's do it." And we founded a company in April 2015. And after founding the company we sat together and said, "Okay, now we have a company. But what about the business idea and the business model?" So first we had the idea to drive digitization with XR, then we founded the company, and then afterwards we had to build up the business model. So it was a little bit funny in the beginning. But in-- I remember it was later 2015 when we were able to get t

Last year, Deloitte's technology allowed golf fans to browse three historic holes right in their homes with XR technology; this year, they recreated the entire 18 holes of the U.S. Open. Alan chats with Allan Cook & Kaitlyn Kuczer who drive home how immersive tech is the next technological leap forward. Alan: Welcome back to the XR for Business podcast, it's Alan Smithson, your host today. And today we have two very special guests: Kaitlyn Kuczer and Allan Cook from Deloitte's Digital Reality practice. They're working with clients to develop and implement their strategies, pilots, and technology solutions in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, 360, spatial, and immersive; all known as XR. We're going to dive into an incredible project, the US Golf Association using augmented reality to bring a live golf tournament to your living room in full 3D. In addition, we're going to be discussing the multimillion dollar XR practice at Deloitte and how they're serving the needs of customers around the world. All that and more coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Allan and Kaitlyn, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Allan: Good morning. Alan: Good morning. Where are you guys calling in from now? Kaitlyn: We are coming in from Denver, Colorado. Alan: Amazing. And so let me ask you a quick question. How did you both get into XR, and what was the spark that you saw? And then we'll talk about the Deloitte practice and how that's evolved over the last little bit. And then I want to really dive into this amazing experience you guys made at the USGA. So perhaps, Kaitlyn and Allan, tell us how you kind of got into this, and what was the specific factor to get into XR within Deloitte? Allan: So I'll jump in here. Kaitlyn and I have been working in what we call digital reality -- it's all things: AR, VR, spatial, immersive, and nowadays 3D -- for about four years. Originally, Deloitte was looking at that next generation of exponential technologies, to look at where we think our next generation of consulting revenues, consulting technologies are going to be coming from. Within that, we'd started off a kind of a deep dive analysis of the marketplace and quickly realized that there was really a huge potential for not only ourselves, but for many technology firms, many consulting firms. Since then, we've grown to between 70 and 100 dedicated staff now within the US. We are working with a huge variety of clients. Our main focus tends to be in four broad areas. Firstly doing a lot of strategy work with clients, so helping them to figure out where to play, how to win, where they should be experimenting in this area, but also where they should be implementing projects and helping them to realize significant returns. We're doing a lot of work in immersive learning. I like to say, if it's too dangerous, too difficult, or too expensive to do the training in the real world, why wouldn't you do it in a virtual world? The next big area we're focusing on is really that frontline work, field service engineers, see-what-I-see, do-what-I-do, digital twins. And then finally what we call digital reality experiences. So this is a lot more consumer facing, whether that's retail type events or -- like you mentioned in the intro -- the work that we did with the US Golf Association on the US Open over the last few years. Alan: So there's a pretty wide swath or pretty wide spectrum here. You've got consumer facing application -- bringing the USGA into your living room -- but then you've also got companies that are manufacturing products that want to see maybe a digital twin of a factory, or even support systems where you can point your phone at a manufacturing machine and h

Last year, Deloitte’s technology allowed golf fans to browse three historic holes right in their homes with XR technology; this year, they recreated the entire 18 holes of the U.S. Open. Alan chats with Allan Cook & Kaitlyn Kuczer who drive home how immersive tech is the next technological leap forward. Alan: Welcome back to the XR for Business podcast, it's Alan Smithson, your host today. And today we have two very special guests: Kaitlyn Kuczer and Allan Cook from Deloitte's Digital Reality practice. They're working with clients to develop and implement their strategies, pilots, and technology solutions in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, 360, spatial, and immersive; all known as XR. We're going to dive into an incredible project, the US Golf Association using augmented reality to bring a live golf tournament to your living room in full 3D. In addition, we're going to be discussing the multimillion dollar XR practice at Deloitte and how they're serving the needs of customers around the world. All that and more coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Allan and Kaitlyn, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Allan: Good morning. Alan: Good morning. Where are you guys calling in from now? Kaitlyn: We are coming in from Denver, Colorado. Alan: Amazing. And so let me ask you a quick question. How did you both get into XR, and what was the spark that you saw? And then we'll talk about the Deloitte practice and how that's evolved over the last little bit. And then I want to really dive into this amazing experience you guys made at the USGA. So perhaps, Kaitlyn and Allan, tell us how you kind of got into this, and what was the specific factor to get into XR within Deloitte? Allan: So I'll jump in here. Kaitlyn and I have been working in what we call digital reality -- it's all things: AR, VR, spatial, immersive, and nowadays 3D -- for about four years. Originally, Deloitte was looking at that next generation of exponential technologies, to look at where we think our next generation of consulting revenues, consulting technologies are going to be coming from. Within that, we'd started off a kind of a deep dive analysis of the marketplace and quickly realized that there was really a huge potential for not only ourselves, but for many technology firms, many consulting firms. Since then, we've grown to between 70 and 100 dedicated staff now within the US. We are working with a huge variety of clients. Our main focus tends to be in four broad areas. Firstly doing a lot of strategy work with clients, so helping them to figure out where to play, how to win, where they should be experimenting in this area, but also where they should be implementing projects and helping them to realize significant returns. We're doing a lot of work in immersive learning. I like to say, if it's too dangerous, too difficult, or too expensive to do the training in the real world, why wouldn't you do it in a virtual world? The next big area we're focusing on is really that frontline work, field service engineers, see-what-I-see, do-what-I-do, digital twins. And then finally what we call digital reality experiences. So this is a lot more consumer facing, whether that's retail type events or -- like you mentioned in the intro -- the work that we did with the US Golf Association on the US Open over the last few years. Alan: So there's a pretty wide swath or pretty wide spectrum here. You've got consumer facing application -- bringing the USGA into your living room -- but then you've also got companies that are manufacturing products that want to see maybe a digital twin of a factory, or even support systems where you can point your phone at a manufacturing machine and h

Talon Simulations was making great strides in the location-based entertainment industry, until COVID-19 hit. Now they're pivoting the technology to suit more training-based use cases, and CEO Brandon Naids is on the show to explain how. Alan: Hey, everyone, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is Brandon Naids. He's the CEO and co-founder of Talon Simulations. They are a provider of virtual reality experiences, but not just any virtual reality experiences. They have full motion simulators for entertainment and training. We're going to dig into how these amazing simulators can push forward the reality behind virtual reality. So, Brandon, welcome to the show and thanks for joining me. Brandon: Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, Alan. Definitely look forward to our discussion. Alan: I'm really excited. You get to play with probably the coolest toys in the VR space. You have motion simulators for racing games, and it's not all fun and games, but man, you must have a pretty cool office. Brandon: Yeah, we definitely have a lot of fun here, and we used to take the simulators home for weekend testing, but kind of got to the point where we play with it enough at the office. [chuckles] Alan: [chuckles] Do you have Thursday night is race night, and everybody shows up and they make bets on each other? Brandon: Yeah, usually Friday afternoons, it's a good time to decompress and have some competition. So it was a lot of fun. Alan: And you guys are right in the heart of simulation country in Orlando, right? Brandon: Yeah, we are. And that's definitely been one of the main factors that we attribute to the success we have, it's just being in the heart of the amusement industry, as well as simulation and training. It's a big hub. And gaming technologies, so couldn't have picked a better spot. Alan: It's true and I love the fact that you're kind of right in the middle of entertainment or training, so that your teams can enjoy the gaming aspect and the fun, but then also the serious aspect and really bring this technology to businesses in ways that can improve their training and improve their safety, as well. So with that, this is the XR for Business podcast. But I wanted you to just maybe introduce Talon Simulations and kind of give us the elevator pitch, if you would. Brandon: Yeah. So Talon Simulations specializes in dynamic and immersive experiences for entertainment centers and training institutes. We'll create cockpit based experiences that we're able to adapt for specific projects, or we'll develop our own specifically for the arcade industries. We've put together a comprehensive turnkey, fully automated virtual reality arcade cabinet that we put together all the hardware and the software. And now we launched last year. And you're able to just purchase it, plug it into the wall and run it, whether with a credit card or arcade card reader, or put in free play, whatever the business model is. And for our training products, they are a little bit more customized for each project. Or we sell just the simulators to different integrators, and they're able to take our SDK and create their own experiences within Unreal or Unity. Alan: Amazing. Brandon: And those are really the exciting ones, because we'll work with universities, or digital marketing companies, or military contractors, and all sorts of different scenarios have been developed with our motion simulators. So we've seen a wide spectrum of use cases. Alan: All right. So on that, I'm looking at your website now and there's people racing a

Talon Simulations was making great strides in the location-based entertainment industry, until COVID-19 hit. Now they’re pivoting the technology to suit more training-based use cases, and CEO Brandon Naids is on the show to explain how. Alan: Hey, everyone, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is Brandon Naids. He's the CEO and co-founder of Talon Simulations. They are a provider of virtual reality experiences, but not just any virtual reality experiences. They have full motion simulators for entertainment and training. We're going to dig into how these amazing simulators can push forward the reality behind virtual reality. So, Brandon, welcome to the show and thanks for joining me. Brandon: Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, Alan. Definitely look forward to our discussion. Alan: I'm really excited. You get to play with probably the coolest toys in the VR space. You have motion simulators for racing games, and it's not all fun and games, but man, you must have a pretty cool office. Brandon: Yeah, we definitely have a lot of fun here, and we used to take the simulators home for weekend testing, but kind of got to the point where we play with it enough at the office. [chuckles] Alan: [chuckles] Do you have Thursday night is race night, and everybody shows up and they make bets on each other? Brandon: Yeah, usually Friday afternoons, it's a good time to decompress and have some competition. So it was a lot of fun. Alan: And you guys are right in the heart of simulation country in Orlando, right? Brandon: Yeah, we are. And that's definitely been one of the main factors that we attribute to the success we have, it's just being in the heart of the amusement industry, as well as simulation and training. It's a big hub. And gaming technologies, so couldn't have picked a better spot. Alan: It's true and I love the fact that you're kind of right in the middle of entertainment or training, so that your teams can enjoy the gaming aspect and the fun, but then also the serious aspect and really bring this technology to businesses in ways that can improve their training and improve their safety, as well. So with that, this is the XR for Business podcast. But I wanted you to just maybe introduce Talon Simulations and kind of give us the elevator pitch, if you would. Brandon: Yeah. So Talon Simulations specializes in dynamic and immersive experiences for entertainment centers and training institutes. We'll create cockpit based experiences that we're able to adapt for specific projects, or we'll develop our own specifically for the arcade industries. We've put together a comprehensive turnkey, fully automated virtual reality arcade cabinet that we put together all the hardware and the software. And now we launched last year. And you're able to just purchase it, plug it into the wall and run it, whether with a credit card or arcade card reader, or put in free play, whatever the business model is. And for our training products, they are a little bit more customized for each project. Or we sell just the simulators to different integrators, and they're able to take our SDK and create their own experiences within Unreal or Unity. Alan: Amazing. Brandon: And those are really the exciting ones, because we'll work with universities, or digital marketing companies, or military contractors, and all sorts of different scenarios have been developed with our motion simulators. So we've seen a wide spectrum of use cases. Alan: All right. So on that, I'm looking at your website now and there's people racing a

The ability to bring the sense of touch into the virtual is the final frontier of true immersion, and some of that technology already exists. Haptics, however, can be prohibitively expensive, even for some enterprise. Gijs den Butter visits the podcast to explain how SenseGlove can bring that power to business for a fraction of the cost. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special guest, Gijs Den Butter. He is the CEO of SenseGlove. Now, if you're not familiar with haptics, we're going to get right into this. It's going to be awesome. But before we get to that, I just want to say, Gijs, it's really a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome to the show, my friend. Gijs: Thank you so much. Real pleasure to be here. Alan: It's really, really cool what you guys have built. A little while ago, I had the opportunity to try haptic gloves, and I put them on and I was able to reach out in virtual reality and grab an object and feel that object in my hand. And I can tell you, it was one of the most incredible ways to connect the physical world with the digital world. It was an amazing experience. And I'm really, really excited to have Gijs explain us and walk us through SenseGlove and what they're doing. Not only have you built haptic glove, but you've built a haptic glove that has force feedback. And so when you reach out and grab something, it stops in the shape of whatever you're reaching. Like, just explain how you got into the where you are right now. Where did this come from? Gijs: Yeah, I think this force feedback component is indeed the crucial part of feeling in VR, because you can have haptic feedback -- like vibro-motors and those kind of things -- but really the moment when you're grasping an object and you feel that there is something that isn't actually there, that is a key moment in what touch enables you in VR. And then you can really interact in VR, as you would do in a normal situation. So, yeah, with this belief, we started off in 2015 from a robotics group at the University of Delft -- Technical University of Delft -- here in the Netherlands. And we tried to get-- to make a wearable that is, well, doing exactly this -- so touch in VR -- but was also affordable for every professional use case. We started firstly with a use case of rehabilitation, but we then found that this rehabilitation-only use case was a too limited scenario. And that was mainly because we were on a larger business fair called the Hannover Messe. And one of our current clients, Volkswagen, came to us and said, "Well, this training of impaired people, could you also do that with healthy people, so that they also can experience feeling in VR?" And that was kind of the start. We pivoted from a research group that was searching for a quest where their technology could be used in VR, to a company called SenseGlove. And that's where we're today. So in 2018, we launched our first product. That is really a development kit where researchers or R&D organizations -- like within Volkswagen -- can test, "OK, what does this component of touch add to my virtual experiences?" Alan: How is Volkswagen using it? I mean, that's a really, really amazing company. Volkswagen Group owns pretty much everything: Porsche, Audi, and BMW, and so on. Gijs: As maybe the followers of this podcast know that Volkswagen is quite a progressive company if it goes down to VR. So what their two use cases that they're interested in, which one of them is the training of assembly personnel inside of your environment. You can imagine if you are about to become an assembly worker in Volkswagen, you need to assemble those cars. The first day on that line is a pretty challenging day. Alan:

The ability to bring the sense of touch into the virtual is the final frontier of true immersion, and some of that technology already exists. Haptics, however, can be prohibitively expensive, even for some enterprise. Gijs den Butter visits the podcast to explain how SenseGlove can bring that power to business for a fraction of the cost. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special guest, Gijs Den Butter. He is the CEO of SenseGlove. Now, if you're not familiar with haptics, we're going to get right into this. It's going to be awesome. But before we get to that, I just want to say, Gijs, it's really a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome to the show, my friend. Gijs: Thank you so much. Real pleasure to be here. Alan: It's really, really cool what you guys have built. A little while ago, I had the opportunity to try haptic gloves, and I put them on and I was able to reach out in virtual reality and grab an object and feel that object in my hand. And I can tell you, it was one of the most incredible ways to connect the physical world with the digital world. It was an amazing experience. And I'm really, really excited to have Gijs explain us and walk us through SenseGlove and what they're doing. Not only have you built haptic glove, but you've built a haptic glove that has force feedback. And so when you reach out and grab something, it stops in the shape of whatever you're reaching. Like, just explain how you got into the where you are right now. Where did this come from? Gijs: Yeah, I think this force feedback component is indeed the crucial part of feeling in VR, because you can have haptic feedback -- like vibro-motors and those kind of things -- but really the moment when you're grasping an object and you feel that there is something that isn't actually there, that is a key moment in what touch enables you in VR. And then you can really interact in VR, as you would do in a normal situation. So, yeah, with this belief, we started off in 2015 from a robotics group at the University of Delft -- Technical University of Delft -- here in the Netherlands. And we tried to get-- to make a wearable that is, well, doing exactly this -- so touch in VR -- but was also affordable for every professional use case. We started firstly with a use case of rehabilitation, but we then found that this rehabilitation-only use case was a too limited scenario. And that was mainly because we were on a larger business fair called the Hannover Messe. And one of our current clients, Volkswagen, came to us and said, "Well, this training of impaired people, could you also do that with healthy people, so that they also can experience feeling in VR?" And that was kind of the start. We pivoted from a research group that was searching for a quest where their technology could be used in VR, to a company called SenseGlove. And that's where we're today. So in 2018, we launched our first product. That is really a development kit where researchers or R&D organizations -- like within Volkswagen -- can test, "OK, what does this component of touch add to my virtual experiences?" Alan: How is Volkswagen using it? I mean, that's a really, really amazing company. Volkswagen Group owns pretty much everything: Porsche, Audi, and BMW, and so on. Gijs: As maybe the followers of this podcast know that Volkswagen is quite a progressive company if it goes down to VR. So what their two use cases that they're interested in, which one of them is the training of assembly personnel inside of your environment. You can imagine if you are about to become an assembly worker in Volkswagen, you need to assemble those cars. The first day on that line is a pretty challenging day. Alan:

If you sell a couch that comes in 1,000 different patters and colours, what's cheaper: printing out a swatch for each variation, or creating a configurator that lets you do that digitally and photo-realistically? The obvious answer is the ethos behind ThreeKit's product customization software, which CTO Ben Houston joins Alan to discuss. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special guest, Ben Houston. He's the founder and CTO of Threekit. Threekit's a platform used by some of the world's top brands like Crate & Barrel and Steelcase. And what they're able to do is create amazing visual customer experiences through virtual photography, augmented reality, 3D imagery, saving companies enormous amounts of time and money, having to get these photographs, set up studios. And at a time of COVID, we just can't do that anyway. So I'm really excited to invite Ben to the podcast today. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Ben: Hey, thank you, Alan, for such a great intro. Alan: Oh, it's my pleasure, man. You guys have really been working hard in the space. You've been in the space since, what, 2005, I believe? Ben: In the 3D space for quite some time, but in doing 3D for e-commerce, we've been doing that since 2015. Alan: Wow. So five years of experience. Let's kind of go back to 2015. What did you start doing and what are you doing now? What are the services that Threekit offers, and how has that changed from 2015? Ben: When we first got into it, we were actually-- our background's Hollywood visual effects. We started making-- this company originally was creating software for Hollywood films, and we did that quite successfully on a lot of films. And then what we did is we started moving that 3D content creation to the web. Once we had done that, we did that around 2013. In 2015, people started using our 3D content creation for the web, for e-commerce applications. Specifically, they were doing it for configurable products. So interactive 3D product configurators. This is-- Steelcase is a good example of an early adopter of this technology. We started doing that, and that had a lot of success, especially for companies that have massive configuration problems, such as Steelcase's office furniture. As we evolved down that path, the next thing we started doing was virtual photography or also called synthetic photography. That's where you will create a number of renderings of products for companies. A good example of that is Crate & Barrel. We've created hundreds and hundreds of thousands of renders for them, of their furniture, and it all looks real. And so now they don't have to build every piece of furniture and every fabric and then take a picture of it. We can just render those off. Alan: Gotta be some massive cost savings. We'll get into the numbers later. But wow, that's like-- if you don't have to take photographs, I mean, I can only imagine a photo shoot's expensive to begin with. Ben: And every one of their sofas is a couple of thousand dollars. So it's just simply not possible. And then what we've done more recently is the rise of AR. That has really been embraced by furniture realtors specifically, and so that allows them to see the furniture, how it would fit in their room or office. And so those are the three main offerings that our platform has. To recap, you have configurators, so companies that have -- maybe it's a chair -- and it comes in 50 different colors, and five different lumbar supports, and people can configure their office furniture, or chair, or any product, really. The second is -- which is a term I've never heard -- synthetic photography, basically being able to cr

If you sell a couch that comes in 1,000 different patters and colours, what’s cheaper: printing out a swatch for each variation, or creating a configurator that lets you do that digitally and photo-realistically? The obvious answer is the ethos behind ThreeKit’s product customization software, which CTO Ben Houston joins Alan to discuss. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special guest, Ben Houston. He's the founder and CTO of Threekit. Threekit's a platform used by some of the world's top brands like Crate & Barrel and Steelcase. And what they're able to do is create amazing visual customer experiences through virtual photography, augmented reality, 3D imagery, saving companies enormous amounts of time and money, having to get these photographs, set up studios. And at a time of COVID, we just can't do that anyway. So I'm really excited to invite Ben to the podcast today. Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Ben: Hey, thank you, Alan, for such a great intro. Alan: Oh, it's my pleasure, man. You guys have really been working hard in the space. You've been in the space since, what, 2005, I believe? Ben: In the 3D space for quite some time, but in doing 3D for e-commerce, we've been doing that since 2015. Alan: Wow. So five years of experience. Let's kind of go back to 2015. What did you start doing and what are you doing now? What are the services that Threekit offers, and how has that changed from 2015? Ben: When we first got into it, we were actually-- our background's Hollywood visual effects. We started making-- this company originally was creating software for Hollywood films, and we did that quite successfully on a lot of films. And then what we did is we started moving that 3D content creation to the web. Once we had done that, we did that around 2013. In 2015, people started using our 3D content creation for the web, for e-commerce applications. Specifically, they were doing it for configurable products. So interactive 3D product configurators. This is-- Steelcase is a good example of an early adopter of this technology. We started doing that, and that had a lot of success, especially for companies that have massive configuration problems, such as Steelcase's office furniture. As we evolved down that path, the next thing we started doing was virtual photography or also called synthetic photography. That's where you will create a number of renderings of products for companies. A good example of that is Crate & Barrel. We've created hundreds and hundreds of thousands of renders for them, of their furniture, and it all looks real. And so now they don't have to build every piece of furniture and every fabric and then take a picture of it. We can just render those off. Alan: Gotta be some massive cost savings. We'll get into the numbers later. But wow, that's like-- if you don't have to take photographs, I mean, I can only imagine a photo shoot's expensive to begin with. Ben: And every one of their sofas is a couple of thousand dollars. So it's just simply not possible. And then what we've done more recently is the rise of AR. That has really been embraced by furniture realtors specifically, and so that allows them to see the furniture, how it would fit in their room or office. And so those are the three main offerings that our platform has. To recap, you have configurators, so companies that have -- maybe it's a chair -- and it comes in 50 different colors, and five different lumbar supports, and people can configure their office furniture, or chair, or any product, really. The second is -- which is a term I've never heard -- synthetic photography, basically being able to cr

Avid listeners will have noticed a few weeks without a podcast - that's because Alan's been hard at work behind-the-scenes building capital for several MetaVRse projects, including the MetaVRse Engine. This gave Alan a chance to reflect on the investment landscape of 2020, and is joined by VP of Marketing Alex Colgan to discuss the new normal that COVID has ushered into the VC world. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special episode. We're going to be talking about the investment landscape of virtual and augmented reality as it pertains to investment in startups, companies going public. What is the investment landscape look like between now and the next few years? How are things going to be funded and what can we expect from the markets in terms of returns? And what can investors really count on to drive those returns as high as possible? Today, I'm joined by the MetaVRse VP of Marketing, our wonderful Alex Colgan. He's going to be joining me today and he's going to be interviewing *me* today. Alex: Hey. Alan: Hey, what's up, Alex? Fun fact about Alex: he also lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Or near Halifax. He's in the eastern part of Canada. So, Alex, thanks for joining me on the show today. Alex: Canadian born and bred. Glad to be taking over the reins today. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, let's flip it around. Alan: It's really interesting, Alex, before we get started I have to really just punctuate a couple of things. Over the last few years, there has been an enormous amount of capital invested into virtual and augmented reality startups, in the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. And it almost feels like we are going through this kind of winter, where investments have dried up in the area. So I'm really excited to talk about that, because I believe that as much as we're going into physical winter in Canada, I believe that we're going into a beautiful spring with regards to the investment landscape of this technology. So I'm really excited to dig into it today. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Bad economies are often some of the best times to invest, and there are also some of the best times to build a startup. COVID has had everybody scrambling over the past six months, and trying to identify the best path forward for the future. As a result of that, we've seen a lot of different sectors have been getting shaken up as a result. What are some of the biggest disruptions that we've seen over the past six months in some of these areas? Alan: Well, I think the major one is that with regards to investment, everybody just closed their wallets. COVID came and people went, "OK, there's so much uncertainty, just stop everything." And so pretty much all investment across all sectors dried up in March, and basically hasn't really come back until you were starting to see funding rounds happen now in September. And I believe this will continue October-November. Now we find ourselves in a time where there's actually a lot of fresh capital sitting on the sidelines that needs to be deployed. And if it's not deployed, it's losing money. So you have a ton of new startups on the market as well. We have a platform called xrcollaboration.com, and there's been over 70 startups that have created XR collaboration tools that allow you to go in VR, go into AR glasses, and communicate with people around the world. And not only if you have the VR and AR glasses, but there's new opportunities around using 2D screens like computers to navigate these 3D worlds, almost like Second Life, but kind of Second Life 2.0, if you would. And this is giving a huge opportunity for investors. There's a company called VirBELA and they have done really well. Their ma

Avid listeners will have noticed a few weeks without a podcast - that’s because Alan’s been hard at work behind-the-scenes building capital for several MetaVRse projects, including the MetaVRse Engine. This gave Alan a chance to reflect on the investment landscape of 2020, and is joined by VP of Marketing Alex Colgan to discuss the new normal that COVID has ushered into the VC world. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have a very special episode. We're going to be talking about the investment landscape of virtual and augmented reality as it pertains to investment in startups, companies going public. What is the investment landscape look like between now and the next few years? How are things going to be funded and what can we expect from the markets in terms of returns? And what can investors really count on to drive those returns as high as possible? Today, I'm joined by the MetaVRse VP of Marketing, our wonderful Alex Colgan. He's going to be joining me today and he's going to be interviewing *me* today. Alex: Hey. Alan: Hey, what's up, Alex? Fun fact about Alex: he also lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Or near Halifax. He's in the eastern part of Canada. So, Alex, thanks for joining me on the show today. Alex: Canadian born and bred. Glad to be taking over the reins today. Thanks for having me on. And, yeah, let's flip it around. Alan: It's really interesting, Alex, before we get started I have to really just punctuate a couple of things. Over the last few years, there has been an enormous amount of capital invested into virtual and augmented reality startups, in the hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. And it almost feels like we are going through this kind of winter, where investments have dried up in the area. So I'm really excited to talk about that, because I believe that as much as we're going into physical winter in Canada, I believe that we're going into a beautiful spring with regards to the investment landscape of this technology. So I'm really excited to dig into it today. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Bad economies are often some of the best times to invest, and there are also some of the best times to build a startup. COVID has had everybody scrambling over the past six months, and trying to identify the best path forward for the future. As a result of that, we've seen a lot of different sectors have been getting shaken up as a result. What are some of the biggest disruptions that we've seen over the past six months in some of these areas? Alan: Well, I think the major one is that with regards to investment, everybody just closed their wallets. COVID came and people went, "OK, there's so much uncertainty, just stop everything." And so pretty much all investment across all sectors dried up in March, and basically hasn't really come back until you were starting to see funding rounds happen now in September. And I believe this will continue October-November. Now we find ourselves in a time where there's actually a lot of fresh capital sitting on the sidelines that needs to be deployed. And if it's not deployed, it's losing money. So you have a ton of new startups on the market as well. We have a platform called xrcollaboration.com, and there's been over 70 startups that have created XR collaboration tools that allow you to go in VR, go into AR glasses, and communicate with people around the world. And not only if you have the VR and AR glasses, but there's new opportunities around using 2D screens like computers to navigate these 3D worlds, almost like Second Life, but kind of Second Life 2.0, if you would. And this is giving a huge opportunity for investors. There's a company called VirBELA and they have done really well. Their ma

Alan recently discussed immersive learning with his partner in life and business, Julie Smithson, on her sister podcast, XR for Learning. We thought it was a good episode, so this week, we're sharing it here for XR for Business listeners. Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson. Alan: And I'm Alan Smithson. Julie: And this is the XR for Learning podcast. Alan: Well… which podcast are we on? Is it mine or yours? Julie: I think it's mine. Alan: Yours, so the XR for Learning podcast. Julie: Yeah. Alan: I'm going to interview you. Julie: Yes. Alan: OK, cool. Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. In all of my episodes, I talk about the way that we need to change the way that we learn and we teach, to adapt to the immersive technologies that are being implemented in enterprise and business today. So today, my guest — my special guest — is Alan Smithson. Alan: Hello. Julie: My partner and husband of almost 20 years. And we're going to talk about education. So welcome. Thanks for being on *my* podcast. Alan: Thank you so much for having me. I'm a little nervous, I'm not going to lie. This is an interesting podcast dynamic. Julie: It really is. We've never done this before. Alan: No, we have not. So I want to ask you questions, because you are the guru in immersive learning systems. So we'll hopefully kind of dig up where this lies, and what we have to do as a society to really push the needle forward. Julie: So what I like to do with all my podcasts is start with a baseline technology. Where are we today? Like, what's going on today? Which is really good question, because it's definitely different than it was six months ago. Alan: I would say, in the industry– I'm coming from the business side of things. What we've seen is there's been a hyper-acceleration of digitization. So in retail and e-com, it has been decimated. People couldn't go to a store physically, and so everything moved online. And in e-commerce, we're seeing shopping trends that would have existed in 2030 happen today. This is trickling down to everything, not only retail, but then also meetings. Everybody's meeting on Zoom these days. Everybody. There's just– we're moving to digital and we're moving to these things much faster than we had ever, ever hoped to do. Plans of digital transformation that would have taken five years are now happening today. So it's an interesting time to revisit and relook at what does education look like in an exponential world of digital transformation. Julie: And this is where the skillsets that are now needed — in enterprise, business, and organizations today to digitally transform — those skillsets are not being taught in the school system today. So COVID coming in and forcing people to virtually connect online, the education systems were forced to actually be online and rethink how they're teaching things. But the unfortunate thing is, is that we didn't get to the point of talking about what we were actually teaching. It was just more of a digital connection for the past six months. Alan: Well, I think since this thing has hit, it's been really just how do we make the technology work in a seamless way that is comfortable for both the teachers and the students? And to be honest, we're not quite there yet. My kids

Alan recently discussed immersive learning with his partner in life and business, Julie Smithson, on her sister podcast, XR for Learning. We thought it was a good episode, so this week, we’re sharing it here for XR for Business listeners. Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson. Alan: And I’m Alan Smithson. Julie: And this is the XR for Learning podcast. Alan: Well… which podcast are we on? Is it mine or yours? Julie: I think it’s mine. Alan: Yours, so the XR for Learning podcast. Julie: Yeah. Alan: I’m going to interview you. Julie: Yes. Alan: OK, cool. Julie: Hi, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. In all of my episodes, I talk about the way that we need to change the way that we learn and we teach, to adapt to the immersive technologies that are being implemented in enterprise and business today. So today, my guest — my special guest — is Alan Smithson. Alan: Hello. Julie: My partner and husband of almost 20 years. And we’re going to talk about education. So welcome. Thanks for being on *my* podcast. Alan: Thank you so much for having me. I’m a little nervous, I’m not going to lie. This is an interesting podcast dynamic. Julie: It really is. We’ve never done this before. Alan: No, we have not. So I want to ask you questions, because you are the guru in immersive learning systems. So we’ll hopefully kind of dig up where this lies, and what we have to do as a society to really push the needle forward. Julie: So what I like to do with all my podcasts is start with a baseline technology. Where are we today? Like, what’s going on today? Which is really good question, because it’s definitely different than it was six months ago. Alan: I would say, in the industry– I’m coming from the business side of things. What we’ve seen is there’s been a hyper-acceleration of digitization. So in retail and e-com, it has been decimated. People couldn’t go to a store physically, and so everything moved online. And in e-commerce, we’re seeing shopping trends that would have existed in 2030 happen today. This is trickling down to everything, not only retail, but then also meetings. Everybody’s meeting on Zoom these days. Everybody. There’s just– we’re moving to digital and we’re moving to these things much faster than we had ever, ever hoped to do. Plans of digital transformation that would have taken five years are now happening today. So it’s an interesting time to revisit and relook at what does education look like in an exponential world of digital transformation. Julie: And this is where the skillsets that are now needed — in enterprise, business, and organizations today to digitally transform — those skillsets are not being taught in the school system today. So COVID coming in and forcing people to virtually connect online, the education systems were forced to actually be online and rethink how they’re teaching things. But the unfortunate thing is, is that we didn’t get to the point of talking about what we were actually teaching. It was just more of a digital connection for the past six months. Alan: Well, I think since this thing has hit, it’s been really just how do we make the technology work in a seamless way that is comfortable for both the teachers and the students? And to be honest, we’re not quite there yet. My kids

Geenee is an AR content company granting the wishes of their clients by creating new ways to market to their audiences, from interactive book covers, to hosting live concerts digitally. Geenee's Cory Grenier and Elena de Sosa explain how those who master this new communication format today will dominate the market tomorrow. Alan: Hey, everybody, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Cory Grenier, the chief revenue officer, and Elena DeSosa, director of strategic partnerships at Geenee, a platform that delivers cost effective WebAR and scalable image recognition to the mobile web, powering XR experiences with no app required. We'll be talking about the power of the spatial web to connect us across time, geographies, and space to transform our workplaces and give us superpowers that drive commerce. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Cory and Elena to the show. Welcome. Cory: Hi. It's good to be here, Alan. Elena: Thank you for having us. Alan: Thank you so much for joining me, guys. Cory, we'll start with you. You're the chief revenue officer at Geenee. I met with one of your colleagues, Luke, a few years ago. We became friends. He showed me this Geenee platform. Maybe just give us the sales pitch on what is Geenee? Cory: Geenee is a new SAS WebAR platform, which is-- a scheme on your mind, it's like a Wix for WebAR. So before Wix or Squarespace, there were a lot of web developers, and it was really expensive to hire a developer to make a website. And then there was these companies that came along, decades after the initial Internet, and simplified that creation process through templates and intuitive interface. And that's what we've done with Geenee. And so we have years of proprietary image recognition technology and also tech IP and AR for Web browsers. And so we brought that together in a templatized form to allow anybody to create, publish, and share WebAR experiences directly to the web, without requiring an app. Alan: You've created these, I guess, SLAM algorithms and image recognition algorithms. One of the things that Luke showed me before was the ability to track moving objects or videos. That was pretty cool. Cory: Yeah. And so we've been leveraging that for a range of businesses across the entertainment, book publishing, and CPG brands, to promote soft drinks and so forth. And so it's really unconstrained what vertical you're in, how you can use the power of spatial computing to connect to your consumers and ultimately transact. Alan: So are there examples that we can put in the show notes, that link directly to a live example? Cory: Yeah, there's many that we can direct your audience to. Scholastic just released a new book in the series of The Hunger Games, and we brought the cover to life in an augmented reality experience on the Web. And at the end, you can buy the book across any channel. So we actually have all the purchase sites integrated for some of the movie releases recently. Even during the time of COVID, the studios are looking to connect with consumers in the home and you can experience the film in a 360 environment through AR and learn fan trivia, but also to make a purchase. Every time we believe that AR is a feature, it's not a product, and it's how you use that to connect directly to the business result that the client is looking for to get ROI in that ad spend. Alan: Interesting. It's great. I was just looking at it, and if you want to try, then go to geenee.me, and then you can just search down the case studies and The Hunger Games one is there. So that's pretty cool. How does it work whe

Geenee is an AR content company granting the wishes of their clients by creating new ways to market to their audiences, from interactive book covers, to hosting live concerts digitally. Geenee’s Cory Grenier and Elena de Sosa explain how those who master this new communication format today will dominate the market tomorrow. Alan: Hey, everybody, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Cory Grenier, the chief revenue officer, and Elena DeSosa, director of strategic partnerships at Geenee, a platform that delivers cost effective WebAR and scalable image recognition to the mobile web, powering XR experiences with no app required. We'll be talking about the power of the spatial web to connect us across time, geographies, and space to transform our workplaces and give us superpowers that drive commerce. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Cory and Elena to the show. Welcome. Cory: Hi. It's good to be here, Alan. Elena: Thank you for having us. Alan: Thank you so much for joining me, guys. Cory, we'll start with you. You're the chief revenue officer at Geenee. I met with one of your colleagues, Luke, a few years ago. We became friends. He showed me this Geenee platform. Maybe just give us the sales pitch on what is Geenee? Cory: Geenee is a new SAS WebAR platform, which is-- a scheme on your mind, it's like a Wix for WebAR. So before Wix or Squarespace, there were a lot of web developers, and it was really expensive to hire a developer to make a website. And then there was these companies that came along, decades after the initial Internet, and simplified that creation process through templates and intuitive interface. And that's what we've done with Geenee. And so we have years of proprietary image recognition technology and also tech IP and AR for Web browsers. And so we brought that together in a templatized form to allow anybody to create, publish, and share WebAR experiences directly to the web, without requiring an app. Alan: You've created these, I guess, SLAM algorithms and image recognition algorithms. One of the things that Luke showed me before was the ability to track moving objects or videos. That was pretty cool. Cory: Yeah. And so we've been leveraging that for a range of businesses across the entertainment, book publishing, and CPG brands, to promote soft drinks and so forth. And so it's really unconstrained what vertical you're in, how you can use the power of spatial computing to connect to your consumers and ultimately transact. Alan: So are there examples that we can put in the show notes, that link directly to a live example? Cory: Yeah, there's many that we can direct your audience to. Scholastic just released a new book in the series of The Hunger Games, and we brought the cover to life in an augmented reality experience on the Web. And at the end, you can buy the book across any channel. So we actually have all the purchase sites integrated for some of the movie releases recently. Even during the time of COVID, the studios are looking to connect with consumers in the home and you can experience the film in a 360 environment through AR and learn fan trivia, but also to make a purchase. Every time we believe that AR is a feature, it's not a product, and it's how you use that to connect directly to the business result that the client is looking for to get ROI in that ad spend. Alan: Interesting. It's great. I was just looking at it, and if you want to try, then go to geenee.me, and then you can just search down the case studies and The Hunger Games one is there. So that's pretty cool. How does it work whe

Developing a pilot or a proof of concept is among the first steps to introducing XR into your industry, but that's only going to provide so much ROI unless you can fully implement that idea. Dave Beck from Foundry 45 discusses how to make that leap. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Dave Beck, founder and managing partner at Foundry 45, an immersive technology company that develops enterprise level virtual reality training experiences. They've created over 250 experiences for notable clients such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, Delta, and UPS. We're going to be discussing going from PoCs, pilots, and case studies to full scale deployments. All that and more, on the XR for Business podcast. Dave, welcome to the show. Dave: Hey, Alan, thanks so much for having me on here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. I'm super excited. You guys have been doing so much work in the VR training space. First of all, let's just talk about, what is Foundry 45? How did you get into this? And we'll kick it off from there. Dave: I guess first off, it's nice to chat with you again. I went back and checked my email, and it looks like the first time you and I talked was way back in 2016. So a lot's happened in that time, hasn't it? So, OK, we put VR to work by creating virtual reality training experiences for enterprise partners. And we specialize in industrial-- think hard skills type training. I've actually been working in immersive technology for almost a decade now. Initially it was in augmented reality, which was something that we added on the side for a SAS product we built, that was actually our main business during that time. And we did a lot of stuff where you would hold up your phone or a piece of industrial equipment, and it would tell you where to wrench on it or how to change the filter, things like that. It was cool technology, but we pretty quickly realized that no one was going to hold a phone or an iPad over a piece of industrial equipment on an oil rig. They weren't going to set it down and start wrenching on something, and then pick it up with greasy hands. [chuckles] So what we wanted to do was hands-free AR, but the technology just wasn't there. We exited that company in 2014, and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do when we grow up. Alan: You exited your company in 2014. Most people didn't even know what this technology was when you guys were exiting your first one and getting into the second. Think about that. Dave: Yeah. I mean, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up. And one of my co-founders bought an early innovators edition of Samsung Gear VR. Do you remember that one? Alan: I have the one with a solid strap on top. Dave: Yeah. Did you strap the Android phone into the headset? Alan: Exactly. Dave: Yeah. And you could use that camera on the back of the phone as a pass-through. Alan: Yes. Well, not very well, but yes, you could. Dave: Well, yeah, it's funny. You know where this is going, right? Because we wanted to use it for hands-free AR, but it didn't work at all. Alan: Not without making people very sick. Dave: Yeah, the processor wasn't good enough. It was super laggy, which kind of made it nauseating. So that wasn't going to work. But wow, VR was awesome. That's when we made the decision to start down our current path. Alan: And that was before ARCore and ARKit. So planer tracking really wasn't a thing. Slim mapping, it was not that easy to do. Dave: Yeah. I mean, just

Developing a pilot or a proof of concept is among the first steps to introducing XR into your industry, but that’s only going to provide so much ROI unless you can fully implement that idea. Dave Beck from Foundry 45 discusses how to make that leap. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Dave Beck, founder and managing partner at Foundry 45, an immersive technology company that develops enterprise level virtual reality training experiences. They've created over 250 experiences for notable clients such as AT&T, Coca-Cola, Delta, and UPS. We're going to be discussing going from PoCs, pilots, and case studies to full scale deployments. All that and more, on the XR for Business podcast. Dave, welcome to the show. Dave: Hey, Alan, thanks so much for having me on here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. I'm super excited. You guys have been doing so much work in the VR training space. First of all, let's just talk about, what is Foundry 45? How did you get into this? And we'll kick it off from there. Dave: I guess first off, it's nice to chat with you again. I went back and checked my email, and it looks like the first time you and I talked was way back in 2016. So a lot's happened in that time, hasn't it? So, OK, we put VR to work by creating virtual reality training experiences for enterprise partners. And we specialize in industrial-- think hard skills type training. I've actually been working in immersive technology for almost a decade now. Initially it was in augmented reality, which was something that we added on the side for a SAS product we built, that was actually our main business during that time. And we did a lot of stuff where you would hold up your phone or a piece of industrial equipment, and it would tell you where to wrench on it or how to change the filter, things like that. It was cool technology, but we pretty quickly realized that no one was going to hold a phone or an iPad over a piece of industrial equipment on an oil rig. They weren't going to set it down and start wrenching on something, and then pick it up with greasy hands. [chuckles] So what we wanted to do was hands-free AR, but the technology just wasn't there. We exited that company in 2014, and we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do when we grow up. Alan: You exited your company in 2014. Most people didn't even know what this technology was when you guys were exiting your first one and getting into the second. Think about that. Dave: Yeah. I mean, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up. And one of my co-founders bought an early innovators edition of Samsung Gear VR. Do you remember that one? Alan: I have the one with a solid strap on top. Dave: Yeah. Did you strap the Android phone into the headset? Alan: Exactly. Dave: Yeah. And you could use that camera on the back of the phone as a pass-through. Alan: Yes. Well, not very well, but yes, you could. Dave: Well, yeah, it's funny. You know where this is going, right? Because we wanted to use it for hands-free AR, but it didn't work at all. Alan: Not without making people very sick. Dave: Yeah, the processor wasn't good enough. It was super laggy, which kind of made it nauseating. So that wasn't going to work. But wow, VR was awesome. That's when we made the decision to start down our current path. Alan: And that was before ARCore and ARKit. So planer tracking really wasn't a thing. Slim mapping, it was not that easy to do. Dave: Yeah. I mean, just

Of all the jobs that are difficult to train for, surgery is especially challenging, what with needing a body and all. But our guest Aravind Upadhyaya is working to make surgical training virtual, with the help of XR technologies. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson, host of the XR for Business podcast. Today, we're speaking with Aravind Upadhyaya, co-founder and CEO of 8chili, an Oakland, California based startup, bringing the dream of telesurgery to the real world. Today, we're going to talk about how virtual reality is improving the outlook for remote surgeries globally. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. I want to welcome Aravind, thank you so much for joining me on the call. Aravind: Thanks, Alan. It's a real pleasure to be on your podcast, and to get to know you, as well. Alan: It's such an honor. You guys are working on something that is a true game changer for surgeries and remote telemedicine. Maybe just tell us what you're doing and the problem you're solving. Aravind: Definitely. So, just to do a quick intro: I'm a technologist, so I'm an electronics engineer. I've spent the last two decades leading R&D projects in mixed reality, computer vision, Internet of Things, and robotics at one of the biggest, largest conglomerates, the Tata Group. And in 2016, I had my Tony Stark moment when I had the Hololens. It kind of felt like I could hold the power of x-rays in my eyes. And that's when the journey started for 8chili. So we've been working on this technology with surgeons for the last two years, kind of in stealth mode. And this year, GPM, we finally kicked it off. In a nutshell, we wanted to reimagine surgeries with mixed reality, by building a remote collaboration platform. I want to start with this: 60 percent of new residents universally are not confident to perform core procedures. And just about 3 percent of the surgeons globally have access to high quality continuous training. And why is that? And that's because we have a very legacy training system. So, there's a great adage that goes like, "I hear and I forget. I see. And I remember. I do and I understand." And that's why we are building NAVIX AIR, because experience cannot be explained. So you have to experience to really get to be an expert. And NAVIX AIR allows residents to experience what a surgeon does in a surgery. So this, what we want to do, is take the platform to a very immersive collaborative experience. Now, NAVIX AIR is a platform that allows residents to transform into the surgeons eyes and follow their steps simultaneously in the virtual world, without disturbing the surgeon. So let's say you can fail and repeat as many times as you want, even post the live surgery. And the big difference is being able to see what the surgeon sees brings this feel of reality into the residence. And that's what is missing in the cadavers or the existing VR simulators. Because what happens is no surgery goes smoothly or perfectly. There are complications, there are surprises that happen, like another surgeons encounter. And these cannot be captured. So it's the surgeons experience that come into play when something is not going as they expect it to go. And this feel of how to react in such a situation-- let's say, what does a surgeon do? What is the communication that they used to talk to the nurse, the anesthesiologist, or the other juniors who are helping the surgeon? Or what kind of technique? Like, if there is a bleed which was unexpected, how do they go about tackling that? So all these things are scenarios that will be happening in the real world. So there's no substitute for it. Alan: That makes a lot of sense. So when a surgeon is operating, when these things pop up, it's almost impossible to train for every scenario, but you can record it. Aravi

Of all the jobs that are difficult to train for, surgery is especially challenging, what with needing a body and all. But our guest Aravind Upadhyaya is working to make surgical training virtual, with the help of XR technologies. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson, host of the XR for Business podcast. Today, we're speaking with Aravind Upadhyaya, co-founder and CEO of 8chili, an Oakland, California based startup, bringing the dream of telesurgery to the real world. Today, we're going to talk about how virtual reality is improving the outlook for remote surgeries globally. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. I want to welcome Aravind, thank you so much for joining me on the call. Aravind: Thanks, Alan. It's a real pleasure to be on your podcast, and to get to know you, as well. Alan: It's such an honor. You guys are working on something that is a true game changer for surgeries and remote telemedicine. Maybe just tell us what you're doing and the problem you're solving. Aravind: Definitely. So, just to do a quick intro: I'm a technologist, so I'm an electronics engineer. I've spent the last two decades leading R&D projects in mixed reality, computer vision, Internet of Things, and robotics at one of the biggest, largest conglomerates, the Tata Group. And in 2016, I had my Tony Stark moment when I had the Hololens. It kind of felt like I could hold the power of x-rays in my eyes. And that's when the journey started for 8chili. So we've been working on this technology with surgeons for the last two years, kind of in stealth mode. And this year, GPM, we finally kicked it off. In a nutshell, we wanted to reimagine surgeries with mixed reality, by building a remote collaboration platform. I want to start with this: 60 percent of new residents universally are not confident to perform core procedures. And just about 3 percent of the surgeons globally have access to high quality continuous training. And why is that? And that's because we have a very legacy training system. So, there's a great adage that goes like, "I hear and I forget. I see. And I remember. I do and I understand." And that's why we are building NAVIX AIR, because experience cannot be explained. So you have to experience to really get to be an expert. And NAVIX AIR allows residents to experience what a surgeon does in a surgery. So this, what we want to do, is take the platform to a very immersive collaborative experience. Now, NAVIX AIR is a platform that allows residents to transform into the surgeons eyes and follow their steps simultaneously in the virtual world, without disturbing the surgeon. So let's say you can fail and repeat as many times as you want, even post the live surgery. And the big difference is being able to see what the surgeon sees brings this feel of reality into the residence. And that's what is missing in the cadavers or the existing VR simulators. Because what happens is no surgery goes smoothly or perfectly. There are complications, there are surprises that happen, like another surgeons encounter. And these cannot be captured. So it's the surgeons experience that come into play when something is not going as they expect it to go. And this feel of how to react in such a situation-- let's say, what does a surgeon do? What is the communication that they used to talk to the nurse, the anesthesiologist, or the other juniors who are helping the surgeon? Or what kind of technique? Like, if there is a bleed which was unexpected, how do they go about tackling that? So all these things are scenarios that will be happening in the real world. So there's no substitute for it. Alan: That makes a lot of sense. So when a surgeon is operating, when these things pop up, it's almost impossible to train for every scenario, but you can record it. Aravi

Happy Finish's CEO Daniel Cheetham's XR bread and butter was virtual experiences and LBEs, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay indoors. Now, he explains, he's exploring the power VR has to help enterprise and the environment. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Daniel Cheetham, CEO of Happy Finish, a creative technology and content firm based in London, UK. They've done XR experiences for Ford, Exxon Mobil, and many more. We will learn today how they're using digital twins to add real business value. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Daniel, welcome to the show, my friend. Daniel: Thanks for having me. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. I've been looking forward to having you on the show for so long. It's really exciting, the stuff you guys have done. You've done everything from putting people from the real world into VR on a bicycle, to help give them a sense of what it's like to be on the other side of a driving scenario. You've done all sorts of things. Tell us, what is Happy Finish? Daniel: So, Happy Finish -- or HF, as we're now more commonly referring to ourselves -- we're really in the space of creating content and experiences for grand clients, right from the very beginning. And this is second hand information; I joined Happy Finish about six, six and a half years ago. Now the business is fifteen years old. We have been employing post-production and CGI techniques to create versions of the real world -- or different flavors of the real world -- over the last six to seven years. I think we built a reputation in the immersive technology space. We started working really early on with the DK-1 from Kickstarter, testing, playing around with Unity, seeing what we could do, up to now where we're easily 200+ commercially funded, brand funded XR experiences. And we work across the whole gamut of immersive tech, from 360 video -- which is less the flavor of the month now -- through to real time based experiences across Microsoft Hololens 2, and in AR. Alan: I've got a call one thing, that I saw here on your site, and I just got to ask: VR bungee jumping? Daniel: [laughs] One of my crazy ideas. It was in the context, we were chatting -- watercooler moment -- chatting about how we could make some noise about untethered VR, particularly around the Oculus Quest. And it just dawned on me as well, what better way to really test what can be done in untethered VR, than tether it to a bungee rope and have somebody jump off a bungee platform? Alan: So were you the first one to try this? Daniel: I wasn't, actually. We a couple of guinea pigs who put their hand up first, but I did try it in the end. It was not without its challenges. We were really putting the tracking system on the Quest to its absolute limits. And so on a few occasions, it was bungee jumping with a blindfold, rather than in VR. Alan: [laughs] Still pretty amazing that you even bit that off. So was it a brand activation, or was this just an internal--? Daniel: This is an in-house piece for us. And back until very recently, an area of focus for us was LB. So we've created a number of -- I think -- pretty recognizable motion platform based VR experiences. One that I know got a lot of sharing couple of years ago, that lives at the top of The Shard -- the tallest building here in London -- where the user will fly virtually -- or slide virtually -- around the top of The Shard. We got a lot of screamers and yeah, we had a real focus on building out that as a product. We have four or five of these VR slides around the world now. However, LB has taken somewhat of a hit --

Happy Finish’s CEO Daniel Cheetham’s XR bread and butter was virtual experiences and LBEs, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay indoors. Now, he explains, he’s exploring the power VR has to help enterprise and the environment. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Daniel Cheetham, CEO of Happy Finish, a creative technology and content firm based in London, UK. They've done XR experiences for Ford, Exxon Mobil, and many more. We will learn today how they're using digital twins to add real business value. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Daniel, welcome to the show, my friend. Daniel: Thanks for having me. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. I've been looking forward to having you on the show for so long. It's really exciting, the stuff you guys have done. You've done everything from putting people from the real world into VR on a bicycle, to help give them a sense of what it's like to be on the other side of a driving scenario. You've done all sorts of things. Tell us, what is Happy Finish? Daniel: So, Happy Finish -- or HF, as we're now more commonly referring to ourselves -- we're really in the space of creating content and experiences for grand clients, right from the very beginning. And this is second hand information; I joined Happy Finish about six, six and a half years ago. Now the business is fifteen years old. We have been employing post-production and CGI techniques to create versions of the real world -- or different flavors of the real world -- over the last six to seven years. I think we built a reputation in the immersive technology space. We started working really early on with the DK-1 from Kickstarter, testing, playing around with Unity, seeing what we could do, up to now where we're easily 200+ commercially funded, brand funded XR experiences. And we work across the whole gamut of immersive tech, from 360 video -- which is less the flavor of the month now -- through to real time based experiences across Microsoft Hololens 2, and in AR. Alan: I've got a call one thing, that I saw here on your site, and I just got to ask: VR bungee jumping? Daniel: [laughs] One of my crazy ideas. It was in the context, we were chatting -- watercooler moment -- chatting about how we could make some noise about untethered VR, particularly around the Oculus Quest. And it just dawned on me as well, what better way to really test what can be done in untethered VR, than tether it to a bungee rope and have somebody jump off a bungee platform? Alan: So were you the first one to try this? Daniel: I wasn't, actually. We a couple of guinea pigs who put their hand up first, but I did try it in the end. It was not without its challenges. We were really putting the tracking system on the Quest to its absolute limits. And so on a few occasions, it was bungee jumping with a blindfold, rather than in VR. Alan: [laughs] Still pretty amazing that you even bit that off. So was it a brand activation, or was this just an internal--? Daniel: This is an in-house piece for us. And back until very recently, an area of focus for us was LB. So we've created a number of -- I think -- pretty recognizable motion platform based VR experiences. One that I know got a lot of sharing couple of years ago, that lives at the top of The Shard -- the tallest building here in London -- where the user will fly virtually -- or slide virtually -- around the top of The Shard. We got a lot of screamers and yeah, we had a real focus on building out that as a product. We have four or five of these VR slides around the world now. However, LB has taken somewhat of a hit --

With the recent launch of the MetaVRse 3D content creation engine, Alan chats with Sikaar Keita from Oracle's XR LAB about what he's building and why he thinks it's a game-changer. Alan: Hey, everybody. My name's Alan Smithson, the host of the XR for Business Podcast, and today we have a very special guest, Sikaar Keita from Oracle. Sikaar is the customer experience specialist and XR lab leader, based in France. And today, we're going to discuss how Sikaar is using the new MetaVRse web-based 3D creation platform to invent the future of customer experiences. All that more coming up next, on the XR for Business Podcast. Sikaar, it's such a pleasure to have you. Sikaar: Thank you very much. Alan: Today is a very special day for me personally, because we're going to talk about something near and dear to my heart, the MetaVRse platform. We've been working on this for four years, and we finally came out of beta, and we released it to the world June 1st at AWE this year. But while it was in beta, you got in there and you started creating some crazy things. And I really want to dive in there. But let's maybe just have in your own words, what is the MetaVRse platform and why did you choose to start working on it? Sikaar: So basically, it comes with two main things that were really key to us. The first one is that it's a WebXR tool. And we really believe that leveraging the web to deploy XR experiences is really what will drive adoption. Also, it was super easy to use, and the way we were prototyping really changed leveraging this platform, compared to what we usually do with other platforms. Alan: So what is the normal path to prototyping, compared to this workflow? Sikaar: Normally what we would do is that we would do sketches like most design agencies would do. And we sometimes leverage 360 degree virtual tours, because it's super easy to showcase something very quickly to stakeholders, which has a sufficient quality to make them understand what the project is about. And what we figured out is just that leveraging MetaVRse, it was extremely fast to build things that looks good. So we are usually buying our models, we don't model everything ourselves. But it was super easy to come up with something that was good enough to be seen, and to help us get budget, or get the stakeholders' approval to move forward. And that was really a game changer for us. Alan: The amazing thing that we noticed is that you hadn't been on the platform more than a few days and you started doing things that we had never contemplated ever being done. And one of them blew our minds: you connected an IoT sensor to our web-based 3D platform. Can you tell us, what was the thought process behind that? How did you come up with that? Sikaar: So basically what we do in the Oracle XR lab is testing, prototyping, and training every possible integration of XR technology with Oracle technologies. And so in this endeavour, we emphasize what comes with feeding XR experiences with data, but also getting data out of XR experiences into record systems. So it just felt normal to get this IoT device connected with an XR experience, so we can drive the experience from out of it, and also get the data back. So basically the idea behind it is very known in the engineering industry and it's all about digital twins. But we have our own platform for that at Oracle. And the idea was can I connect it with MetaVRse, and especially how long would it-- actually, it was done in a flash. Alan: What made it so quick, though? One of the things that I didn't understand is how did you connect it? Is it because of the ability to code in i

With the recent launch of the MetaVRse 3D content creation engine, Alan chats with Sikaar Keita from Oracle’s XR LAB about what he's building and why he thinks it’s a game-changer. Alan: Hey, everybody. My name's Alan Smithson, the host of the XR for Business Podcast, and today we have a very special guest, Sikaar Keita from Oracle. Sikaar is the customer experience specialist and XR lab leader, based in France. And today, we're going to discuss how Sikaar is using the new MetaVRse web-based 3D creation platform to invent the future of customer experiences. All that more coming up next, on the XR for Business Podcast. Sikaar, it's such a pleasure to have you. Sikaar: Thank you very much. Alan: Today is a very special day for me personally, because we're going to talk about something near and dear to my heart, the MetaVRse platform. We've been working on this for four years, and we finally came out of beta, and we released it to the world June 1st at AWE this year. But while it was in beta, you got in there and you started creating some crazy things. And I really want to dive in there. But let's maybe just have in your own words, what is the MetaVRse platform and why did you choose to start working on it? Sikaar: So basically, it comes with two main things that were really key to us. The first one is that it's a WebXR tool. And we really believe that leveraging the web to deploy XR experiences is really what will drive adoption. Also, it was super easy to use, and the way we were prototyping really changed leveraging this platform, compared to what we usually do with other platforms. Alan: So what is the normal path to prototyping, compared to this workflow? Sikaar: Normally what we would do is that we would do sketches like most design agencies would do. And we sometimes leverage 360 degree virtual tours, because it's super easy to showcase something very quickly to stakeholders, which has a sufficient quality to make them understand what the project is about. And what we figured out is just that leveraging MetaVRse, it was extremely fast to build things that looks good. So we are usually buying our models, we don't model everything ourselves. But it was super easy to come up with something that was good enough to be seen, and to help us get budget, or get the stakeholders' approval to move forward. And that was really a game changer for us. Alan: The amazing thing that we noticed is that you hadn't been on the platform more than a few days and you started doing things that we had never contemplated ever being done. And one of them blew our minds: you connected an IoT sensor to our web-based 3D platform. Can you tell us, what was the thought process behind that? How did you come up with that? Sikaar: So basically what we do in the Oracle XR lab is testing, prototyping, and training every possible integration of XR technology with Oracle technologies. And so in this endeavour, we emphasize what comes with feeding XR experiences with data, but also getting data out of XR experiences into record systems. So it just felt normal to get this IoT device connected with an XR experience, so we can drive the experience from out of it, and also get the data back. So basically the idea behind it is very known in the engineering industry and it's all about digital twins. But we have our own platform for that at Oracle. And the idea was can I connect it with MetaVRse, and especially how long would it-- actually, it was done in a flash. Alan: What made it so quick, though? One of the things that I didn't understand is how did you connect it? Is it because of the ability to code in i

In countries like China, the camera on a smartphone isn't just for fun selfies -- it's an everyday practical device, for everything from banking to shopping. Michael Agustin wants to fast track this sort of adoption in the west by giving retailers AR IoT technology with Curie. Alan: Hey there, it's Alan Smithson with the XR for Business Podcast. And today we're speaking with Michael Agustin, co-founder and CEO of Curie. They're an augmented reality shopping platform that enables consumers to make better purchasing decisions quickly and visually. All that coming up on the XR for Business Podcast. Michael, welcome to the show, my friend. Michael: Thanks for having me on. Alan: I'm so excited. We had the opportunity to meet recently at., well, these two things, really. It was the VRARA gathering in San Francisco, and then we went from there to Verizon's head office and we went for a meetup where we learned from Apple and a bunch of other people about what's coming up in virtual reality. So it was really great to meet you in person. I want to unpack what you've been doing, but let's talk about what is Curie? We're Curie-ous. Michael: Yeah. So I see that you're AI-curious. So Curie is an AR shopping assistant that allows people to make decisions very quickly. This sort of ties in to the journey of any customer that is looking to make a purchase about any type of thing. So we're kind of giving people this on-screen HUD, to be able to make decisions on the fly about any different type of product, especially the ones that they would want to save money on. And it also enables retailers to sort of keep other apps from participating in show-rooming in their stores. So we're looking at big box stores by giving them the powers of augmented reality and enabling all of the same tools that shoppers would typically have online, offline. So things like online reviews and movies and people who bought this also buy these things. Alan: That's really interesting. I think it's it's something that's coming really quickly. And, you know, you guys have listed on your website that you're computer vision company. Walk me through the consumer experience of this. So I have my phone. I'm in a store. I point my phone at a pair of shoes. It recognizes the shoes and says, here's some Amazon reviews on it -- or some reviews from that store, I guess -- and then here's some other things that you might like that aren't necessarily in the physical store, correct? Michael: Yeah. So typically, you don't have these tools available to you offline. The reason why we say we're a computer vision company is that computer vision is like G.P.S. for your camera. So think about all the times you use G.P.S. and Waze and Yelp and Google Maps. We're doing that from a first-person perspective and providing the ability to sort of connect to things that are in front of you, via services and information. The reason why you would want to do this is that information is typically still not in front of you when you need it, but it's available online. So we were named after Marie Curie, who sort of dedicated her life to seeing what was invisible. And we would argue that right, now information is invisible, and you can't really see it when you need it on top of things. Alan: Amazing. So are there any companies actively deploying this now, or is this still in early phases, or where were you in the food chain of startups? Michael: So our lead investor is 500 Startups, and we are gaining customers through a program that's backed by Wal-Mart and Sam's Club and Tyson. We're talking to several OEMs and other types of retailers about incorporating our technology into their shopping apps. Alan: Inter

In countries like China, the camera on a smartphone isn't just for fun selfies -- it's an everyday practical device, for everything from banking to shopping. Michael Agustin wants to fast track this sort of adoption in the west by giving retailers AR IoT technology with Curie. Alan: Hey there, it's Alan Smithson with the XR for Business Podcast. And today we're speaking with Michael Agustin, co-founder and CEO of Curie. They're an augmented reality shopping platform that enables consumers to make better purchasing decisions quickly and visually. All that coming up on the XR for Business Podcast. Michael, welcome to the show, my friend. Michael: Thanks for having me on. Alan: I'm so excited. We had the opportunity to meet recently at., well, these two things, really. It was the VRARA gathering in San Francisco, and then we went from there to Verizon's head office and we went for a meetup where we learned from Apple and a bunch of other people about what's coming up in virtual reality. So it was really great to meet you in person. I want to unpack what you've been doing, but let's talk about what is Curie? We're Curie-ous. Michael: Yeah. So I see that you're AI-curious. So Curie is an AR shopping assistant that allows people to make decisions very quickly. This sort of ties in to the journey of any customer that is looking to make a purchase about any type of thing. So we're kind of giving people this on-screen HUD, to be able to make decisions on the fly about any different type of product, especially the ones that they would want to save money on. And it also enables retailers to sort of keep other apps from participating in show-rooming in their stores. So we're looking at big box stores by giving them the powers of augmented reality and enabling all of the same tools that shoppers would typically have online, offline. So things like online reviews and movies and people who bought this also buy these things. Alan: That's really interesting. I think it's it's something that's coming really quickly. And, you know, you guys have listed on your website that you're computer vision company. Walk me through the consumer experience of this. So I have my phone. I'm in a store. I point my phone at a pair of shoes. It recognizes the shoes and says, here's some Amazon reviews on it -- or some reviews from that store, I guess -- and then here's some other things that you might like that aren't necessarily in the physical store, correct? Michael: Yeah. So typically, you don't have these tools available to you offline. The reason why we say we're a computer vision company is that computer vision is like G.P.S. for your camera. So think about all the times you use G.P.S. and Waze and Yelp and Google Maps. We're doing that from a first-person perspective and providing the ability to sort of connect to things that are in front of you, via services and information. The reason why you would want to do this is that information is typically still not in front of you when you need it, but it's available online. So we were named after Marie Curie, who sort of dedicated her life to seeing what was invisible. And we would argue that right, now information is invisible, and you can't really see it when you need it on top of things. Alan: Amazing. So are there any companies actively deploying this now, or is this still in early phases, or where were you in the food chain of startups? Michael: So our lead investor is 500 Startups, and we are gaining customers through a program that's backed by Wal-Mart and Sam's Club and Tyson. We're talking to several OEMs and other types of retailers about incorporating our technology into their shopping apps. Alan: Inter

With the next generation of Playstation set to hit shelves this holiday season, the big news in the gaming circuit is the revelation of Unreal Engine 5. But this game engine is good for more than just the next top video game experience. Unreal Engine manager Marc Petit explains the many other use cases this technology promises. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Marc Petit, general manager of Unreal Engine at Epic Games. If you're not familiar with Epic Games, ask your kids. They're probably playing a video game built on their development engine. For example, Fortnite is built by them. We'll be discussing the myriad ways 3D and XR can be used for organizations. And of course, what's coming up with Unreal Engine 5? All that more on the XR for Business podcast. I am super excited and thrilled to invite Marc Petit on the show. Marc, welcome to the show. Marc: Well, thanks for having me, Alan, and thanks for the introduction. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. This has been one of those episodes that I've been really excited. And I don't want to hear myself talk anymore, so please tell us, what is Unreal Engine, and how is it being is now OK? Marc: Well, that's a pretty broad topic. So first of all, maybe we'll go back to the basics. What is a game engine? A game engine is a piece of software, it does a lot of things in real time. What is a game? I mean, a game is everything about a simulated world and a story mixed together. So what a game engine do, they can provide you with real time simulated worlds and/or stories. It's based on complex technology, like real time rendering and rules and physics. But at the end of the day, you can be and interact with the virtual world. And I think that's all XR is about, is empowering and connecting the virtual and the real. So game engine, we're kind of the-- think of it as an operating system for visual development. That's the software on which you can build a game like Fortnite, or you can build a car configurator. So where this lower layer of software comes as a bunch of tools. Alan: One of the basic things that people misunderstand is that 3D is a little bit different than creating a PowerPoint deck. There's a lot more to it involved, you're rendering many more things all at once. Marc: Yeah, no, absolutely. Again, think of it of a simulated world. I mean, good 3D, things react when you interact with them. And so you have-- somebody has to go and program those multiple layers of artificial intelligence to bring the right look and also the right behavior of things in the virtual world. So what the game engine does it makes this process very easy, makes it a cross-platform. It's a very, very involved and complex piece of technology. But for users, it's pretty simple to use and that's all we are about: making that process much, much simpler for everybody. Alan: So one of the things that you guys just released is a video showing the new PlayStation 5 running the Unreal Engine, and the demo was -- and I'll quote -- there's billions of polygons running. I think we start with, what's a "polygon" and why is that important to be able to push so much data? And how does that pertain to a business? How would a business use that then? Marc: Polygons and triangles, this is how we present 3D geometry in the virtual space. It's basically a way to represent the v

Why trek up to the Arctic circle to capture 360 footage of the aurora borealis yourself, when you can license stunning footage someone else already shot? That was Alan's thinking when he availed Blend Media of their services, whose founder — Damian Collier — is our guest. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Damian Collier, co-founder and CEO of Blend Media, a centralized hub for all things VR and AR content. From stock 360 images and videos, right up to fully customized interactive experiences. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Damian, welcome to the show. Damian: Hey, Alan. How are you? Alan: I'm so amazing. It's been a long time since we spoke. I think the first time we met was probably four or five years ago, when you started this wonderful journey. How did you get here? Damian: Yeah. Well, I'm just thinking back to a panel that we did at VR LA, which must be at least three, if not four years ago. It must be about that time. Alan: Got to be four years ago, yeah. Damian: It's crazy how time flies. And obviously, having been in VR and AR, we've seen peaks and troughs, and ups and downs, and all in between. Alan: That panel, because it was with-- the one with Saul Rodgers, right? Damian: That's right. Alan: I haven't had Saul on the show, I haven't reached out him. That panel at VR LA, to me, was like the pinnacle of the VR hype. That event was so amazing. And it seems like we kind of took a step back a bit in subsequent years, and now it's starting to pick up again. Damian: Yeah, it was great. It was a big event. But you know what? This week I attended Laval virtually. And I think they had something like ten thousand attendees and dozens, if not up into hundreds of speakers. And I have to say, for me, it really felt engaging. I didn't attend in the headset. I attended it on the web app that they built. But it felt buzzing. It felt-- there were some great presentations and keynotes. Alan: I have to say yes, where was: my wife, Julie Smithson, was one of them. [laughs] Damian: Oh, great. I'm sorry to say I missed Julie's lecture, but I saw some great keynotes. Alan: What was the highlight of Laval Virtual for you? Damian: Well, I think it was reconnecting with people virtually. There were people there that I -- like you -- I haven't seen physically for some time. And seeing their avatars and waving at them across the room, and then kind of setting up separate meetings together, it was really well done. Alan: Amazing. The last time I was on your site, there was Blend Media, and then it ended up being Blend Market, Blend Stock, Blend Studio. Walk us through kind of the progression of where you were when we met, and where you are now and what's what's changed. Damian: Yeah, we started off as just a new footage business, because I am a serial entrepreneur, they say. I have businesses all in the content space. So that is my background, kind of rights management, IP. My last business was a viral video business that I sold in 2014. And I just had this idea when Mark Zuckerberg posted the first 360 video around about November 2015, I just had this idea for creating what I guess would be described as the Getty Images for 360 video. And that was the original idea. And I raised a bit of seed money, built the first platform in the first part of 2016 as a 360 video stock footage site, helping creators monetize their 360 video content through a platform. Alan: I have to interj

IKEA might be best known for its affordable furniture, cartoon building instructions, and hard-to-pronounce product names, but that's not all its about. They're also exploring how they can improve lives with XR technology, as Martin Enthed explains.  Alan: Hey everyone, I'm Alan Smithson. Today we're speaking with Martin Enthed, digital manager at IKEA Communications, who's also part of the IKEA Digital Lab, looking five to seven years out into the future of how we bring retail to the masses. Martin is also part of the Khronos Group, an organization working on the open standards for spatial web and 3D world. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Martin, welcome to the show. Martin: Thank you, Alan. And thank you for having me here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. This interview has been long overdue. You've had to get a ton of approvals and everything. So we're very, very lucky and honored to have you on the show. And thank you so much for joining us. Let's get into it. Maybe you can describe how you got to where you are, and the role that you're at with IKEA. Martin: I started 13 years ago now in 2007, and I was hired to try to make use of computer graphics into a volume production, instead of just doing a few models or images a year or two, large volumes. And building those back-end tools, coding, setting up standards and everything, up to 2011. And then they hired me to do all development for that company, IKEA Communications. And I've been the IT manager and development manager for that all the way up to now, two years ago, when I became digital manager there. Then I headed up what's called IKEA Digital Lab, that you mentioned. Now I'm working mainly with that, looking into the spatially aware 3D future. Alan: So how is IKEA using these tools now? Because I think it's a big shock, when you explained to me how the magazine that we get, some of the photos in there aren't real photographs, they're renders. Martin: That story has been told a few times. But if I take it very short, it started really in volume 2012-ish. So it took like from 2007 to 2012. And in 2011-2012 we did about 10 to 12,000 high-res images a year, and I would say maybe 1,500 of them were 3D. In the last five, six years we have been doing about 50,000 high risk images a year. And about 35,000 of them is 3D, mainly the product images and those things you find there. And then, of course, a lot of kitchen brochures and such are 3D. You take a kitchen brochure from our stores and look at through that one, you will see a lot of 3D. If you take the IKEA catalog, then it's much, much, much less, because most of the time we also do video sessions in those. And that's so much easier to do in a real set. But it's a lot of 3D. But that's the offline rendering stuff, that's in huge production right now. Alan: So that's kind of pervasive now. So when you're looking at the kitchen catalogue, most of those renters are all in 3D. It's funny, because Helen Papagiannis -- author of Augmented Human -- she's got this game, "Augmented Reality Or Real?" And I've gone through the magazine, I can't tell. I really can't tell what's real and what's 3D. So kudos to you guys for making it realistic. So we render something and we have the best quality of everything. What about real time rendering? I know a couple of years ago you guys experimented with VR and also the IKEA Place app, and real time rendering of spatial objects. What's kind of on the roadmap there? Martin: The exploration stuff internally started already in 2010, when we made some things that was running in a browser, and then we sent off a small little file that's told how that sce

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

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

Even in a virtual world, you still sweat. That's why it's important to keep your HMDs clean, especially if there's multiple users. Cleanbox devised UV light technology for just such a purpose, then found a higher calling during the Coronavirus. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here, with the XR for Business podcast. Today, we're speaking with Amy Hedrick, co-founder and CEO of Cleanbox, a smart technology hygiene company that's providing hospital grade decontamination of shared hardware, which I guess we can all agree right now, is very necessary in the current situation. In this podcast, we'll also learn how the team at Cleanbox is helping hospitals maintain mask hygiene. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Amy, welcome. Amy: Thank you, Alan. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for taking time. I know you are crazy busy, working probably 20 hour days right now. You are on the front lines, bringing hygiene in a time where it could not be more important. So thank you for joining us and taking the time. Amy: It's my pleasure. I'm happy to do it. And you're right. It is very timely. Everybody's focus right now -- globally -- is on hygiene and public safety and public responsibility, and how we can better stay safe when we're able to go back out in the world. Alan: Absolutely. So I'm going to get right into it. I know you were working with the VR community very heavily, but I think right now this is just kind of top of mind with everybody. So maybe in your own words, you can explain what Cleanbox Technologies does. Amy: Sure. Well, OK, so Cleanbox technology provides hospital grade decontamination of shared hardware. We designed our core technology with-- actually with XR in mind, with the idea and the belief that virtual and augmented reality had great potential in terms of business and enterprise purposes, as well as in healthcare, and of course, entertainment. Seeing the value there and thinking ahead of what would be the pain points that would prevent a successful global deployment, or a successful corporate deployment, and adequate actual consumer adoption. Few years ago, thinking back on how we would be able to meet some of those pain points and eliminate them and lower the barrier of entry, hygiene seemed to be one of those things that was easy to forget. So with XR technology, it's so sexy and there's a lot of very interesting and cool and unique things you can do with it. So the logistics sometimes gets gets a little bit lost. We came at the XR community from the point of risk mitigation. How could we reduce the risk of contagion transfer and thus some detrimental event happening within the industry? And we've grown since then. Alan: So right now it's an interesting time, because we're all stuck at home. So things like location based entertainment facilities are empty. Where is your business coming from now? I know you-- from speaking with one of your advisors, Terry Schussler, that you're booming right now. You can't fulfill the orders fast enough. Where's this business coming from, if it's not coming from location based entertainment? Amy: Well, we've always been addressing multiple markets at once. Location based entertainment is, of course, first and foremost in people's minds because that's -- I guess -- the best education for the average consumer into what immersive technology can do. So it's-- and it's very dear to my origins and we definitely take care of the LB community. On that note, I would say that there are plenty of organizations looking forward to the day that they can reopen, and realizing that not only just the idea of hygiene, but actual hygiene is really critically important to reopening those busine

Even in a virtual world, you still sweat. That’s why it’s important to keep your HMDs clean, especially if there’s multiple users. Cleanbox devised UV light technology for just such a purpose, then found a higher calling during the Coronavirus. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here, with the XR for Business podcast. Today, we're speaking with Amy Hedrick, co-founder and CEO of Cleanbox, a smart technology hygiene company that's providing hospital grade decontamination of shared hardware, which I guess we can all agree right now, is very necessary in the current situation. In this podcast, we'll also learn how the team at Cleanbox is helping hospitals maintain mask hygiene. All that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Amy, welcome. Amy: Thank you, Alan. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for taking time. I know you are crazy busy, working probably 20 hour days right now. You are on the front lines, bringing hygiene in a time where it could not be more important. So thank you for joining us and taking the time. Amy: It's my pleasure. I'm happy to do it. And you're right. It is very timely. Everybody's focus right now -- globally -- is on hygiene and public safety and public responsibility, and how we can better stay safe when we're able to go back out in the world. Alan: Absolutely. So I'm going to get right into it. I know you were working with the VR community very heavily, but I think right now this is just kind of top of mind with everybody. So maybe in your own words, you can explain what Cleanbox Technologies does. Amy: Sure. Well, OK, so Cleanbox technology provides hospital grade decontamination of shared hardware. We designed our core technology with-- actually with XR in mind, with the idea and the belief that virtual and augmented reality had great potential in terms of business and enterprise purposes, as well as in healthcare, and of course, entertainment. Seeing the value there and thinking ahead of what would be the pain points that would prevent a successful global deployment, or a successful corporate deployment, and adequate actual consumer adoption. Few years ago, thinking back on how we would be able to meet some of those pain points and eliminate them and lower the barrier of entry, hygiene seemed to be one of those things that was easy to forget. So with XR technology, it's so sexy and there's a lot of very interesting and cool and unique things you can do with it. So the logistics sometimes gets gets a little bit lost. We came at the XR community from the point of risk mitigation. How could we reduce the risk of contagion transfer and thus some detrimental event happening within the industry? And we've grown since then. Alan: So right now it's an interesting time, because we're all stuck at home. So things like location based entertainment facilities are empty. Where is your business coming from now? I know you-- from speaking with one of your advisors, Terry Schussler, that you're booming right now. You can't fulfill the orders fast enough. Where's this business coming from, if it's not coming from location based entertainment? Amy: Well, we've always been addressing multiple markets at once. Location based entertainment is, of course, first and foremost in people's minds because that's -- I guess -- the best education for the average consumer into what immersive technology can do. So it's-- and it's very dear to my origins and we definitely take care of the LB community. On that note, I would say that there are plenty of organizations looking forward to the day that they can reopen, and realizing that not only just the idea of hygiene, but actual hygiene is really critically important to reopening those busine

For most of the world, a cross-country, gapless 5G network is still the realm of futurists. One exception is South Korea, where a 5G network is quickly proliferating. Korea Telecom's Joonmo Park discusses how his company is using the network to evangelize VR. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Joonmo Park, new media business development manager at Korea Telecom, the largest telecommunications company in South Korea. We're going to be talking about 5G, virtual reality and transportation. All that coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Joonmo, welcome to the show, my friend. Joonmo: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Alan. And I'm really happy to be here. Alan: It's an absolute honor to have you on the show. I was really impressed with some of the work that I've been seeing come out of Korea. And I was very impressed to find out that it was the work of you and your team, that have put these things together. So maybe just talk about the projects that you've been working on at KT Tel. Joonmo: Okay. Our company -- KT -- is the largest telecommunications company in South Korea, with more than 30 years of experience in mobile telephone service, and broadcasting, and Internet. And I've been with the company for over three years across a variety of different functions, including business strategy, B2C business, and B2B business. But about one and half years ago, as a company, we decided to establish a dedicated team that's purely focused on what's new and what's next. So we focused on the emerging consumer landscape and the emerging technology landscape, and make sure that the KT brand continues to be relevant not only today, but five or ten years from now. So we are focusing on looking at new business models and emerging technologies, then tying those to our strategy businesses. So we wanted to make sure that any new innovation that we bring into the society has a lasting impact. But more importantly, a monetary impact that is actually moving the needle. So to introduce a little bit about South Korean XR market, South Korea's telecom operators are really striving to create the right range of immersive mixed reality content to leverage their 5G network and attract more customers. And there are three local carriers, including SK Telecom, and Korea Telecom, and LG Uplus. And they rolled out their 5G network in the nation in April 2019, and together are drawing more than three million subscribers in the first seven months of the launch. Alan: Sorry, three million subscribers to the new 5G network? Joonmo: Yes, right. Alan: So do these people have 5G devices? Is there a lot of 5G devices available? Joonmo: Yes, right. Because as the launch of Galaxy S10 with 5G, and that many people bought that device and using 5G network right now. Alan: That's incredible. So how many would you estimate are using the 5G network with 5G devices? Joonmo: I think until the end of the 2020, more than the five million people will use it. Alan: Wow, that's way far ahead of North America. In Canada, we have zero 5G deployment. We only have it in research parks and research areas. Joonmo: Well, you need to think about that. South Korea is a very small country with very many numbers of populations. So it is really easy for companies to make the decision to build new 5G infrastructures, because even though they build small 5G networks, many people would use that. So many tech companies feel that building a 5G networks is attracting more money than just using 4G network. Alan: So how is 5G -- or just the ability to h

For most of the world, a cross-country, gapless 5G network is still the realm of futurists. One exception is South Korea, where a 5G network is quickly proliferating. Korea Telecom’s Joonmo Park discusses how his company is using the network to evangelize VR. Alan: Hey, everyone. Alan Smithson here. Today, we're speaking with Joonmo Park, new media business development manager at Korea Telecom, the largest telecommunications company in South Korea. We're going to be talking about 5G, virtual reality and transportation. All that coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Joonmo, welcome to the show, my friend. Joonmo: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Alan. And I'm really happy to be here. Alan: It's an absolute honor to have you on the show. I was really impressed with some of the work that I've been seeing come out of Korea. And I was very impressed to find out that it was the work of you and your team, that have put these things together. So maybe just talk about the projects that you've been working on at KT Tel. Joonmo: Okay. Our company -- KT -- is the largest telecommunications company in South Korea, with more than 30 years of experience in mobile telephone service, and broadcasting, and Internet. And I've been with the company for over three years across a variety of different functions, including business strategy, B2C business, and B2B business. But about one and half years ago, as a company, we decided to establish a dedicated team that's purely focused on what's new and what's next. So we focused on the emerging consumer landscape and the emerging technology landscape, and make sure that the KT brand continues to be relevant not only today, but five or ten years from now. So we are focusing on looking at new business models and emerging technologies, then tying those to our strategy businesses. So we wanted to make sure that any new innovation that we bring into the society has a lasting impact. But more importantly, a monetary impact that is actually moving the needle. So to introduce a little bit about South Korean XR market, South Korea's telecom operators are really striving to create the right range of immersive mixed reality content to leverage their 5G network and attract more customers. And there are three local carriers, including SK Telecom, and Korea Telecom, and LG Uplus. And they rolled out their 5G network in the nation in April 2019, and together are drawing more than three million subscribers in the first seven months of the launch. Alan: Sorry, three million subscribers to the new 5G network? Joonmo: Yes, right. Alan: So do these people have 5G devices? Is there a lot of 5G devices available? Joonmo: Yes, right. Because as the launch of Galaxy S10 with 5G, and that many people bought that device and using 5G network right now. Alan: That's incredible. So how many would you estimate are using the 5G network with 5G devices? Joonmo: I think until the end of the 2020, more than the five million people will use it. Alan: Wow, that's way far ahead of North America. In Canada, we have zero 5G deployment. We only have it in research parks and research areas. Joonmo: Well, you need to think about that. South Korea is a very small country with very many numbers of populations. So it is really easy for companies to make the decision to build new 5G infrastructures, because even though they build small 5G networks, many people would use that. So many tech companies feel that building a 5G networks is attracting more money than just using 4G network. Alan: So how is 5G -- or just the ability to h

Seeing is believing, but in the age of 3D product views through AR technology, seeing is also conceptualizing. Simply Augmented CEO Boaz Ashkenazy comes on the show to explain how AR-enabled 3D viewing will revolutionize everything from how we shop, to how we work. Alan: Hey everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today we're speaking with Boaz Ashkenazy from SimplyAugmented. We're going to be talking about how 3D is revolutionizing furniture views and products on the web. All that coming up on the XR for Business podcast. Boaz, welcome to the show, my friend. Boaz: Hey, thank you very much. It's good to be here. Alan: Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I love the work you guys are doing. Let's get right into it. What is it that SimplyAugmented does, and how is it benefiting your customers now? Boaz: Well, we have a 3D platform that benefits customers both in the sales and marketing teams, and one of our products is called Simply3D. It allows for sales and marketing teams to easily share augmented reality. We found a lot of challenges around sharing augmented reality online and Simply3D.io is a vehicle for helping folks share. And we also create product and room configurators that exist online that allow people to experience environments and products really easily with augmented reality integration. Alan: So I got a chance to try one of the samples. I got to configure a-- it was like a quiet room or almost like a study room for open office furniture. So you go in, you close the door, and make yourself a phone call or whatever, but I got to configure it on the web. I hit a button, and it was in my living room here, this giant pod. And I was like, "Oh wow. This pod is huge in real life." So it was a great understanding of how big these things are, and I think that's truly the power of this technology. Maybe you can speak to some of the specific clients that you've worked with. What are they seeing, results wise? Boaz: You know what's interesting about what you said is a lot of folks have trouble visualizing products at scale, especially with the bigger the product, the harder it is to visualize. I am an architect by training. And I spent years designing spaces, and a lot of times people are surprised about what those designs end up looking like, because it's hard to understand objects at scale. And the pods that you mentioned, they're called Nook pods. And they're large rooms within a room, basically. You can have a quiet room inside an open office, which is pretty typical these days. For two people for four people, for one person. And to see it online and configure it is one thing, but to see it in the environment and walk into is another. One of the things that we recognized was there was two things that people really wanted to do. They wanted to quickly customize any of their products -- We're used to doing it with cars and vehicles, customize your products with colors, with options -- but then immediately be able to drop that in your environment and walk around it, look underneath it, walk inside it. And that's really what our configurator does. One of the challenges that a lot of folks face in the XR space is how do you spin up augmented reality with so many possible variations? That's the hard part about building these configurators. There's so many options, that you would never be able to create the augmented reality content beforehand. You wouldn't be able to predict it. And so what we've done is we've allowed for on-demand, real time augmented reality, depending on the choices that you make. Alan: So once I've configured it -- and I don't know, I didn't actually think about this until now -- but once I've configured -- let's say -- the Nook and I drop it

Seeing is believing, but in the age of 3D product views through AR technology, seeing is also conceptualizing. Simply Augmented CEO Boaz Ashkenazy comes on the show to explain how AR-enabled 3D viewing will revolutionize everything from how we shop, to how we work. Alan: Hey everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today we're speaking with Boaz Ashkenazy from SimplyAugmented. We're going to be talking about how 3D is revolutionizing furniture views and products on the web. All that coming up on the XR for Business podcast. Boaz, welcome to the show, my friend. Boaz: Hey, thank you very much. It's good to be here. Alan: Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I love the work you guys are doing. Let's get right into it. What is it that SimplyAugmented does, and how is it benefiting your customers now? Boaz: Well, we have a 3D platform that benefits customers both in the sales and marketing teams, and one of our products is called Simply3D. It allows for sales and marketing teams to easily share augmented reality. We found a lot of challenges around sharing augmented reality online and Simply3D.io is a vehicle for helping folks share. And we also create product and room configurators that exist online that allow people to experience environments and products really easily with augmented reality integration. Alan: So I got a chance to try one of the samples. I got to configure a-- it was like a quiet room or almost like a study room for open office furniture. So you go in, you close the door, and make yourself a phone call or whatever, but I got to configure it on the web. I hit a button, and it was in my living room here, this giant pod. And I was like, "Oh wow. This pod is huge in real life." So it was a great understanding of how big these things are, and I think that's truly the power of this technology. Maybe you can speak to some of the specific clients that you've worked with. What are they seeing, results wise? Boaz: You know what's interesting about what you said is a lot of folks have trouble visualizing products at scale, especially with the bigger the product, the harder it is to visualize. I am an architect by training. And I spent years designing spaces, and a lot of times people are surprised about what those designs end up looking like, because it's hard to understand objects at scale. And the pods that you mentioned, they're called Nook pods. And they're large rooms within a room, basically. You can have a quiet room inside an open office, which is pretty typical these days. For two people for four people, for one person. And to see it online and configure it is one thing, but to see it in the environment and walk into is another. One of the things that we recognized was there was two things that people really wanted to do. They wanted to quickly customize any of their products -- We're used to doing it with cars and vehicles, customize your products with colors, with options -- but then immediately be able to drop that in your environment and walk around it, look underneath it, walk inside it. And that's really what our configurator does. One of the challenges that a lot of folks face in the XR space is how do you spin up augmented reality with so many possible variations? That's the hard part about building these configurators. There's so many options, that you would never be able to create the augmented reality content beforehand. You wouldn't be able to predict it. And so what we've done is we've allowed for on-demand, real time augmented reality, depending on the choices that you make. Alan: So once I've configured it -- and I don't know, I didn't actually think about this until now -- but once I've configured -- let's say -- the Nook and I drop it

Surface miners, like the ones safety instructor Nick Ullrich teaches, get to play with some pretty big toys, like loading trucks with tires three times taller than the average person. But tires that big come with some pretty big blind spots, and Nick is using VR to get them used to those blind spots before putting them behind those gigantic wheels. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast, with your host, Alan Smithson. We all know safety comes first, and today, we're speaking with Nick Ullrich, a safety instructor from Gillette College, who's focused on using VR to train mining employees to become safer and better operators. Coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Nick, welcome to the show. Nick: Yes, Alan, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Alan: Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I read an article about how you're using VR to train mining employees. How did you get into this? Tell us a little bit about your background. Nick: Ok. Yeah, so the first project that we've done is a blind spot recognition, using virtual reality 360 photography as well. And it's to help miners -- when they're on the mine side -- understand the blind spots of heavy equipment. So we started with that because MSHA -- the Mine Safety and Health Administration -- has an initiative out there about powered haulage. And that's kind of where the idea came from. We see fatalities every year in the mining world. So I wanted to give everybody an understanding of what the blind spots for the heavy equipment that they're working around are on, and give them an idea of that. And virtual reality gave us an opportunity to do that without actually having to have all the equipment here at the college. So it works out great to give them a vision of what they would see if they were in that equipment. Alan: That's pretty cool. So you're talking about those big, huge dump trucks with the giant wheels and loaders and all these type of things? Nick: Yeah, absolutely. We have-- in the program that we have now, we have 10 pieces of equipment, it includes the 400 ton haul trucks, which is the largest haul trucks in the world. Those tires are approximately 15 feet high. Alan: Whoa. Nick: Yeah, next to them, you will go about to the middle of the tire. Alan: That's incredible. So you've got these trucks. Now, did you create them as 3D models and then climb inside of it? Or is this taken from like a 360 video type of thing? Nick: So we do a couple different things with it. We do have 3D models of all the pieces of equipment. So like I said, we have about ten pieces of equipment right now, and we just have 3D models of those, where people can walk around them virtually and see how big they are, put them to actual size or as close as I could get to actual size, by my recollection of them. They can get into them -- for the most part -- and just kind of see it in a virtual spot. And then we did go out to all the different mine sites and take 360 photography of each of those pieces of equipment. And we did it a really cool way. We set up a scene, so we had a whole lot of different things around the piece of equipment. So let's just say a haul trip, we have several different people and smaller vehicles, like light duty vehicles, such as just your normal pickup or van. We had those all set up in a special way, where you couldn't see them from the cab, so they were *in* the blind spots of that equipment. We took that 360 photo from the cab of that piece of equipment, so we can show everybody what the cab looks like and what they could see outside of it, knowing that they couldn't see any of the things in the blind s

Surface miners, like the ones safety instructor Nick Ullrich teaches, get to play with some pretty big toys, like loading trucks with tires three times taller than the average person. But tires that big come with some pretty big blind spots, and Nick is using VR to get them used to those blind spots before putting them behind those gigantic wheels. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast, with your host, Alan Smithson. We all know safety comes first, and today, we're speaking with Nick Ullrich, a safety instructor from Gillette College, who's focused on using VR to train mining employees to become safer and better operators. Coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Nick, welcome to the show. Nick: Yes, Alan, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Alan: Oh, it's my absolute pleasure. I read an article about how you're using VR to train mining employees. How did you get into this? Tell us a little bit about your background. Nick: Ok. Yeah, so the first project that we've done is a blind spot recognition, using virtual reality 360 photography as well. And it's to help miners -- when they're on the mine side -- understand the blind spots of heavy equipment. So we started with that because MSHA -- the Mine Safety and Health Administration -- has an initiative out there about powered haulage. And that's kind of where the idea came from. We see fatalities every year in the mining world. So I wanted to give everybody an understanding of what the blind spots for the heavy equipment that they're working around are on, and give them an idea of that. And virtual reality gave us an opportunity to do that without actually having to have all the equipment here at the college. So it works out great to give them a vision of what they would see if they were in that equipment. Alan: That's pretty cool. So you're talking about those big, huge dump trucks with the giant wheels and loaders and all these type of things? Nick: Yeah, absolutely. We have-- in the program that we have now, we have 10 pieces of equipment, it includes the 400 ton haul trucks, which is the largest haul trucks in the world. Those tires are approximately 15 feet high. Alan: Whoa. Nick: Yeah, next to them, you will go about to the middle of the tire. Alan: That's incredible. So you've got these trucks. Now, did you create them as 3D models and then climb inside of it? Or is this taken from like a 360 video type of thing? Nick: So we do a couple different things with it. We do have 3D models of all the pieces of equipment. So like I said, we have about ten pieces of equipment right now, and we just have 3D models of those, where people can walk around them virtually and see how big they are, put them to actual size or as close as I could get to actual size, by my recollection of them. They can get into them -- for the most part -- and just kind of see it in a virtual spot. And then we did go out to all the different mine sites and take 360 photography of each of those pieces of equipment. And we did it a really cool way. We set up a scene, so we had a whole lot of different things around the piece of equipment. So let's just say a haul trip, we have several different people and smaller vehicles, like light duty vehicles, such as just your normal pickup or van. We had those all set up in a special way, where you couldn't see them from the cab, so they were *in* the blind spots of that equipment. We took that 360 photo from the cab of that piece of equipment, so we can show everybody what the cab looks like and what they could see outside of it, knowing that they couldn't see any of the things in the blind s

Aggreko's in the business of temporary power - you need an outdoor installation set up for electricity? They're who to call. But that means that the less time to train, the better. Walter Davis explains how AR is helping trim some time off a new employee's intake. Alan: Hey, everybody, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we're speaking with Walter Davis, head of talent and learning technology at Aggreko. We'll be learning about how they're using XR to train technicians and speed up their time to competency, for new and existing employees. All that and more on the XR for Business podcast. Walter, welcome to the show. Walter: Thanks, Alan. Glad to be here. Alan: Really excited. Why don't you start by telling us your role at Aggreko and how you started working in XR in this role? I think first thing to do might help to paint a picture of maybe what Aggreko does, which will help in then showing how we're applying augmented reality to our services. So, Aggreko is the largest provider of temporary power and cooling solutions. We work in over 100 countries and we power things like Super Bowl here in the US, which many of you might know, or the Olympics that are coming up in Japan. That's another project we're doing. We also work everywhere, from remote parts of Africa, to powering up a data center that needs some backup power. So we're sort of everywhere in the background, if you would. Just ensuring that major events and operations run smoothly. And with that, obviously, we need to ensure that we are providing an expert service and minimize any potential downtime. We need to have expert staff to support that. Alan: So basically, if the lights stay on, you guys are there. Walter: Exactly. That's a great way of putting it. We make it a point to ensure that we have a highly reliable service. Alan: So I was reading, Aggreko specializes in seven key areas, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, petrochemicals, construction. And then events, the live events thing almost seems like an add-on to this, but it seems to fit perfectly. Walter: It does, yeah. So events are really what we're known for, right? I mean, that's where we will pop up on occasion. Actually, I could say that we are actually in one-- we're in a recent country music video in the background, because we are powering the stage that they recorded the music video at. But yeah, like I said, keeping the lights on, making sure that entertainment can happen, events can happen, and everybody has a comfortable experience. Alan: So how does VR/AR/XR relate to temporary power? Walter: With the nature of our business -- as we operate in over 100 countries -- we operate very broadly but very agilely. And one of the challenges that we tend to sometimes have is ensuring that we can bring new hires and products together really in that introductory period of time, when someone is just joining the organization. We don't always necessarily have every type of fleet available for them to familiarize themselves with and educate themselves on, to start developing those competencies. And where we're seeing AR in particular, is in allowing those individuals to gain that knowledge really right when they join the organization. They're able to go through an immersive experience in full scale, so as if the product was right in front of them. Going-- both familiarizing themselves with the key components and aspects of the product, but also going through a key service procedures th

Aggreko’s in the business of temporary power - you need an outdoor installation set up for electricity? They’re who to call. But that means that the less time to train, the better. Walter Davis explains how AR is helping trim some time off a new employee’s intake. Alan: Hey, everybody, welcome to the XR for Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we're speaking with Walter Davis, head of talent and learning technology at Aggreko. We'll be learning about how they're using XR to train technicians and speed up their time to competency, for new and existing employees. All that and more on the XR for Business podcast. Walter, welcome to the show. Walter: Thanks, Alan. Glad to be here. Alan: Really excited. Why don't you start by telling us your role at Aggreko and how you started working in XR in this role? I think first thing to do might help to paint a picture of maybe what Aggreko does, which will help in then showing how we're applying augmented reality to our services. So, Aggreko is the largest provider of temporary power and cooling solutions. We work in over 100 countries and we power things like Super Bowl here in the US, which many of you might know, or the Olympics that are coming up in Japan. That's another project we're doing. We also work everywhere, from remote parts of Africa, to powering up a data center that needs some backup power. So we're sort of everywhere in the background, if you would. Just ensuring that major events and operations run smoothly. And with that, obviously, we need to ensure that we are providing an expert service and minimize any potential downtime. We need to have expert staff to support that. Alan: So basically, if the lights stay on, you guys are there. Walter: Exactly. That's a great way of putting it. We make it a point to ensure that we have a highly reliable service. Alan: So I was reading, Aggreko specializes in seven key areas, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, petrochemicals, construction. And then events, the live events thing almost seems like an add-on to this, but it seems to fit perfectly. Walter: It does, yeah. So events are really what we're known for, right? I mean, that's where we will pop up on occasion. Actually, I could say that we are actually in one-- we're in a recent country music video in the background, because we are powering the stage that they recorded the music video at. But yeah, like I said, keeping the lights on, making sure that entertainment can happen, events can happen, and everybody has a comfortable experience. Alan: So how does VR/AR/XR relate to temporary power? Walter: With the nature of our business -- as we operate in over 100 countries -- we operate very broadly but very agilely. And one of the challenges that we tend to sometimes have is ensuring that we can bring new hires and products together really in that introductory period of time, when someone is just joining the organization. We don't always necessarily have every type of fleet available for them to familiarize themselves with and educate themselves on, to start developing those competencies. And where we're seeing AR in particular, is in allowing those individuals to gain that knowledge really right when they join the organization. They're able to go through an immersive experience in full scale, so as if the product was right in front of them. Going-- both familiarizing themselves with the key components and aspects of the product, but also going through a key service procedures th

We're used to navigating our computing with keyboards, mice, and maybe track pads — analog input. But those inputs work for desktop computers; they're clunky for XR interfaces. That's why we need gesture controls ASAP, according to today's guest, Clay AIR's Varag Gharibjanian. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today we're speaking with Varag Gharibjanian, the chief revenue officer at Clay AIR, a software company shaping the future of how we interact with the digital world, using natural gesture recognition. We're going to find out how Clay will bring our real hands into the virtual world. Coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Varag, welcome to the show, my friend. Varag: Hey, Alan. Glad to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I know you guys are working on some cutting edge stuff, so why don't I not ruin it, and just let you tell us what is Clay AIR? Varag: So Clay is a software company, we're specializing in hand tracking and gesture recognition, mostly in the AR and VR space. And we're also tackling a couple other industries, automotive. And our third product category we call Clay Control, which is kind of all the devices that can use gesture interaction at a distance. Alan: Are you doing this from single cameras, or is this from infrared cameras, or a combination of everything? Varag: Yes, so Clay's-- we're hardware agnostic. So it'll work across all those types you just said. It could be one camera, two cameras, or more. And all different types, so we'll work on RGB cameras that you'll find on everyday smartphones, to what you might find embedded in AR and VR devices, to monochrome ones, time-of-flight ones, and so we're pure software and we've worked across a lot of those different types and have compatibility with most of them now, which gives us a lot of flexibility and it's really useful. Alan: So I'm going to be able to look at watches on my wrist in AR, right? Like I'm going to be able hold my hand up and see what the newest, latest, greatest watch is? Varag: It's actually pretty cool that you say that, because that is one of the use cases that comes in often inbound to us, as companies -- it hasn't happened yet -- but those companies definitely brainstorming around how you track the hands even with just a smartphone, like overlaying something. Alan: We actually did it. We did a project just using Google's hand tracking library. We managed to make the watch sit on the wrist, but it was kind of glitchy. It would sit weird. And yeah, it was-- it was not great, but we made it work, it just wasn't sellable. Varag: Yeah. Alan: So this is really a foundational software. And I know you guys are working with some of the larger manufacturers. You want to talk about that -- or can you talk about that -- and then what that might look like? Varag: Yeah, I can speak a little bit about that. So we feel -- like you said -- this is software that really needs to be optimized for the hardware that it's working on. The deeper it is in the stack, the better performance you'll get, and the better synergies you'll get with all the other technologies that are working on these devices. So that's why when I joined the company, really, I made the focus to get as deep into the stack as possible. We looked at the market that time a couple of years ago to look at who is really central to defining the reference stack. What's going to most AR and VR devices? And to me, Qualcomm made the most sense. So we spent a lot of time working with them. As you know -- and some of our listeners might know -- they really do define a l

We’re used to navigating our computing with keyboards, mice, and maybe track pads — analog input. But those inputs work for desktop computers; they’re clunky for XR interfaces. That’s why we need gesture controls ASAP, according to today’s guest, Clay AIR’s Varag Gharibjanian. Alan: Hey, everyone, Alan Smithson here. Today we're speaking with Varag Gharibjanian, the chief revenue officer at Clay AIR, a software company shaping the future of how we interact with the digital world, using natural gesture recognition. We're going to find out how Clay will bring our real hands into the virtual world. Coming up next, on the XR for Business podcast. Varag, welcome to the show, my friend. Varag: Hey, Alan. Glad to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I know you guys are working on some cutting edge stuff, so why don't I not ruin it, and just let you tell us what is Clay AIR? Varag: So Clay is a software company, we're specializing in hand tracking and gesture recognition, mostly in the AR and VR space. And we're also tackling a couple other industries, automotive. And our third product category we call Clay Control, which is kind of all the devices that can use gesture interaction at a distance. Alan: Are you doing this from single cameras, or is this from infrared cameras, or a combination of everything? Varag: Yes, so Clay's-- we're hardware agnostic. So it'll work across all those types you just said. It could be one camera, two cameras, or more. And all different types, so we'll work on RGB cameras that you'll find on everyday smartphones, to what you might find embedded in AR and VR devices, to monochrome ones, time-of-flight ones, and so we're pure software and we've worked across a lot of those different types and have compatibility with most of them now, which gives us a lot of flexibility and it's really useful. Alan: So I'm going to be able to look at watches on my wrist in AR, right? Like I'm going to be able hold my hand up and see what the newest, latest, greatest watch is? Varag: It's actually pretty cool that you say that, because that is one of the use cases that comes in often inbound to us, as companies -- it hasn't happened yet -- but those companies definitely brainstorming around how you track the hands even with just a smartphone, like overlaying something. Alan: We actually did it. We did a project just using Google's hand tracking library. We managed to make the watch sit on the wrist, but it was kind of glitchy. It would sit weird. And yeah, it was-- it was not great, but we made it work, it just wasn't sellable. Varag: Yeah. Alan: So this is really a foundational software. And I know you guys are working with some of the larger manufacturers. You want to talk about that -- or can you talk about that -- and then what that might look like? Varag: Yeah, I can speak a little bit about that. So we feel -- like you said -- this is software that really needs to be optimized for the hardware that it's working on. The deeper it is in the stack, the better performance you'll get, and the better synergies you'll get with all the other technologies that are working on these devices. So that's why when I joined the company, really, I made the focus to get as deep into the stack as possible. We looked at the market that time a couple of years ago to look at who is really central to defining the reference stack. What's going to most AR and VR devices? And to me, Qualcomm made the most sense. So we spent a lot of time working with them. As you know -- and some of our listeners might know -- they really do define a l

Today's guest got his start in the world of game development. But soon, Arash Keshmirian saw the writing on the wall that XR's current usefulness was better-suited to the worlds of industry, retail, and journalism. Arash and Alan discuss how he made that transition. Alan: Hey, everyone, it's Alan Smithson here, the host of the XR for Business podcast. Today we have Arash Keshmirian, co-founder of Extality. His personal goal is to create powerful content that delivers results. We're going to dig into using Magic Leap and Hololens and mixed reality headsets as a tool for business. So all that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Arash, welcome to the show, my friend. Arash: Thank you for having me. Great to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. You guys have done some pretty cool stuff. I was on your website playing with a shoe. What is Extality? Arash: Were a lot of things to many people. So we built Extality out of a long, 10 year experience in the games industry, building mobile games. Did a lot of games, including Zombie Gunship, which ended up being this kind of worldwide sensation of shooting zombies from an airplane. That company -- Limbic -- we ended up doing a lot of XR stuff. And kind of around 2016, 17, 18 we built a game for ARKit, called Zombie Gunship Revenant. And that ended up being a huge hit across the app store. Apple featured it a whole bunch of times. It was one of the 2017 games of the year. And it spread ARKit to a lot of people, trying new things on their new iPhones. And we later did a project called Zombie Guns Raptor with Oculus and Oculus Go, Gear VR. But really kind of around that time -- 2017 -- we started to feel like it was getting way too crowded in the games business, and we were starting to look around and try to figure out what we could do with our experience in high-performance graphics and making cool experiences, immersive experiences. I started talking to a guy named Ryan Peterson, who's the founder of a CEO called Finger Food out in Vancouver. And he was telling me about all these exciting opportunities in AR and VR for enterprises. He was talking about how they'd saved millions and millions of dollars for a truck company that was looking to move their design to virtual reality from using clay models. And this got our head scratching, we were like, "You know, maybe there's an opportunity to use all of our games experience, to help big companies and do more than just give people an entertaining hour on their phones." So we founded a new company called Extality. And we set out to essentially discover companies that really wanted to explore XR, be it on their phones, on headsets, iPods -- every type of XR -- and leverage our background in doing just really hard graphics problems, building scalable global servers and connectivity, all those hard things that you learn how to do making games, we quickly realized that we're super, super applicable to building enterprise solutions as well. Alan: Actually, I know Ryan very well from Finger Food, really great guy. And they've done some amazing work in the space. What are some of the highlights that you've done for enterprise? And first of all, I just want to say that having a flying zombie shooter game? Pretty awesome. Arash: [chuckles] Thank you. Alan: The fact you guys had a hit with ARKit is pretty amazing, because there's not too much out there leveraging the power of ARKit yet. Arash: Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about games for just a second, it's an interesting thing. I mean, it gives people a totally different experience using their phone as the controller and running around the room. We have all these videos during our user tests

Today’s guest got his start in the world of game development. But soon, Arash Keshmirian saw the writing on the wall that XR’s current usefulness was better-suited to the worlds of industry, retail, and journalism. Arash and Alan discuss how he made that transition. Alan: Hey, everyone, it's Alan Smithson here, the host of the XR for Business podcast. Today we have Arash Keshmirian, co-founder of Extality. His personal goal is to create powerful content that delivers results. We're going to dig into using Magic Leap and Hololens and mixed reality headsets as a tool for business. So all that and more, coming up next on the XR for Business podcast. Arash, welcome to the show, my friend. Arash: Thank you for having me. Great to be here. Alan: It's my absolute pleasure. You guys have done some pretty cool stuff. I was on your website playing with a shoe. What is Extality? Arash: Were a lot of things to many people. So we built Extality out of a long, 10 year experience in the games industry, building mobile games. Did a lot of games, including Zombie Gunship, which ended up being this kind of worldwide sensation of shooting zombies from an airplane. That company -- Limbic -- we ended up doing a lot of XR stuff. And kind of around 2016, 17, 18 we built a game for ARKit, called Zombie Gunship Revenant. And that ended up being a huge hit across the app store. Apple featured it a whole bunch of times. It was one of the 2017 games of the year. And it spread ARKit to a lot of people, trying new things on their new iPhones. And we later did a project called Zombie Guns Raptor with Oculus and Oculus Go, Gear VR. But really kind of around that time -- 2017 -- we started to feel like it was getting way too crowded in the games business, and we were starting to look around and try to figure out what we could do with our experience in high-performance graphics and making cool experiences, immersive experiences. I started talking to a guy named Ryan Peterson, who's the founder of a CEO called Finger Food out in Vancouver. And he was telling me about all these exciting opportunities in AR and VR for enterprises. He was talking about how they'd saved millions and millions of dollars for a truck company that was looking to move their design to virtual reality from using clay models. And this got our head scratching, we were like, "You know, maybe there's an opportunity to use all of our games experience, to help big companies and do more than just give people an entertaining hour on their phones." So we founded a new company called Extality. And we set out to essentially discover companies that really wanted to explore XR, be it on their phones, on headsets, iPods -- every type of XR -- and leverage our background in doing just really hard graphics problems, building scalable global servers and connectivity, all those hard things that you learn how to do making games, we quickly realized that we're super, super applicable to building enterprise solutions as well. Alan: Actually, I know Ryan very well from Finger Food, really great guy. And they've done some amazing work in the space. What are some of the highlights that you've done for enterprise? And first of all, I just want to say that having a flying zombie shooter game? Pretty awesome. Arash: [chuckles] Thank you. Alan: The fact you guys had a hit with ARKit is pretty amazing, because there's not too much out there leveraging the power of ARKit yet. Arash: Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about games for just a second, it's an interesting thing. I mean, it gives people a totally different experience using their phone as the controller and running around the room. We have all these videos during our user tests