Podcasts about alan you

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A Scar Worth Bearing: My Improbable Story of Kidney Donation, published by Elizabeth Klugh on May 30, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. TL;DR: I donated my kidney and you can too. If that's too scary, consider blood donation, the bone marrow registry, post-mortem organ donation, or other living donations (birth tissue, liver donation). Kidney donation sucks. It's scary, painful, disruptive, scarring. My friends and family urged me not to; words were exchanged, tears were shed. My risk of preeclampsia tripled, that of end stage renal disease multiplied by five. I had to turn down two job offers while prepping for donation. It is easy to read philosophical arguments in favor of donation, agree with them, and put the book back on the shelf. But it is different when your friend needs a kidney: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Eighteen months ago, at 28-years-old, my friend Alan started losing weight. He developed a distinctive butterfly-shaped rash and became too weak to eat. On February 1, 2023, he collapsed. The level of toxins in his blood were the worst the doctors had ever seen, 24 times the normal level. He shouldn't have been alive. Two years ago, he'd watched his mother die of lupus and now he had the same disease. His body was attacking itself. Alan: By April 1, transplant discussions were under way. A living donor would mean avoiding years of relentless dialysis while waiting for a 3-year backlog of deceased donors. Living kidneys are better-quality and longer-lasting too. Having received six units of blood though, Alan had become allergic to 88% of donors. Regardless, I completed a comprehensive eleven-page history to determine my eligibility. In each of my classes, and at my own wedding, I gave a brief presentation encouraging others to apply as well. Nobody did. After initial blood work, my blood type was deemed incompatible, but I continued the health screenings to see if I could give indirectly through the National Kidney Registry. There were countless physicals, urine samples, iron infusions, psychological examinations, and dozens of tubes of blood. Throughout the process, Alan, his wife Meg, and I had many conversations that went something like this: Meg and Alan: "You know you don't have to do this right?" Me: "I want to... I might still bail though." Meg and Alan: "We certainly wouldn't blame you if you did." In January, I got the call that further bloodwork showed that I had a special type of AB+ blood and would be a direct match for Alan. I was elated. Alan cried. We both figured that God wouldn't have made me such an improbable match if I wasn't meant to share. So, on Tuesday April 9, 2024, we applied lick-and-stick kidney tattoos and drove to the hospital together at 5am. We were wheeled into surgery at 9am and were out by lunchtime. I took the anesthesia harder than most and spent a day longer in the hospital than predicted. I had an ugly scar and was crumpled in pain. I vomited on myself. I couldn't sleep on my side. I couldn't sleep at all. For weeks, every time I coughed or sneezed, it felt like I was going to rip open. There were times I feared I would never heal. But that's not the point. The point is that life persists. Alan is composing symphonies and playing cello and learning Mandarin. He released a new rap album, Back from the Dead, about his experiences. Though still recovering, I'm attending weddings and baking muffins, planting plants, and mending clothes. I started a new role with FHI 360 and am working to eradicate neglected tropical diseases. I will continue to fight for life. And you can too: Consider donating a kidney, giving blood, joining the bone marrow registry, signing up for post-mortem organ donation, or giving other living donations (birth tissue, liver donation). Alan ...

If you're interested in learning how employment contract restrictions can seriously disrupt your plans to take clients with you should you decide to break away from your broker, as well working through growth and fee structuring decisions, this episode is for you! XYPN member John Underhill, CFP®, founder of Acorn and Oak Wealth Management, based in Raleigh, North Carolina shares how his journey from ski bum to managing parts of a ski resort, and then several Starbucks helped bolster his business acumen as well as humility—in the best ways. After having their first child, John and his wife moved back to the East Coast to be near family. He found a job on Indeed in financial services with a national firm. And he said without a plan B, he just committed to following their recipe for success. He knocked on a lot of doors and ultimately built a successful practice.  In 2020, after listening to the Financial Advisors Success Podcast, he decided to launch his own firm. We talked about his experience with a difficult employment contract and how he navigated it to let his prior clients know that he had gone independent. John is at a really cool point in his business where now that he has three years of experience under his belt, he's trying to figure out his fee structure if he's going to hire another advisor and more. It was fun to catch him in the middle of these big decisions as they are choices that all advisors eventually have to make as they start to approach capacity.   -Alan You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://www.xyplanningnetwork.com/362  

What is Production Insurance exactly? How do you get it affordably for smaller projects? What exactly do all those terms on that certificate of insurance even mean?!?!? Production Insurance is a non-negotiable when it comes to filmmaking. You need it to rent gear. You need it to book locations. You need it to keep your crew covered. Filming without it is a risky business. We'll be joined by Alan Schlaifer who has been helping indie filmmakers get insured for over two decades. We plan to demystify production insurance and help make it more attainable for filmmakers at all levels.   (Episode 41) Hosted by Director/Producer⁠⁠⁠ Jenn Page.⁠⁠⁠ To join our private FB group for directors or to learn about The Working Director course that helps emerging filmmakers become working directors faster, visit ⁠⁠⁠TheWorkingDirector.Pro⁠⁠⁠. More on Alan: You can reach Alan to ask questions or get a quote for production insurance at alan@asisfinancial.com. Prior to starting his agency Alan Schlaifer began his career working in post-production. He moved up the ladder from the role of assistant video editor to sound designer and music editor. Recognizing that there were a number of opportunities for calamity in the production process, he transitioned into the field of production insurance. He spent a few years with the John Hart Agency to learn the ropes of handling production insurance needs. Eventually, he started ASIS Entertainment Insurance. It is interesting to note that Alan's mother was a studio teacher who brought him to the set with her, so he has been around the industry for his entire life. From that beginning, an entry into the industry wasn't an unexpected leap. In his early years, Alan worked as an extra, body double, hand model, on-set P.A., and assistant to a director where he experienced the production process from script to screen. Alan believes that – for better or for worse – every frame of film offers a learning opportunity. If the worst happens, you want the comfort of knowing that your insurance policy covers the solution. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theworkingdirector/message

In this fun conversation with XYPN member Brian O'Neill, CFP®, founder of Winged Wealth Management and Financial Planning, we hear how niching not only what you know, but who you know can radically grow your business—even in the first year!  Brian spent the first 20 years of his career as an Air Force pilot, during which time he developed a passion for personal finance. After considering what to do after retirement from the military, he decided to launch a firm dedicated to working with fighter pilots like himself. Brian launched his firm in January 2021 and came out of the starting gates hot, working with 30 clients in his first year, 23 of which were retainer clients. He's grown quickly and shared that he'll gross over $200,000 in 2023, just his third year in business.  He shared his marketing secret sauces that helped him grow quickly as well as build upon the equity of trust his fellow fighter pilots feel towards each other.  Finally, we talked about his view of the future of the business and how that's changed from a plan to stay solo to a desire to grow, not only to serve more clients in need of his services but also his family—in the form of a succession plan for his business. Every entrepreneur has to make a similar decision, and I think you'll find his thoughts on the subject illuminating if you're near that junction in your journey.  -Alan You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: http://www.xyplanningnetwork.com/361

If you are interested in what it takes to transition from a long-term wirehouse position to solo RIA ownership, what it means to truly answer a calling, and how to sustainably serve others without being self-sacrificing, this episode is for you! XYPN member Kaysian Gordon, MBA, CFP®, CPA, CKA®, founder of Kaysi Gordon Financial Planning, started her career at UBS where her team grew over her tenure and ultimately focused on doing financial planning for ultra-high net worth clients.  She spent 14 years there learning the ins and outs of serving those clients and was the first on her team to get her CFP® designation.  Seven years ago she was able to start a weekly devotional blog that was not finance-related, so she had the freedom to share her thoughts and insights.  It later helped lay the foundation for her current niche of working with women of faith that are in transition.  When she felt called to leave UBS, she joined another organization that not only provided a unique “practice run” at RIA entrepreneurship, it allowed her to build a client base she could take with her when she decided to go independent—a rare opportunity. In late 2021, she left that RIA and launched her own firm with the help of XY Planning Network. She's been growing quickly (60 households in less than a year!) and her clear niche has not only helped build her base, it's kept her feeling fulfilled.  We also talked about how important time of life is—as she is a single mom with a ten-year-old daughter (who, by the way, co-authored a book with her!).  Her life stage has impacted the design of her business and how she ultimately wants her life to look.  There is so much to connect with in Kaysi's story, I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! -Alan You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: http://www.xyplanningnetwork.com/360

If you're interested in learning about the advantages of growing your firm with like-minded advisors, the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant, and how none of it would be possible without a supportive spouse, this episode's for you! XYPN member Mike Troxell, CPA, founder of Modern Financial Planning knew he wanted to be a financial planner, but his career started off on the tech side of the business as an accountant. After being steeped in tax education for two and a half years, he made the move into financial planning and started working at an RIA. While he thought at that time he might want to start a firm one day, he loved that job and the people he was working with and thought he'd be there a long time.  The stars unexpectedly aligned for him, however, and he decided to launch his own RIA. We talked about how he and his wife ultimately made that decision and made it work as they had just had their first child and had their second just 12 months after he launched. Modern Financial Planning works with clients with RSUs or stock options so many of his clients are in tech and we talked about how he helps clients navigate the financial decisions that come with that industry.  While he thought he would stay solo, he ended up bringing on another advisor and is in the process of onboarding a virtual assistant. We discussed that decision and how he's been focused on growing his business. This is a really fun interview that I'm certain you'll enjoy. - Alan You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: http://www.xyplanningnetwork.com/359

If you've ever found yourself questioning what “having it all” looks like for you, how to pull focus on those visions and find balance as you start and run your business, this episode is for you. In this reflective and empowering conversation, XYPN member Betty Wang, CFP®, founder of BW Financial Planning, shares a very real look into her journey from a career in financial services on the buy side, to taking time off to care for her children with medical issues to returning to the industry in private equity and ultimately deciding to do her own thing as a firm owner.  While she doesn't describe herself as an entrepreneur—because she doesn't fit the image that she had of what it means to be an entrepreneur—she has built a very successful firm. She launched in 2018, but struggled to put herself out into the world, so she didn't see much traction early on.  That all changed in 2020 when she made the decision to lean into the uncomfortable parts of the business, primarily selling financial planning and the relationship with her as the product of her business—and it has grown rapidly since.  She shares how she has been able to be intentional with her time—focusing on working 25 hours a week so she can spend time with her kids (something she hadn't envisioned being a priority in the beginning of her career).  She also shares tools she uses to help with what she calls life planning—a way for her to focus on living from a fulcrum of integrity, according to her values.  There are many aspects of Betty's story that you may find familiar, but mostly I think you'll appreciate her ability to turn the unexpected into an intentional and meaningful life.  I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! - Alan You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: http://www.xyplanningnetwork.com/358

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is Decarbonizing Logistics. Our guest is Alan McKinnon (https://www.alanmckinnon.co.uk/), Professor of Logistics at the Kühne Logistics University of Hamburg (https://www.the-klu.org/). In this conversation, we talk about the huge tasks of mitigating and adapting to climate change throughout industrial supply chains. If you like this show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/). If you like this episode, you might also like Episode 68: Industrial Supply Chain Optimization (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/68). Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (https://trondundheim.com/) and presented by Tulip (https://tulip.co/). Follow the podcast on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/75424477/). Trond's Takeaway: Decarbonizing logistics without slowing economic growth is a formidable challenge which requires paradigm shifts across many industries, as well as adopting openness principles from the virtual internet onto the physical nature of the supply chain, as well as facilitating new business models, sharing, and standardization, and eventually dematerialization. Transcript: TROND: Welcome to another episode of the Augmented Podcast. Augmented brings industrial conversations that matter, serving up the most relevant conversations on industrial tech. Our vision is a world where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is Decarbonizing Logistics. Our guest is Alan McKinnon, Professor of Logistics at the Kühne Logistics University of Hamburg. In this conversation, we talk about the huge tasks of mitigating and adapting to climate change throughout industrial supply chains. Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip. Alan, welcome. How are you? ALAN: I'm very well, thank you. TROND: I'm super excited to have you, Alan, you know, an academic that has transformed and seen the transformation of a field that barely existed when you started. Some 40 years in academia and logistics and now being part of this exciting experiment with creating a whole new university focused on logistics. It's been quite a journey, hasn't it? ALAN: It certainly has. I think this is my 43rd year as an academic. My colleagues often think maybe it is time to retire, but the subjects in which I specialize, which we'll be talking about in a few moments, like decarbonization, are sort of hot topics at the moment. So I'm very reluctant to phase myself out. So it's been an enjoyable 40-year career, I must confess. TROND: How did you get to pick this area? It's obviously not; I mean, now, because of the pandemic and other things, logistics or at least supply chains is kind of on everybody's mind because we're not getting whatever product we want or maybe some sort of interest in green practices. And we're starting to realize that transportation is becoming more of an issue. People are worried about that. How did you get into this area? ALAN: My interests initially were in transport and particularly freight transport. In fact, right at the beginning, it was actually a crime, believe it or not, which got me into this area. TROND: [laughs] ALAN: Because I'd done my masters at UBC in Vancouver. I returned to London to do my Ph.D. at the University of London. This was in 1976, a long time ago. And I had spent three or four months reading up on the subject of freight modal split, you know, why so much freight goes by road and so little by rail. And I'd compiled all my notes, and my briefcase was stolen. [laughter] So the day before that, I'd been to visit a professor at the London Business School who said to me, "The freight modal split topic has been very much researched." He said, "You're a young man. Why don't you go out and find something new to bring a new perspective to this subject?" And around then, the subject of...it wasn't called logistics back then; it was called physical distribution, right? TROND: Hmm. ALAN: Where you saw freight transport in a broader context linking it to inventory management, to production planning, to warehousing, and so forth. And so I began reading up on that subject. And that then became the main theme of my Ph.D., which I think was one of the first PhDs done in the UK on that subject. So you could say that it was the person that stole my briefcase way back in 1996 [laughs] that played a part in me discovering logistics as a field, and that's occupied me for 40 years in my academic career. TROND: And on that journey, you have entered in and out of different fields. I noticed that you were a lecturer in economic geography in the beginning. So there's a very interesting, I find, physical component to logistics, obviously. How does geography enter into it for you? ALAN: Well, I see transport and logistics as essentially a spatial subject. My Ph.D. focused on the geographical aspects of logistics, you know, where you locate the warehouses, how you route the vehicles, you know, so much logistics planning has a geographical component. But the thing about logistics as an academic discipline is that it's drawn together academics from many different disciplines. Many have come from a mathematical background, from engineering, from economics, in my case, as I said, from geography. And that, I think, is one of the strengths of the subject area, that it has got this interesting interdisciplinary mix. And that allows us, in a sense, to deal with a whole range of policy issues, of industrial issues, I mean, from land use planning to environmental issues, which we'll be talking about in a moment. I've really enjoyed engaging with academics really from different disciplines over my career as an academic. TROND: Well, and we'll talk about these things in a second. But, I mean, it's not just academics, right? Because the subject is so non-academic in a sense, right? [laughs] It's actually very alive, and it affects all of us. So people may not have been super aware of it. But, like you point out, it's very multidisciplinary. Now, how did this startup University concept come about? You've moved to Hamburg or spent a lot of time in Hamburg with this KLU university for logistics, essentially, which sounds to me like a daunting prospect to create a new university based on a new discipline in Germany of all places. ALAN: So I'd been 25 years in my previous university here in Edinburgh where I'd set up a master's program in the subject and a research center. And then, in my late 50s, I got the opportunity to go to Hamburg and to join what was a startup University. I mean, when I joined, I think we only had nine academic employees. We only had about 40 or 50 students in total. So it was a challenge. And a bit of background on the university; it is a legacy project of a very wealthy man, Klaus-Michael Kühne, who is the majority owner of Kuehne+Nagel, which is the world's biggest freight forwarding company. And he also owns about a quarter of Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world's biggest shipping companies. And he, in a sense, wanted to give something back to the industry, and so he founded the university in 2010. So it's now 12 years old, and I think it's been a very successful enterprise. We're still niche, obviously. We've got, I think, about 27 or 28 professors, about 500 students. But we have this focus on logistics and supply chain management. And there are also quite ambitious plans to globalize the university, to open up satellite KLUs around the world. So I was just very lucky really to get involved in this in the early stages and do my bit to help to shape this institution. TROND: Well, you're lucky but obviously enormously accomplished. I wanted to talk a little bit about your 2018 book: Decarbonizing Logistics here. So this came out on Kogan Page. I also published on Kogan Page. It's a great UK-based publisher. Tell me a little bit about decarbonization overall and what you see as the main opportunities but also the challenges. It seems to me there's a lot of talk of decarbonization, but the subject that you are attacking it from is one that points out a lot of the limitations of these visions of changing the world into a decarbonized world. They're very physical limits and very real practices out there in various industries. How can we kick off this discussion on decarbonization? What is the best way to understand the biggest challenge here? ALAN: If we confine that to logistics, to put that into perspective, I think in my book, I reckoned...I pulled together as many numbers as I could, and I reckoned that logistics worldwide accounted for about between 10% and 11% of energy-related CO2 emissions. I've now revised that upwards, so I think it's probably now closer to 11% to 12%, most of that coming from freight transport but some of it from the buildings, from the warehouses, and the freight terminals. To my knowledge, nobody has yet carbon footprinted the IT and administrative aspects of logistics, but that could maybe be up half a percent or thereabouts. And there's a general recognition that Logistics is going to be a very hard sector to decarbonize for three reasons: one, because of the forecast growth in the amount of freight movement worldwide over the next few decades. Second thing is because almost all the energy currently used in logistics is fossil fuel, right? So we're going to have to convert from fossil fuel to renewables. And the third thing is the length of the asset life because ships would typically have an asset life of 25, 30, 35 years; planes, likewise, trucks are a bit shorter, maybe 10 to 15 years. But it's going to take us time to change that asset base away from fossil energy to renewables. TROND: Well, I believe in the middle of your book, somewhere in chapter three, I read this quote that you had that the only way a restraining future increases in freight movement is basically to slow economic growth. That's not really very exciting of a prospect. ALAN: Well, that's one of my five decarbonization levers to just reduce the amount of stuff that we have to move. TROND: You must be a popular guy if you say that to industry leaders. [laughter] ALAN: Well, I think the challenge of dealing with a climate problem is so enormous that we really have to think out of the box and think of these radical suggestions. But in this case, a number of things can help us there; I mean, the development for circular economy, increasingly manufacturing and recycling will help to reduce the amount of stuff. A lot of the research suggests that people are prepared now to move to a sharing economy where they're less obsessive about owning things and more willing to share. In some sectors...look at electronics how we have managed to miniaturize products. There's also 3D printing, which some people think will help us to reduce the amount of stuff that we need to move. It will help us to streamline our supply chains, reduce the amount of wastage in the production process. So it's not all about just people buying less. I mean, there are a number of trends I think we should -- TROND: I get that, but, Alan, I mean, 3D printing, I was just, again, reading from your book. You're not all that bullish on 3D printing, either. It's certainly not on the individual level this vision people might have in their heads that everyone's going to have a 3D printer, or the neighborhood will have a vast 3D printer network, and you can print everything locally. This whole decentralized idea of the world of material goods, essentially, where everything is printed on demand, you don't really see that as a very easy transition, do you? ALAN: No, I don't. I think it's also a longer-term transition. I mean, there's a debate as to whether this will be truly a game changer. And maybe in the longer term, we will see a lot of consumer products printed in the home, and then we can greatly streamline supply chains. That is a long way off if it ever happens. Where I think it's more likely to reduce, freight demand is further back along the supply chain instead of business applications of 3D printing. But there's an academic debate on this subject. Some people are quite upbeat about this, thinking 3D printing is going to be an effective decarbonizer. Others are a bit more skeptical. I mean, there are some forecasts being made about the net effect of 3D printing on the amount of air cargo in the future. But there's not necessarily a wide agreement on that. So I think the jury's out on this one, [laughs] on the net contribution 3D printing will make to decarbonization. TROND: Alan, can you give me some tangible examples of what we're talking about here with logistics? Because, in essence, it's an unfair business to be in to decarbonize logistics in the sense that the subject as a whole is almost a victim of climate change. You're dealing with extractive or heavy industries that are moving about a lot of damaging [laughs] materials that they have extracted. To turn this into a positive discussion is challenging, but there are a lot of attempts to do so. Maybe we can take trucking perhaps as an example. So transportation, obviously, of goods via air is challenging, and road and by ocean, I guess, is somewhat less climate impactful. But what is the prospect? If we just take trucks, it's a modal transportation element. People understand truckers, and we see trucks on the road. It's a very visceral kind of element. What has happened there, and what would you see is the prospect there? People talk about electrification of trucks. What are the real prospects for change in trucking, transportation? ALAN: I think one of the positive things here is that there are many things that can be done, and they're additive. Their net effects will be cumulative. They're going to be implemented over different timescales. So the sort of things that we can do today which yield a significant carbon saving would be to improve the aerodynamics of the vehicles, streamline them. We can train the truck drivers to drive more fuel efficiently. I mean, I think that's recognized to be one of the most cost-effective ways of cutting carbon emissions and also, of course, reducing fuel costs as well. A lot of this would be self-financing for the trucking businesses. Then looking to the longer-term, there are technologies that we'll be able to deploy. Here in Europe, there's been a lot of interest in platooning, where it's not just the fuel efficiency of the individual vehicle that you improve but convoys of vehicles that would then be closely coupled, if you like, on the motorway. But many people see ultimately, the way we decarbonize road freight to get it down to zero emissions is through switching from diesel fuel to low carbon fuels, mainly batteries. I would have thought, certainly for smaller countries where the trucks travel shorter distances, maybe some use of hydrogen though I have to confess that I'm doubtful about the use of hydrogen in the road freight sector. I see we will need the hydrogen to decarbonize other sectors of the freight market, the ones you mentioned, aviation and shipping, because they don't have the same opportunity to electrify the operations that we will have in the road freight sector. But I mentioned the importance of timescale here because if you look at Europe, I think there are 6.2 million trucks in Europe. We are replacing those trucks at about 200,000 or 300,000 a year. At that replacement rate, it's going to take us probably a couple of decades to entirely replace a diesel fleet with a fleet running on batteries or fuel cells, and therefore there are things we have to do in the interim. So, in addition to the things I've mentioned, the shorter-term ones, we can fill the vehicles better. Typically in Europe, about 20% of truck kilometers are run empty. In some parts of the world, it's 30% or 40% of truck kilometers run empty. We need better load matching, you know, to get return loads because that would then help us to cut truck kilometers and thereby save energy and CO2. TROND: You know, it strikes me that a lot of what you're talking about, I guess, resonates with the topic of this podcast because it's not just automating and making things enormously advanced in terms of technology per se. It is optimizing within this idea that you're using your assets differently, perhaps through digital means and organizing people and assets in a system in a better way. How would you say the progress is there? Because there's, you know, we'll move to this in a second, there are these very high-profile projects, sequestration and such which we'll talk about that require technological leaps. But the kinds of things you're talking about here they are more tweaks, I guess, with better control of where your asset is, what's empty at given moments, and, like you said, platooning and other things, organizing people differently. ALAN: I think the use of the word tweak may underestimate their contribution. It can be incremental, but it can still be quite significant, I think. So one thing is load matching; you know, if you're a trucking company or a truck driver and your truck is going to be returning empty, how can you find a return load? Or, if your vehicle is only partially loaded, how can you maybe pick up another load that will fill it to a greater extent? Now, we have heard what we call freight exchanges, online freight exchanges now, for over 20 years where a trucker could go online, and it would be an online market, and they would be finding an available load. But that technology has been greatly upgraded recently with the application...well, moving to cloud computing, for example. But the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, we can now take that level of transport solution to a new level. TROND: You know, that's fascinating, Alan. My question, though, is, is the business model of the way that drivers are organized also needing to be optimized for that purpose? For example, if a driver works for a given company, what is the incentive for that company to have that driver take more load? I mean, is there a way that you can take someone else's cargo and then get evenly distributed? I don't know, the driver gets something for the inconvenience of going somewhere, and the company that owns the asset obviously gets part of it. There are business model changes needed too. ALAN: Yes, again, a very good point. One important feature of the trucking industry, I think virtually everywhere in the world, is it's highly fragmented. Here in Europe, we've got over half a million small and medium-size carriers. I think about 80% of carriers only have one vehicle. So how do you engage that vast community of small operators in this process? Mobile computing has helped the mobile phone. Now these owner-drivers, of course, have an obvious incentive to keep their vehicle as full as much of the time. For the bigger operators, many of them now operate control towers. So it's no longer the driver's decision to do this. I mean, the driver will be told where to go to pick up a load. But for these bigger companies as well, by deploying this technology, they can improve the efficiency of their operation. And as a cool benefit from all of that, you get the carbon reductions and the energy savings. And we shouldn't just look at this in terms of Europe and in North America. If we look at this at a global level, these technologies that we've just mentioned are beginning to have a revolutionary effect in countries like India, in Indonesia, in African countries, where small operators with a mobile phone can now tap into these networks to find their next backload. So it's not so much changing the business model; it's refining the business model and creating new commercial opportunities for these companies. So they're not doing this to decarbonize their operations. They're doing this to fill the vehicles, improve efficiency, and save money, but there will be carbon savings as a consequence. MID-ROLL AD: In the new book from Wiley, Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations, serial startup founder Dr. Natan Linder and futurist podcaster Dr. Trond Arne Undheim deliver an urgent and incisive exploration of when, how, and why to augment your workforce with technology, and how to do it in a way that scales, maintains innovation, and allows the organization to thrive. The key thing is to prioritize humans over machines. Here's what Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, says about the book: "Augmented Lean is an important puzzle piece in the fourth industrial revolution." Find out more on www.augmentedlean.com, and pick up the book in a bookstore near you. TROND: You know, your field is so fascinating for the myriad of different tactics that can be deployed here. Let's move for a second just to the bigger issues around energy, infrastructure, and ideas to change the way that that operates. Sequestration, for example, this idea of removing greenhouse gases, requires an enormous infrastructure. And I know you have written extensively on infrastructure overall. What is really at stake here with this type of process? We're talking about a futuristic, enormous industry that would be, I guess, on top of the existing logistics structure. ALAN: Yes. It certainly will. I mean, I often flag this up to logistics businesses as the next huge business opportunity for so many of these companies. Because sequestration or carbon dioxide removal, I mean, drawing down the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere is essentially a logistical process. We're going to be creating new supply chains, moving liquidized CO2 to places where it will either be buried in the ground or maybe used for some other purpose, like to make e-fuels. But to put this into context, why is this happening? It's because we're almost certainly going to overshoot our carbon budgets. And so, if we want to commit to net zero, it is not simply a matter anymore of reducing emissions. We're also going to have to think about removing greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. And to put that into perspective, I think last year; there were only about 18 or 19 plants in the world that were engaged in sequestration. And they only withdrew, I think, about 10,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. They're now projecting that by 2050 we'll, on an annual basis, be removing between 10 and 15 billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. And that is going to entail an enormous logistical exercise. But at the moment, thinking as at an early stage, we really haven't worked out where the best place will be to do the sequestration and where we will have to take the stuff to bury it in the ground. TROND: In one of your presentations. You quoted an article from 2021 that says that the concept itself of net zero is basically a trap that it becomes kind of an excuse to do certain things as an extension of existing industries. These researchers have started to get second thoughts about something that they might even themselves have proposed. Is that the alternative view that you'd like to flag out there, or is this really a serious concern that we're putting too many eggs in one basket here? ALAN: You're right. I mean, a lot of climate scientists are now seriously worried about the concept of net zero. I read the other day I think if you look at all the countries in the world that have committed to being net zero by 2050 or earlier and all the companies, I think 91% of the global economy is now covered by a net zero commitment. But I suspect a lot of people don't truly understand what net zero entails, I mean, realizing there's a big sequestration side to it, and it's not purely mitigation. But I sympathize with the views of those who say that if we now get fixated with sequestration, if we realize we don't have to cut our emissions very quickly or dramatically because we can just leave it to future generations to pull down all the CO2 that we have put there. That is highly risky because the technologies we have for doing this are still fairly immature. And we're just not sure how we're going to be able to scale this up to the level I've just mentioned. But there's an equity and ethical issue here that we should be leaving it to future generations to reverse the climate change processes that we have started. The last thing we want, of course, is for interest in sequestration to deflect attention from cutting emissions now. That's what we really need to do. Because the economic modeling on this suggests, it's an awful lot cheaper to stop emitting today than it will be in the future to remove those greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. TROND: So let's talk a little bit about the future outlook then because there obviously are technologies on the table, on the books but also in development that do have certainly more renewable potential. There are improvements in renewables. There's the whole switching argument that eventually, once you switch, that is going to take effect. But are you, I guess, pessimistic or optimistic that this switch or this future, as in 2050, which is kind of the climate future that most people are looking at, what is the prospect that we're anywhere close here? And where are the things where you think we should be putting our energies? ALAN: One has to be optimistic in this area. I mean, if you're pessimistic, what do you gain? We have to look at the positives. And I think we will ultimately be able to decarbonize logistics. What concerns me is the speed at which we're doing it. Now, as I said, ultimately, we will do this by switching from fossil fuel to zero-carbon energy sources. In most cases, we're going to have to change the vehicles, the locomotives, the ships, the planes to do that, and that's going to be a long-term process. Another thing which concerns me at the moment is there's a lot of disagreement as to what the dominant low-carbon fuel will be for the various future transport modes. So in the road freight sector, there's a debate as to whether we should be using batteries to do this or hydrogen. In the shipping sector, the main choice is between e-methanol or green ammonia. And some people think we should be using nuclear even. So a disagreement there. And then, on aviation, sustainable aviation fuel will be required in vast quantities to decarbonize aviation. TROND: How are we going to do that? How are we going to do that, right? Isn't that the question? The vast amounts of forests or whatever agriculture is going to go to these biofuels. ALAN: Well, I think biofuel will make a contribution. Personally, I think the main fuel we will use for aircrafts in the future is e-kerosene, which is a synthetic fuel which will use green electricity. Once we've decarbonized electricity, we can then use that to make green hydrogen, which we can then combine with other chemicals to make e-kerosene. Now at the moment, that's currently...we can do this currently, but it's two or three times more expensive than fossil kerosene. But also, until we get the capability to do that, we will rely on biofuels. That's certainly true, not just for aviation but in the road freight sector and possibly to some extent in the shipping sector. But we got to make sure the biofuels are environmentally sustainable. Because, I mean, I was a real enthusiast for biofuels when I began to get involved in the climate change work. I thought it's biofuels that will allow us to decarbonize logistics until we did the lifecycle analysis. And we discovered that if you make your biofuel with palm oil sourced from, I don't know, Indonesia or Malaysia, on a lifecycle basis, the emissions are three times those of the diesel that we are replacing. It just doesn't make sense at all. So we have to ensure that we're using feedstocks for the biofuels, which are genuinely sustainable. There's a limited quantity of those. So we have to see these as being of limited value short term, as transitional, until we move to the other fuels I've just mentioned. TROND: But, Alan, it seems to me that as much as you're an enthusiast of various futuristic technologies, you're also saying that in the next ten years, there are a lot of operational things we can do. One idea that has been put forward that you've talked to me about is this idea, which needs to be explained, of the physical internet as a conceptual change in the logistics industry. Can you elucidate that concept? Because at face value, I don't quite understand it, but on the other hand, it's the principle here. It's not recreating the internet. ALAN: No, yeah. I always have to say that the physical internet is not the Internet of Things because people, I think, often wrongly confuse the two things. The physical internet would be a physical manifestation, if you like, of the digital internet, applying the same principles, the same organizational principles that we have for moving emails to the movement of physical consignments. So if you think what are the key features of the digital internet, open systems, standardized modules for moving information through the internet, we would be creating an open system. There'd be little proprietary asset-based logistics so that the warehouses, the freight terminals, the vehicles would be available for general access. And we would have to put in place, therefore, IT systems and market mechanisms to make that possible because that would then allow us to use that asset base an awful lot more efficiently. The other thing which would, if I'd just add something else, is modularization. Because at the moment, we have got some degree of modularization obviously in pallets and containers and so forth, but we may have then to remodularize with a different type of handling equipment that would be nested and compatible to allow us to fill the vehicles better and to manage processes in the warehouses, for example. TROND: It's surprising, I guess, a little bit to hear this, and maybe you can explain this to me. But at surface value, this whole international container standard and the way that that really changed shipping because there's, after all, one container. It looks the same pretty much everywhere. It was this big battle. And then there is this container, it doesn't quite work for air travel, but it works for freight, ocean-based shipping, and for land transport. So one would have thought that that perspective is so ingrained in logistics because it was such a success story. But you're telling me that...did one rest too much on the laurels of that one success and then never extended this to other aspects of standardization? Or how do you explain that one element is so standardized and many, many, many other elements remain stuck in kind of that proprietary logic? ALAN: It's a great point. So containerization was a game changer. I mean, it transformed international trade. And we've always been looking for a similar game changer, [laughs] you know, to be equally transformational. But there were still problems with containerization, you know, so that standardized the boxes and made it easier to transfer them between transport modes and so forth. But if you look at the internal dimensions of a container, they're not all that compatible with the dimensions of the pallets inside, so you always waste some space. We call this the unit load hierarchy. So at the top end, we got the container, and then we come down to the next level, which would be the pallet load, and then the level below that would be the carton. And then you get down to the individual product. And it's at these lower levels in that hierarchy we don't have sufficient standardization. So there are many different sizes and shapes of pallets and stillages, and so forth. And it would be nice if we could converge on similar standardization at that level. TROND: Fascinating. Let's move to the policy area in a second. I know that you did some work for Unilever a while back and developed a framework for decarbonization policy essentially or to understand the different factors that that will impact, and you called it the Timber Decarbonization Framework. And I'm just going to quickly recite these factors, and you'll explain why they all are here. So technology, we've talked about technology, infrastructure, you know, obviously, the physical aspect of all these assets. And then market trends behavior which is interesting because behavior is not the first thing I would think of in logistics, [laughs] and then energy system and regulation. So there are many, many things here in this framework. But what does that mean for a policymaker? Because up until now, we've been talking about private sector optimizing their own portfolios, but there's also a wider concern here for policymakers or indeed for individuals. ALAN: That's right. So a bit of background then on the project that we did for Unilever. The company had set itself this target to reduce the carbon intensity of its global logistics by 40% between 2010 and 2020, and it obviously had some ideas to how it could do that internally. But I thought over that time period, almost certainly, there'll be development outside Unilever's control, many of them at a national level, a macro level, which will help to decarbonize logistics, which would reinforce anything that the company was doing itself internally. So they asked us to look at 13 of their main markets in the world and make an assessment as to what extent transport logistics were decarbonizing generally. And it was -- TROND: Only 13 markets. [laughs] ALAN: Only 13 markets, that's right, I know. [laughter] I can tell you it was hard enough just doing it for 13 markets because that includes big markets like China and Brazil, and so forth. So we came up with the timber framework to say that these macro-level trends would fall basically into those six categories. And what we tried to do then was...this was a desk-based study. We tried to pull together as much data as we could for each of those six subject areas. TROND: What was the most surprising of them for you, Alan? Technology is perhaps pretty obvious. And then infrastructure, I guess, for you in your field is very obvious. But some of the others, at least for me...and regulation, obviously, this was a regulatory concern as well. But what were some of the surprises, the biggest surprise when you were putting together this and realizing which factors were influential? ALAN: I think it was the diversity which surprised us. Well, maybe I should qualify that because some of those countries were European countries where there's a lot of similarity. Many of them belong to the EU and therefore were governed by continental-wide regulatory policies. But when you went into other countries, even countries you might think were similar in their level of development and in the maturity of their logistics industry, there were actually quite different approaches to the way in which they were decarbonizing. Just take one thing, for example, the freight modal split, you know, the division of freight traffic between transport modes can vary a lot between countries, and that can be quite a big determinant of the average carbon intensity of freight movement within that country. But also, there's a feeling that it's the developed world that are doing the most innovative things in decarbonizing logistics. But we did find examples in less developed countries of quite clever initiatives. One often imagines that the lessons from decarbonizing logistics will transfer from the wealthier countries to the poorer ones. But there could be a scope, I think, for the movement of ideas and practices in the opposite direction as well. TROND: Alan, let me ask you this. I mean, many times, when you know a lot about an area, you come to the conclusion that if I only ruled this system, things would be better. ALAN: [laughs] TROND: And thereby, in French, they say this dirigiste approach where you say government or me, the expert, or whoever it is, we are just going to set this straight. Is that the big wish for you or the experts in this domain that some master planner comes in and just kind of lays down the law? Or is the clue to these very necessary decarbonization strategies a more flexible framework? ALAN: If I was that global dictator with special powers over logistics, I think the one thing I would prioritize would be pricing using the price mechanism. And things are progressing well in that direction. If you go to the World Bank website, there's a dashboard, and they show the extent to which carbon pricing schemes are developing around the world. And I think currently, almost a quarter of greenhouse gases emitted are in countries that have got some form of emissions trading or carbon taxation. So I think that needs to be extended. What we're also seeing, of course, is the cost of carbon increasing. So the world's biggest emissions trading market is here in Europe. And I think over the past two years, or so, the price of carbon has rocketed; it's currently, I think, about €100 per ton of CO2. So extending these carbon pricing, carbon taxation schemes, and at the same time raising the cost of carbon will then incorporate carbon pricing into companies' balance sheets and their investment appraisal. And that, I think, will drive a lot of the changes we've been discussing. That includes the managerial, operational things right through to the technological things like switching to lower carbon fuels. TROND: So at the end of the day then, Alan, you say there's a benefit to being optimistic, and I liked that message. But I do sense that there are some bumps in the road here. It's not going to necessarily be an easy technology fix or even an easy policy fix here. It seems the overall logistics framework it's not one industry; it seems to me. There are the logistics practices, and they are spread around every industry. ALAN: Yes, you're right. I mean, I don't want to give the impression that any of this is going to be easy. It's going to be tough, but it will have to be done. And just to flag up some of the complexities, I've mentioned how in the trucking industry, we're going to have to shift from diesel trucks to probably battery ones predominantly. And again, almost all the discussion of that relates to Europe and in North America. But we got to do this at a global level. At the moment, a lot of developing countries buy second-hand trucks from Europe or North America. And one thing that concerns me is that as Europe and North America accelerate the transition to low-carbon vehicles, they will want to dump a lot of their existing diesel vehicles. And the danger is they'll be dumped in less developed countries, where that will then slow their transition to the next generation of battery-powered vehicles. So this is an area where we really have to take a truly global perspective on how we transform road freight because what's the point of us massively reducing our CO2 emissions in Europe if all we do is inflate emissions from other parts of the world? I mean, climate change is a global problem. We've got one atmosphere, and therefore we have to look at that bigger picture. TROND: That's fascinating. It would seem to me that the solution would have to be something where you add incentive for everyone regardless of where you are in the pyramid of industrial transition to leapfrog essentially, right? ALAN: Yes, yes, exactly. I think the key will be transferring technologies best practice from a lot of the more developed countries to the less developed world. I've just written a paper for the World Bank looking at how we tailor logistics, decarbonization to the needs of less developed countries, and that will be coming out in a few months' time. And I think that's going to be really one of our bigger challenges in this field. TROND: Alan, it's fascinating to hear such an overview of a field and an expanding landscape that is so crucial to something that clearly is one of the bigger challenges of our time. Thank you so much for your time today. ALAN: You're welcome. Thank you. TROND: You have just listened to another episode of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Decarbonizing Logistics. Our guest was Alan McKinnon, Professor of Logistics at the Kühne Logistics University of Hamburg. In this conversation, we talked about mitigating and adapting to climate change throughout industrial supply chains. My takeaway is that decarbonizing logistics without slowing economic growth is a formidable challenge which requires paradigm shifts across many industries, as well as adopting openness principles from the virtual internet onto the physical nature of the supply chain, as well as facilitating new business models, sharing, and standardization, and eventually dematerialization. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 68: Industrial Supply Chain Optimization. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes, and if so, do let us know by messaging us because we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented Podcast is created in association with Tulip, the frontline operation platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially where industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy; we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube. Augmented — industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. Special Guest: Alan McKinnon.

I am joined by Alan Weiss, a psychologist and Hall of Fame Speaker that has been called “The finest entrepreneurial coach in the world” by Marshall Goldsmith. He`s the best-selling author of over 60 books, and today we`ll talk about his latest work on creating meaning and a legacy today. Max Out Insights: • Life is the creation of meaning. It's a choice we need to make every single day. • Your legacy is occurring every day. • In the morning set your head in the right direction and in the evening go to bed with positive thoughts about who you are. • You have to keep bringing people into your life that raises the bar, challenges you and makes you grow. • Never get comfortable and build “desks” • Being afraid of critique blocks the path to building a legacy. Max Out Quotes: • “Legacy occurs every day and we can control it.” • “Stop looking out and start looking inwards.” • “Self-respect is the key to everything.” • “We need to identify with whom we can learn.” • “Get comfortable in your own skin.” • “Spirituality is about contributing to the environment.” • “Time is not a resource, it's a priority.” Connect with Alan: You can find his work at www.alanweiss.com and make sure to follow and connect with him on www.youtube.com/user/alansummitconsulting

Alan: Hello, I'm Alan Mehanna Sophie: and I'm Sophie Ghaziri! And we are the hosts on the brand new LevantX Podcast! Alan: The LevantX Podcast brings together journalists, activists, and opinion influencers from around the Mena Region as they share their views on political and human rights issues, culture and beyond. Sophie: It's a space to give these voices a chance and share them with the rest of the world.  Alan: You can catch our show every Thursday at 9AM on all podcast platforms! Sophie: To stay updated on all things LevantX follow us on instagram @levant_x! Alan: We hope you tune in to the show and don't forget to give your voice a chance!

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s guest — Sector 5 Digital‘s Jeff Meisner — hopes to put grave robbers out of business, among other things. He pops in to talk to Alan about all the experiential learning experiences his company has developed, from digital cadavers to study anatomy, to the VR design process of Bell Helicopters. [Editor’s Note: due to an uploading error on my part, this episode was previously released last week with the wrong audio. We’re re-releasing today with the correct audio. We appreciate your understanding, and in particular, Jeff Meisner’s understanding in this matter – Chris, Podcast Editor] Alan: Hi, I’m Alan Smithson. And today, we’re speaking with Jeff Meisner, CEO of Sector 5 Digital, about their pioneering work on the Fantastic Journey Anatomy VR Ride, Fork Lift Training Simulator, and the work they did with Bell Helicopters, shortening design times from years to months. All of this and more on the XR for Business Podcast. Jeff, welcome to the show, my friend. Jeff: Thanks, Alan. Alan: I am super excited. So, Jeff, you are doing some incredible work at Sector 5. Let’s start with the Fantastic Journey Anatomy VR. Right. This just blows my mind. Jeff: Yeah. Yes. Just as a historical perspective on this, we’ve been working with this particular healthcare client for a couple of years now. And we started out initially doing a 3D digital cadaver, basically, that allowed them to do facial anatomy. And the company is in the business of doing injections into the face and hand. And so they needed a way to have safe areas so the injectors would have training. So we created a basic virtual training tool and that was initially in 3D, not in VR, but it was driven through our tablets and things like that. So it had kind of an AR component to it. Alan: You will learn in 3D dramatically better than even just on a 2D screen. Jeff: Yeah, exactly. And we actually did a conference which had over somewhere between 200-300 of their folks training with a massive 3D screen in front of them. So it was used as a training aid, and really now, it’s gone global. So it started initially in the U.S. and got picked up by this company, because they are a global company. And what they wanted to do was take that next step, if you will. And so We’re creating this, what we call a VR Fantastic Anatomy Journey. We’re going to be taking their folks through… well, if you know what Fantastic [Voyage] is —- as most people do — but taking them through the human body. So you’re going to have a really cool edutainment-type experience, whereby you’re going to be on somewhat of a of a VR roller coaster, although it being through the body, we’re going to be adding some elements of teaching at various points. So it’ll stop and you’ll be asked questions. It’s really, the major focus is to be very much a learning experience. But one of the things we’re finding —- and I know you are too, Alan —- is if you make it fun or people, it becomes a much more memorable experience and they want to do it again and again. We’re combining kind of that gaming-type element, if you will, but with actual data and experience, to make it something that their injectors are going to be learning from, and not just the entertainment element. Alan: When you guys started rolling out the 3D digital cadaver, how are they measuring against baseline? So, what was their baseline learning before? Just a textbook? Or..? Jeff: No, they were actually using “live” cadavers, and cadavers — and this may sound a little gruesome — but they’re somewhat h

Today’s guest — Sector 5 Digital‘s Jeff Meisner — hopes to put grave robbers out of business, among other things. He pops in to talk to Alan about all the experiential learning experiences his company has developed, from digital cadavers to study anatomy, to the VR design process of Bell Helicopters. [Editor’s Note: due to an uploading error on my part, this episode was previously released last week with the wrong audio. We’re re-releasing today with the correct audio. We appreciate your understanding, and in particular, Jeff Meisner’s understanding in this matter – Chris, Podcast Editor] Alan: Hi, I’m Alan Smithson. And today, we’re speaking with Jeff Meisner, CEO of Sector 5 Digital, about their pioneering work on the Fantastic Journey Anatomy VR Ride, Fork Lift Training Simulator, and the work they did with Bell Helicopters, shortening design times from years to months. All of this and more on the XR for Business Podcast. Jeff, welcome to the show, my friend. Jeff: Thanks, Alan. Alan: I am super excited. So, Jeff, you are doing some incredible work at Sector 5. Let’s start with the Fantastic Journey Anatomy VR. Right. This just blows my mind. Jeff: Yeah. Yes. Just as a historical perspective on this, we’ve been working with this particular healthcare client for a couple of years now. And we started out initially doing a 3D digital cadaver, basically, that allowed them to do facial anatomy. And the company is in the business of doing injections into the face and hand. And so they needed a way to have safe areas so the injectors would have training. So we created a basic virtual training tool and that was initially in 3D, not in VR, but it was driven through our tablets and things like that. So it had kind of an AR component to it. Alan: You will learn in 3D dramatically better than even just on a 2D screen. Jeff: Yeah, exactly. And we actually did a conference which had over somewhere between 200-300 of their folks training with a massive 3D screen in front of them. So it was used as a training aid, and really now, it’s gone global. So it started initially in the U.S. and got picked up by this company, because they are a global company. And what they wanted to do was take that next step, if you will. And so We’re creating this, what we call a VR Fantastic Anatomy Journey. We’re going to be taking their folks through… well, if you know what Fantastic [Voyage] is —- as most people do — but taking them through the human body. So you’re going to have a really cool edutainment-type experience, whereby you're going to be on somewhat of a of a VR roller coaster, although it being through the body, we’re going to be adding some elements of teaching at various points. So it’ll stop and you’ll be asked questions. It’s really, the major focus is to be very much a learning experience. But one of the things we’re finding —- and I know you are too, Alan —- is if you make it fun or people, it becomes a much more memorable experience and they want to do it again and again. We’re combining kind of that gaming-type element, if you will, but with actual data and experience, to make it something that their injectors are going to be learning from, and not just the entertainment element. Alan: When you guys started rolling out the 3D digital cadaver, how are they measuring against baseline? So, what was their baseline learning before? Just a textbook? Or..? Jeff: No, they were actually using “live” cadavers, and cadavers — and this may sound a little gruesome — but they’re somewhat h

We live in a three-dimensional world, and according to today’s guest — You Are Here Labs president John Buzzell — our computers are finally starting to catch up with that. John shoots the proverbial breeze with Alan on how spatial computing is going to fundamentally change our relationship with computers, and thus, our relationship with the world. Alan: My name is Alan Smithson, your host for the XR for Business Podcast. Today’s guest is a good friend, John Buzzell from You Are Here Labs and You Are Here Agency. John is an award winning 28 year veteran of the digital industry, creating interactive experiences across augmented reality, virtual reality, video games, mobile apps and numerous high volume websites. To learn more about You Are Here Labs and You Are Here Agency, visit yahagency.com. John, welcome to the show. John: Thanks, Alan. Good to be with you. Alan: And of all the people we’ve had on the show, you have a lot of experience in this field. I mean, you built the AR Porsche visualizer where you could drop a Porsche right in your living room and I actually have a photo of a Porsche in my living room from your app. John: [laughs] That’s great. You know, that was an interesting project, because we started off on the Hololens and it was a really interesting project. But at some point, Porsche said this is a little too future for us at the moment and we need something that the dealers and the salespeople can use without fear. And so when ARKit popped up from Apple and they said surprise, now everybody with an iPhone 6 and above and use augmented reality, it really changed the game. And we very quickly converted that experience from the Hololens to the humble iPad and it took off from there. So we were really excited to have one of the first ARKit apps that was really connected to a major company or brand. And I’m glad you liked it, too. That’s cool. Alan: It was really special. Can people download it now still? John: Well, no, they can’t. That was about two years ago that we did it. And for all of us in technology, who knows how fast it moves. Porsche is a global company and they were very impressed with the innovation. And I think they were excited to kind of pull it back to HQ and see what they could do globally with it. And also our clients left for jobs at other companies simultaneously. [laughs] So– Alan: That’s the challenge in technology, you’re working on a project with somebody, you’re all in it, and then they leave. [laughs] John: I mean, I think that’s one of the neat things about emerging tech is, is it really can help vault peoples careers into the next dimension, in the sense that these technologies are so profound and they will affect the work that we do and the way we live our lives for so long in the future, that people that have this experience, it’s really great for them individually. Alan: You’ve been doing this a while longer than myself, but I’ve been in early VR since 2014. And I’ve noticed that a lot of the people that were just building demos and stuff like that, now are running huge companies. HP and Microsoft, they’re running huge departments in this, just because they were early and learned how to do it. And they learned in a time when there was no YouTube video on how to make AR, you had to just kind of guess. John: Yeah. I mean, my career resembles that, in the sense that I got started doing interactive marketing on diskettes before CD-ROM. Our friend Cathy Hackl says, “Don’t talk about that, it makes you sound old!” but I think the experi

We live in a three-dimensional world, and according to today’s guest — You Are Here Labs president John Buzzell — our computers are finally starting to catch up with that. John shoots the proverbial breeze with Alan on how spatial computing is going to fundamentally change our relationship with computers, and thus, our relationship with the world. Alan: My name is Alan Smithson, your host for the XR for Business Podcast. Today’s guest is a good friend, John Buzzell from You Are Here Labs and You Are Here Agency. John is an award winning 28 year veteran of the digital industry, creating interactive experiences across augmented reality, virtual reality, video games, mobile apps and numerous high volume websites. To learn more about You Are Here Labs and You Are Here Agency, visit yahagency.com. John, welcome to the show. John: Thanks, Alan. Good to be with you. Alan: And of all the people we’ve had on the show, you have a lot of experience in this field. I mean, you built the AR Porsche visualizer where you could drop a Porsche right in your living room and I actually have a photo of a Porsche in my living room from your app. John: [laughs] That’s great. You know, that was an interesting project, because we started off on the Hololens and it was a really interesting project. But at some point, Porsche said this is a little too future for us at the moment and we need something that the dealers and the salespeople can use without fear. And so when ARKit popped up from Apple and they said surprise, now everybody with an iPhone 6 and above and use augmented reality, it really changed the game. And we very quickly converted that experience from the Hololens to the humble iPad and it took off from there. So we were really excited to have one of the first ARKit apps that was really connected to a major company or brand. And I’m glad you liked it, too. That’s cool. Alan: It was really special. Can people download it now still? John: Well, no, they can’t. That was about two years ago that we did it. And for all of us in technology, who knows how fast it moves. Porsche is a global company and they were very impressed with the innovation. And I think they were excited to kind of pull it back to HQ and see what they could do globally with it. And also our clients left for jobs at other companies simultaneously. [laughs] So– Alan: That’s the challenge in technology, you’re working on a project with somebody, you’re all in it, and then they leave. [laughs] John: I mean, I think that’s one of the neat things about emerging tech is, is it really can help vault peoples careers into the next dimension, in the sense that these technologies are so profound and they will affect the work that we do and the way we live our lives for so long in the future, that people that have this experience, it’s really great for them individually. Alan: You’ve been doing this a while longer than myself, but I’ve been in early VR since 2014. And I’ve noticed that a lot of the people that were just building demos and stuff like that, now are running huge companies. HP and Microsoft, they’re running huge departments in this, just because they were early and learned how to do it. And they learned in a time when there was no YouTube video on how to make AR, you had to just kind of guess. John: Yeah. I mean, my career resembles that, in the sense that I got started doing interactive marketing on diskettes before CD-ROM. Our friend Cathy Hackl says, “Don’t talk about that, it makes you sound old!” but I think the experi

Imagine being able to learn, hands-on, exactly how to operate a deep-sea submarine — without needing the submarine! That’s the kind of training opportunities VR training platforms like Immerse are able to offer with the technology at their disposal. James Watson and Justin Parry drop in to talk about all the other opportunities the tech presents businesses. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have two amazing guests, James Watson and Justin Parry from Immerse. Justin is the co-founder and chief operating officer and leads product strategy for Immerse. As a founder, he designed and led product development of the Immerse platform from scratch. He now oversees the delivery of all technology and VR content across the organization. Justin has 20 years experience creating and growing B2C and B2B products from startups to global organizations. He’s developed and launched online platforms, websites, mobile products across the world, and joined Immerse from his role as global director of the Internet Yellow Pages for Yell Group. Immerse Virtual Enterprise Platform enables enterprises to create scale and measure virtual reality training content and programs. The platform enables enterprises to look at training and assessment in a completely different way, providing the tools to help maximize human performance, resulting in a more engaged, better equipped and safer workforce. If you want to learn more, you can visit immerse.io. Guys, welcome to the show. Justin: Hello. James: Thanks, Alan. Alan: [laughs] Hey. So you guys are in beautiful, sunny, warm UK. How’s it going over there? Justin: Well, it was very sunny until last week, actually, with the sort of slightly freakish weather that we’ve been having, but today is cold. James: It’s British grey. Justin: Yeah. Alan: British grey. Oh, well, we’ll just assume it’s beautiful and sunny. So let’s get digging in here. I’ve had a chance to try out the Immerse platform. It’s really amazing. You’re completely immersed, and the demo that you guys did for us: We were inside of a submarine. We not only go into it, but interact with all the bits of the submarine and start to learn parts of, “how do I make some things work?” And the great thing about it is you guys were there every step of the way. But one of you was in VR, and the other one was on a tablet or a computer. Talk to us, just to how did Immerse come to be? Justin: Well, we’ve been in the training space quite a long time. We weren’t initially in VR. We actually delivered our training applications via desktop, but they were always multi-user. So we would be tying together people from somewhere — maybe even Kazakhstan, some oil and gas training that we did — with trainers that may be in Iraq, or in the UK, or wherever that might be. And that was all done in a sort of virtual world. So it’s a little bit like the old Second Life, if people remember that. So it’s a powerful proposition, but it’s still a little bit difficult to sell. So with the advent of the headsets — or the latest generation of headsets, at least — we made the move into VR and a lot of services that we built there just kind of immediately made sense, and we got traction very quickly. We effectively then pivoted the whole company to be a full-on VR training platform. We rebuilt a lot of those services, especially for VR, because there was obviously some small itemization that we need to make. And so we find ourselves where we are today. And just in terms what you said there,

Imagine being able to learn, hands-on, exactly how to operate a deep-sea submarine — without needing the submarine! That’s the kind of training opportunities VR training platforms like Immerse are able to offer with the technology at their disposal. James Watson and Justin Parry drop in to talk about all the other opportunities the tech presents businesses. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we have two amazing guests, James Watson and Justin Parry from Immerse. Justin is the co-founder and chief operating officer and leads product strategy for Immerse. As a founder, he designed and led product development of the Immerse platform from scratch. He now oversees the delivery of all technology and VR content across the organization. Justin has 20 years experience creating and growing B2C and B2B products from startups to global organizations. He’s developed and launched online platforms, websites, mobile products across the world, and joined Immerse from his role as global director of the Internet Yellow Pages for Yell Group. Immerse Virtual Enterprise Platform enables enterprises to create scale and measure virtual reality training content and programs. The platform enables enterprises to look at training and assessment in a completely different way, providing the tools to help maximize human performance, resulting in a more engaged, better equipped and safer workforce. If you want to learn more, you can visit immerse.io. Guys, welcome to the show. Justin: Hello. James: Thanks, Alan. Alan: [laughs] Hey. So you guys are in beautiful, sunny, warm UK. How’s it going over there? Justin: Well, it was very sunny until last week, actually, with the sort of slightly freakish weather that we’ve been having, but today is cold. James: It’s British grey. Justin: Yeah. Alan: British grey. Oh, well, we’ll just assume it’s beautiful and sunny. So let’s get digging in here. I’ve had a chance to try out the Immerse platform. It’s really amazing. You’re completely immersed, and the demo that you guys did for us: We were inside of a submarine. We not only go into it, but interact with all the bits of the submarine and start to learn parts of, “how do I make some things work?” And the great thing about it is you guys were there every step of the way. But one of you was in VR, and the other one was on a tablet or a computer. Talk to us, just to how did Immerse come to be? Justin: Well, we’ve been in the training space quite a long time. We weren’t initially in VR. We actually delivered our training applications via desktop, but they were always multi-user. So we would be tying together people from somewhere — maybe even Kazakhstan, some oil and gas training that we did — with trainers that may be in Iraq, or in the UK, or wherever that might be. And that was all done in a sort of virtual world. So it’s a little bit like the old Second Life, if people remember that. So it’s a powerful proposition, but it’s still a little bit difficult to sell. So with the advent of the headsets — or the latest generation of headsets, at least — we made the move into VR and a lot of services that we built there just kind of immediately made sense, and we got traction very quickly. We effectively then pivoted the whole company to be a full-on VR training platform. We rebuilt a lot of those services, especially for VR, because there was obviously some small itemization that we need to make. And so we find ourselves where we are today. And just in terms what you said there,

“You cannot learn empathy on powerpoint!” Wise words from today’s guest, Somewhere Else CEO Christophe Mallet, who comes by the show to discuss how soft skills training — basically, training for human behavior — is now a wide-open industry, thanks to XR technology. Alan: My name is Alan Smithson, your host for the XR for Business Podcast. Today’s guest is Christophe Mallet, co-founder of Somewhere Else. Somewhere Else Solutions is a London based innovation agency specialized in immersive technologies. He’s now exploring how to leverage immersive technology and artificial intelligence to deliver soft skills training that actually delivers behavioral change. The end goal is to make the workplace a better place for everyone. Throughout his careers, he has strived to bring together brilliant minds, makers and businesses to deliver impactful projects and solutions. He’s worked with a variety of global clients, including Adidas, Samsung, Ernst and Young, Save the Children, Sony, IKEA, KPMG, Nokia, and the list goes on. To learn more about Somewhere Else Solutions, you can visit them at somewhereelse.co. Welcome to the show, Christophe, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Christophe: Thanks, Alan. Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. Alan: You’ve been working in immersive technologies. Maybe kind of give listeners an understanding of what you’ve done at Somewhere Else, some of the projects you’ve done, and then we’ll dig into something really exciting after that. Christophe: So I came from the world of mostly strategic consulting, digital and social, and the world of storytelling, kind of on my own time. And back in 2015, I met with a guy called Julien in a pub, and he showed me an experience: The Night Café, in which you enter a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. I don’t know if you’ve tried that one. Alan: I have. So to paint a picture for people. They took Vincent Van Gogh’s painting and then made it fully spatial so you could walk around in the painting in VR. It was the night café and you could walk around and go and sit at the piano. And it was beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Christophe: It was beautiful. It was very early. And my jaw dropped, because I saw a new way to tell stories. I was a bit bored of my previous job, so I decided to quit, and I started a studio with that guy — Julien — and another guy, Randy. And kind of alongside the market — the way the market has evolved since 2015 — is, the wow factor was big in the beginning, where a lot of things were done around entertainment and marketing. We worked on that with TV channels, we did an escape room in Paris, we did stuff for the climbing experience for Adidas. Champions seeking experiences for the UFR. And that’s honed our skills in what it means to tell a story in virtual reality, versus other mediums — such as cinema. And about two years ago, Accenture, BCG, McKinsey started publishing their reports about how immersive technologies should impact service design, visualization, training, and so on. And so suddenly, immersive tech started appearing in conversations at the boardroom level, which is what you need for any technology to be adopted. And so we started receiving inquiries in this area, and specifically in training. And so for the past, I would say 18 months to two years, we’ve been specializing on that and more specifically on the behavioral side of things and taking VR support what it really is, which is– you know, VR has been very focused on environments, and virtual realities are recreating the environment virtually. But your reality is also about the people who are part of th

“You cannot learn empathy on powerpoint!” Wise words from today’s guest, Somewhere Else CEO Christophe Mallet, who comes by the show to discuss how soft skills training — basically, training for human behavior — is now a wide-open industry, thanks to XR technology. Alan: My name is Alan Smithson, your host for the XR for Business Podcast. Today’s guest is Christophe Mallet, co-founder of Somewhere Else. Somewhere Else Solutions is a London based innovation agency specialized in immersive technologies. He’s now exploring how to leverage immersive technology and artificial intelligence to deliver soft skills training that actually delivers behavioral change. The end goal is to make the workplace a better place for everyone. Throughout his careers, he has strived to bring together brilliant minds, makers and businesses to deliver impactful projects and solutions. He’s worked with a variety of global clients, including Adidas, Samsung, Ernst and Young, Save the Children, Sony, IKEA, KPMG, Nokia, and the list goes on. To learn more about Somewhere Else Solutions, you can visit them at somewhereelse.co. Welcome to the show, Christophe, it’s a pleasure to have you here. Christophe: Thanks, Alan. Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here. Alan: You’ve been working in immersive technologies. Maybe kind of give listeners an understanding of what you’ve done at Somewhere Else, some of the projects you’ve done, and then we’ll dig into something really exciting after that. Christophe: So I came from the world of mostly strategic consulting, digital and social, and the world of storytelling, kind of on my own time. And back in 2015, I met with a guy called Julien in a pub, and he showed me an experience: The Night Café, in which you enter a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. I don’t know if you’ve tried that one. Alan: I have. So to paint a picture for people. They took Vincent Van Gogh’s painting and then made it fully spatial so you could walk around in the painting in VR. It was the night café and you could walk around and go and sit at the piano. And it was beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Christophe: It was beautiful. It was very early. And my jaw dropped, because I saw a new way to tell stories. I was a bit bored of my previous job, so I decided to quit, and I started a studio with that guy — Julien — and another guy, Randy. And kind of alongside the market — the way the market has evolved since 2015 — is, the wow factor was big in the beginning, where a lot of things were done around entertainment and marketing. We worked on that with TV channels, we did an escape room in Paris, we did stuff for the climbing experience for Adidas. Champions seeking experiences for the UFR. And that’s honed our skills in what it means to tell a story in virtual reality, versus other mediums — such as cinema. And about two years ago, Accenture, BCG, McKinsey started publishing their reports about how immersive technologies should impact service design, visualization, training, and so on. And so suddenly, immersive tech started appearing in conversations at the boardroom level, which is what you need for any technology to be adopted. And so we started receiving inquiries in this area, and specifically in training. And so for the past, I would say 18 months to two years, we’ve been specializing on that and more specifically on the behavioral side of things and taking VR support what it really is, which is– you know, VR has been very focused on environments, and virtual realities are recreating the environment virtually. But your reality is also about the people who are part of th

PTC LiveWorx is one of the biggest gatherings of up-and-coming XR tech in the industry. With all sorts of amazing future tech demos, PTC’s Executive VP of AR Products Mike Campbell understands how businesses might want to implement the most far-out features of XR technology right away. But he says there’s plenty AR can do perfectly right now that more industries should take advantage of. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s episode is with Mike Campbell, executive vice president of Augmented Reality Products at PTC. Mike leads the Vuforia product team, and is responsible for driving the product and technology strategy of PTC’s leading solutions for the development of augmented reality applications. You can learn more about the work they’re doing at ptc.com. Mike, welcome to the show. Mike: Hey, Alan, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. I’ve been really, really looking forward to this, because I went to LiveWorx in… was it June? Mike: June, yep. Alan: My God. I had no idea, first of all, how big PTC was and how important Vuforia and your augmented reality strategy is going to be and is becoming to all sorts of different industries. I got to fix a tractor. I got to work on an ATV. I got to look in retail. Is there any industries that this won’t affect? Mike: Well, PTC’s focus is really in the industrial enterprise domain. And I would say across all of the verticals there — heavy equipment, automotive, aerospace, medical devices — I mean, all of those places are ripe for transformation, thanks to the power of augmented reality. Alan: It’s amazing. You even had a boat there. Mike: We did, we did, yeah. One of our customers is Beneteau. Alan: Yeah. So let’s start from the beginning here. What is PTC? What do you guys do? Where did it come from? Let’s start there. Mike: Ok. So PTC is a billion-dollar plus software company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. We have been around for a long time and we got our start back in the late 80s, early 90s by revolutionizing the 3D solid modeling industry. Basically, we invented a better mousetrap that allowed companies to create products virtually in 3D much faster and more effectively than ever before. Fast forward from then, we not only have a 3D solid modeling CAD offering, we have a great offering used in engineering for lifecycle management. And about 10 years ago, we recognized the trend of the Internet of Things, this explosion of connectivity and ubiquity of sensors, and companies wanting to leverage that information so that they could create products and manufacture products and service products better. We invested pretty heavily at that time. And once we did that, we were thinking a lot about this idea of IOT and products broadcasting information about themselves in the form of digital data. And we were thinking about our 3D heritage and we recognized that augmented reality was a great way to unlock some of that digital data in the context of the physical world, where you do your work. And that’s really what got us into AR. I have been at PTC — as you said — for a long, long time. And I’ve been involved in our AR journey since the beginning and it’s been a fantastic ride. Alan: Vuforia was an acquisition. Was that something that you guys made a decision to– can we build this in-house, or should we just acquire it? How did that come about? Mike: So we were th

PTC LiveWorx is one of the biggest gatherings of up-and-coming XR tech in the industry. With all sorts of amazing future tech demos, PTC’s Executive VP of AR Products Mike Campbell understands how businesses might want to implement the most far-out features of XR technology right away. But he says there’s plenty AR can do perfectly right now that more industries should take advantage of. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s episode is with Mike Campbell, executive vice president of Augmented Reality Products at PTC. Mike leads the Vuforia product team, and is responsible for driving the product and technology strategy of PTC’s leading solutions for the development of augmented reality applications. You can learn more about the work they’re doing at ptc.com. Mike, welcome to the show. Mike: Hey, Alan, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. I’ve been really, really looking forward to this, because I went to LiveWorx in… was it June? Mike: June, yep. Alan: My God. I had no idea, first of all, how big PTC was and how important Vuforia and your augmented reality strategy is going to be and is becoming to all sorts of different industries. I got to fix a tractor. I got to work on an ATV. I got to look in retail. Is there any industries that this won’t affect? Mike: Well, PTC’s focus is really in the industrial enterprise domain. And I would say across all of the verticals there — heavy equipment, automotive, aerospace, medical devices — I mean, all of those places are ripe for transformation, thanks to the power of augmented reality. Alan: It’s amazing. You even had a boat there. Mike: We did, we did, yeah. One of our customers is Beneteau. Alan: Yeah. So let’s start from the beginning here. What is PTC? What do you guys do? Where did it come from? Let’s start there. Mike: Ok. So PTC is a billion-dollar plus software company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. We have been around for a long time and we got our start back in the late 80s, early 90s by revolutionizing the 3D solid modeling industry. Basically, we invented a better mousetrap that allowed companies to create products virtually in 3D much faster and more effectively than ever before. Fast forward from then, we not only have a 3D solid modeling CAD offering, we have a great offering used in engineering for lifecycle management. And about 10 years ago, we recognized the trend of the Internet of Things, this explosion of connectivity and ubiquity of sensors, and companies wanting to leverage that information so that they could create products and manufacture products and service products better. We invested pretty heavily at that time. And once we did that, we were thinking a lot about this idea of IOT and products broadcasting information about themselves in the form of digital data. And we were thinking about our 3D heritage and we recognized that augmented reality was a great way to unlock some of that digital data in the context of the physical world, where you do your work. And that’s really what got us into AR. I have been at PTC — as you said — for a long, long time. And I’ve been involved in our AR journey since the beginning and it’s been a fantastic ride. Alan: Vuforia was an acquisition. Was that something that you guys made a decision to– can we build this in-house, or should we just acquire it? How did that come about? Mike: So we were th

If you want to master something, teach it.” That’s the old adage, and at Circuit Stream, the thinking is teaching XR helps you develop better solutions, too. Founder and CEO Lou Pushelberg created Circuit Stream courses to give companies the power to educate and empower themselves, and just make the whole XR ecosystem stronger. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Lou Pushelberg, founder and CEO of Circuit Stream. Circuit Stream’s story began in 2015 with Lou traveling around North America, connecting with developers, designers, and creators, pushing the boundaries of immersive experiences. Rather than try to build the next big application like everyone else, Lou saw a bigger need for education and training that could help propel the industry forward. From this journey, Circuit Stream’s 10-week online course emerged. Their education platform has reached over 25,000 students. They’re a Unity authorized training partner and their team of 20 people is giving professionals the skills they need to build value-driven XR experiences. They have three business divisions: education, software development, and their platform. To learn more about the great work that Lew and his team is doing, you can visit circuitstream.com. Lou, welcome to the show, my friend. Lou: Alan, thanks so much for hosting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Alan: It’s my absolute honor. I’ve been watching the work you guys are doing. You’re basically one of the only educational institutions that are teaching people the practical hands-on skills on how to create XR. How did this come about? Lou: Well, I was working for another VR startup early in 2015. They were based out of Seattle. This was kind of the DK2 era — so early in VR’s history — and personally was inspired by a lot of the early pioneers, who were building some of the flagship VR content and titles that were coming out on the first wave of consumer hardware — so the Vive and the original Rift — and was basically looking for an opportunity and a need, where I could create value for the ecosystem and help accelerate the adoption of VR and ultimately of XR technology, and found that kind of service and value that I could provide to the ecosystem in education. Alan: So how did you begin? Where do you start with building a course for technology that’s emerging? Like, “Unity 101: here’s how to make a model.” Like, how did that– where do you even begin? Lou: [chuckles] Yeah, that’s a good question. So we began with a kind of a core philosophy that was, the only way to learn anything really in it — and especially this technology — was to get hands-on and just start building things. There wasn’t a playbook for VR and AR, there wasn’t a series of best practices at the time. They were kind of just beginning to emerge. So we really wanted to focus a lot of what we were doing around getting people into Unity and some of the other major engines, and just helping them start blazing their own trails by just building stuff and sharing it with people. That’s kind of been our MO and what we try to facilitate with all of the professionals, companies that we work with. So in kind of architecting the course in the beginning, we would go straight to the source. So you mentioned travelling across North America. I had basically booked a trip through what were the four biggest hubs down the West Coast. So starting in Vancouver and then heading south through into Seattle, San Francisco, and LA and in each XR hub, I would interview developers, sometimes from startups who were kind o

If you want to master something, teach it.” That's the old adage, and at Circuit Stream, the thinking is teaching XR helps you develop better solutions, too. Founder and CEO Lou Pushelberg created Circuit Stream courses to give companies the power to educate and empower themselves, and just make the whole XR ecosystem stronger. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Lou Pushelberg, founder and CEO of Circuit Stream. Circuit Stream’s story began in 2015 with Lou traveling around North America, connecting with developers, designers, and creators, pushing the boundaries of immersive experiences. Rather than try to build the next big application like everyone else, Lou saw a bigger need for education and training that could help propel the industry forward. From this journey, Circuit Stream’s 10-week online course emerged. Their education platform has reached over 25,000 students. They’re a Unity authorized training partner and their team of 20 people is giving professionals the skills they need to build value-driven XR experiences. They have three business divisions: education, software development, and their platform. To learn more about the great work that Lew and his team is doing, you can visit circuitstream.com. Lou, welcome to the show, my friend. Lou: Alan, thanks so much for hosting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Alan: It’s my absolute honor. I’ve been watching the work you guys are doing. You’re basically one of the only educational institutions that are teaching people the practical hands-on skills on how to create XR. How did this come about? Lou: Well, I was working for another VR startup early in 2015. They were based out of Seattle. This was kind of the DK2 era — so early in VR’s history — and personally was inspired by a lot of the early pioneers, who were building some of the flagship VR content and titles that were coming out on the first wave of consumer hardware — so the Vive and the original Rift — and was basically looking for an opportunity and a need, where I could create value for the ecosystem and help accelerate the adoption of VR and ultimately of XR technology, and found that kind of service and value that I could provide to the ecosystem in education. Alan: So how did you begin? Where do you start with building a course for technology that’s emerging? Like, “Unity 101: here’s how to make a model.” Like, how did that– where do you even begin? Lou: [chuckles] Yeah, that’s a good question. So we began with a kind of a core philosophy that was, the only way to learn anything really in it — and especially this technology — was to get hands-on and just start building things. There wasn’t a playbook for VR and AR, there wasn’t a series of best practices at the time. They were kind of just beginning to emerge. So we really wanted to focus a lot of what we were doing around getting people into Unity and some of the other major engines, and just helping them start blazing their own trails by just building stuff and sharing it with people. That’s kind of been our MO and what we try to facilitate with all of the professionals, companies that we work with. So in kind of architecting the course in the beginning, we would go straight to the source. So you mentioned travelling across North America. I had basically booked a trip through what were the four biggest hubs down the West Coast. So starting in Vancouver and then heading south through into Seattle, San Francisco, and LA and in each XR hub, I would interview developers, sometimes from startups who were kind o

Alan is always ready with an interesting XR anecdote or two on this podcast, but even he has a source for interesting XR tidbits. In today’s episode, he brings that source to him – XR journalist and consultant, Alice Bonasio. They end up chatting about the principles behind the idea that XR is an “empathy machine.” Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Alice Bonasio, the technology writer for Inside VR and AR. Alice is a technology writer/producer/consultant with a particular interest in the immersive space. Over the past 15 years, she’s combined a career in freelance journalism, contributing to outlets such as Wired, Quartz, Fast Company, Playboy, Upload VR, Ars Technica and many others. She’s advised a broad range of companies, from startups to major corporations on their communications and digital strategy. She’s currently the editor-in-chief of Tech Trends, a news and opinion website she founded in 2016, and the curator of the daily Inside VR and AR newsletter, which I personally read every single day. You can connect with Alice on LinkedIn and you can also reach her at Twitter on Alice Bonasio. And if you want to subscribe to Inside VR, it’s inside.com/vr and inside.com/ar. Alice, welcome to the show. Alice: Hello. Very nice to meet you. Thanks for inviting me on. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. I read your content daily, so it’s a real pleasure for me to have you on the show. Every day I get this Inside VR, and I skim through it, I look for the things that are business related. And at the bottom, it says “curated by Alice.” And I was like, I got to have her on the show. So thank you so much. Alice: You’re very, very welcome. Alan: You are my source for news. Alice: [laughs] That’s very nice to know. Yes. And the more subscribers we get, the more I get to do what I love, which is trawling through all of those interesting bits of news. So, yeah, definitely get everyone to subscribe. That’ll be great. Alan: Well, I know one way to get more subscribers, we should write a piece about this amazing new podcast called the XR for Business Podcast. Alice: Ah, yes, yes. That’s how you make a great plug. Yeah, yeah. We’re pros here, we’re pros. Alan: So I want to dive in here because there’s so much to get in. We’ve got an hour, let’s really make the best of it. Let’s start with one or two things that you’ve seen in the last little bit that just blew your mind, because I think you get to see everything from a 10,000 foot view. What is personally blowning your mind in XR for business? Alice: I think one of the recent examples — and you were talking about it when you were saying about doing your news roundup — in the last week was really that Microsoft demo at Inspire. That really did blow my mind. And it’s one of those things where you see several elements just come together into something that just makes such sense. And it was one of those eureka moments. Together with mapping, I think that translation is just such an obvious use case for augmented or mixed reality, but it is also one of the most difficult ones to get right, because you just need a lot of elements to be at the optimum stage and to come together for the experience to work. And the experience either really works well or doesn’t. So what they did was, at Microsoft Inspire — which is a partner conference for Microsoft — Julia White, who is an executive for

Alan is always ready with an interesting XR anecdote or two on this podcast, but even he has a source for interesting XR tidbits. In today’s episode, he brings that source to him – XR journalist and consultant, Alice Bonasio. They end up chatting about the principles behind the idea that XR is an “empathy machine.” Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Alice Bonasio, the technology writer for Inside VR and AR. Alice is a technology writer/producer/consultant with a particular interest in the immersive space. Over the past 15 years, she’s combined a career in freelance journalism, contributing to outlets such as Wired, Quartz, Fast Company, Playboy, Upload VR, Ars Technica and many others. She’s advised a broad range of companies, from startups to major corporations on their communications and digital strategy. She’s currently the editor-in-chief of Tech Trends, a news and opinion website she founded in 2016, and the curator of the daily Inside VR and AR newsletter, which I personally read every single day. You can connect with Alice on LinkedIn and you can also reach her at Twitter on Alice Bonasio. And if you want to subscribe to Inside VR, it’s inside.com/vr and inside.com/ar. Alice, welcome to the show. Alice: Hello. Very nice to meet you. Thanks for inviting me on. Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure. I read your content daily, so it’s a real pleasure for me to have you on the show. Every day I get this Inside VR, and I skim through it, I look for the things that are business related. And at the bottom, it says “curated by Alice.” And I was like, I got to have her on the show. So thank you so much. Alice: You’re very, very welcome. Alan: You are my source for news. Alice: [laughs] That’s very nice to know. Yes. And the more subscribers we get, the more I get to do what I love, which is trawling through all of those interesting bits of news. So, yeah, definitely get everyone to subscribe. That’ll be great. Alan: Well, I know one way to get more subscribers, we should write a piece about this amazing new podcast called the XR for Business Podcast. Alice: Ah, yes, yes. That’s how you make a great plug. Yeah, yeah. We’re pros here, we’re pros. Alan: So I want to dive in here because there’s so much to get in. We’ve got an hour, let’s really make the best of it. Let’s start with one or two things that you’ve seen in the last little bit that just blew your mind, because I think you get to see everything from a 10,000 foot view. What is personally blowning your mind in XR for business? Alice: I think one of the recent examples — and you were talking about it when you were saying about doing your news roundup — in the last week was really that Microsoft demo at Inspire. That really did blow my mind. And it’s one of those things where you see several elements just come together into something that just makes such sense. And it was one of those eureka moments. Together with mapping, I think that translation is just such an obvious use case for augmented or mixed reality, but it is also one of the most difficult ones to get right, because you just need a lot of elements to be at the optimum stage and to come together for the experience to work. And the experience either really works well or doesn’t. So what they did was, at Microsoft Inspire — which is a partner conference for Microsoft — Julia White, who is an executive for

As the lead writer and head of content at BrainXchange, Emily Friedman has had ample chances to explore a lot of XR-related topics. She lets Alan pick her brain about a few of them, from getting millennials interested in trades, to democratizing knowledge, and how humanity will enter The Cloud. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Emily Friedman from BrainXchange and Augmented World Expo. Emily Friedman is a New York based enterprise immersive, wearable and emerging technology advocate, journalist and facilitator. She’s Head of Content and the lead writer at BrainXchange, lead journalist and senior editor at Enterprisewear Blog, and head of marketing and communications for Augmented World Expo USA and AWE EU. To learn more about BrainXchange, you can visit brainxchange.com. And if you wanna learn more about AWE or Augmented World Expo, you can visit awexr.com. Welcome to the show, Emily. Emily: Thank you for having me. Alan: Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure. I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation, because you are writing everyday – or, not everyday, but what, a couple times a week? — on the enterprise wearables world. So maybe just kind of give us an overview of what is BrainXchange and AWE. Let’s start with that. Emily: Ok, I wish I were productive enough to write multiple articles a week. But there’s a lot going on. BrainXchange, we started out as a boutique events company, and we just happened to enter augmented reality at the right time. It was 2015, right after Google Glass, quote/unquote failed. And there were all these headlines, “Glasshole” articles. But if you read between the lines, it was clear that smartglasses weren’t a failure, and that enterprises were actually finding good use cases for it. So today we provide events, content, and other services all related to facilitating enterprise XR. Alan: You know, I’ve been at AWE a couple of times now. I lead the startup track this year. It’s an important conference for virtual/augmented/mixed reality and some may say it is the most important conference. It’s where everybody around the world gathers in. And I made this comment that if the building happened to collapse, basically the entire VR world would cease to exist, and we’d have to start over again. It was an amazing collection of some of the world’s smartest people working in this technology and enterprise. They seem to be really driving this technology forward. What are you seeing? Emily: Well, as for AWE, I think it’s a very important benchmarking event. Like you said, the entire industry gets together at that one point. What we’re seeing — and the reason we gravitated towards enterprise at first — is that that’s where the money is. I mean, that’s where the money has to be made, both for end users and the AR/VR companies themselves. At the end of the day, we cater to the enterprises and we talk to them every day. We get on the phone with Fortune 500 companies, the innovation people and all these different companies every day. And we listen to their pain points. AR/VR happens to offer a solution to a lot of their pain points. Alan: So what are some of the pain points? Let’s unpack that. Emily: Huge one is a shrinking workforce, that creates this need to train faster, better. So as the workforce ages — in manufacturing, I think the average age is like 40 to 50 now — and retires, not only do you need to attract new talent; you need to train them. As a millennial, this is actually pretty important to me. Learning a skill today just doesn’t get you as far as it did half a ce

As the lead writer and head of content at BrainXchange, Emily Friedman has had ample chances to explore a lot of XR-related topics. She lets Alan pick her brain about a few of them, from getting millennials interested in trades, to democratizing knowledge, and how humanity will enter The Cloud. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Emily Friedman from BrainXchange and Augmented World Expo. Emily Friedman is a New York based enterprise immersive, wearable and emerging technology advocate, journalist and facilitator. She’s Head of Content and the lead writer at BrainXchange, lead journalist and senior editor at Enterprisewear Blog, and head of marketing and communications for Augmented World Expo USA and AWE EU. To learn more about BrainXchange, you can visit brainxchange.com. And if you wanna learn more about AWE or Augmented World Expo, you can visit awexr.com. Welcome to the show, Emily. Emily: Thank you for having me. Alan: Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure. I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation, because you are writing everyday – or, not everyday, but what, a couple times a week? — on the enterprise wearables world. So maybe just kind of give us an overview of what is BrainXchange and AWE. Let’s start with that. Emily: Ok, I wish I were productive enough to write multiple articles a week. But there’s a lot going on. BrainXchange, we started out as a boutique events company, and we just happened to enter augmented reality at the right time. It was 2015, right after Google Glass, quote/unquote failed. And there were all these headlines, “Glasshole” articles. But if you read between the lines, it was clear that smartglasses weren’t a failure, and that enterprises were actually finding good use cases for it. So today we provide events, content, and other services all related to facilitating enterprise XR. Alan: You know, I’ve been at AWE a couple of times now. I lead the startup track this year. It’s an important conference for virtual/augmented/mixed reality and some may say it is the most important conference. It’s where everybody around the world gathers in. And I made this comment that if the building happened to collapse, basically the entire VR world would cease to exist, and we’d have to start over again. It was an amazing collection of some of the world’s smartest people working in this technology and enterprise. They seem to be really driving this technology forward. What are you seeing? Emily: Well, as for AWE, I think it’s a very important benchmarking event. Like you said, the entire industry gets together at that one point. What we’re seeing — and the reason we gravitated towards enterprise at first — is that that’s where the money is. I mean, that’s where the money has to be made, both for end users and the AR/VR companies themselves. At the end of the day, we cater to the enterprises and we talk to them every day. We get on the phone with Fortune 500 companies, the innovation people and all these different companies every day. And we listen to their pain points. AR/VR happens to offer a solution to a lot of their pain points. Alan: So what are some of the pain points? Let’s unpack that. Emily: Huge one is a shrinking workforce, that creates this need to train faster, better. So as the workforce ages — in manufacturing, I think the average age is like 40 to 50 now — and retires, not only do you need to attract new talent; you need to train them. As a millennial, this is actually pretty important to me. Learning a skill today just doesn’t get you as far as it did half a ce

We often talk about how XR technologies are great tools for education and training on this podcast. But why is that? Like, physiologically? Turns out, XR tickles the thalamus in ways traditional learning strategies never could, and that’s not us just whistling Dixie. Today’s guest — Cognitive Design & Statistical Consulting, LLC CEO Todd Maddox — has a PhD in Computational and Psychological Science, meaning there’s no one better to explain why XR and your brain are a match made in heaven. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Todd Maddox. He is a cognitive design specialist. Todd is a PhD, and the CEO and founder of Cognitive Design and Statistical Consulting LLC. He’s also a learning scientist and a research fellow at Amalgam Insights. His passion is to apply his 25 years of psychological and neuroscientific expertise gained by managing a large human learning, memory, and performance laboratory to help build better education and training solutions. Todd has published over 200 peer reviewed scientific articles, resulting in over 10,000 academic citations and hundreds of speaking engagements. During his 25 year academic career, he’s awarded $10-million in federal grants from the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense to support his research. Since entering the private sector, Todd has embarked on a mission to translate the amazing body of research conducted in the ivory towers into plain English and help companies leverage this research to build better products. Todd is especially interested in applying his expertise in the psychology and neuroscience of learning, memory, and performance, and to use immersive technologies in manufacturing, health care, corporate training, and retail, to name a few. You can follow Todd on LinkedIn. Just look for “Todd Maddox PhD.” Todd, welcome to the show. Todd: Hey, Alan, it is fantastic to be here. Thank you. Alan: It’s such an honor. I’ve been reading your posts and your articles, and trying to get through some of your scientific papers is a challenge. It’s so much information there. Todd: Yeah, I hear you. And to be honest, my recommendation is to sort of skim the peer-reviewed stuff, because it does seem like it’s written in a foreign language, even though it is English. And the LinkedIn post and the more recent stuff, where I really try to talk in plain English, because if a scientist can’t present their work in plain English then there’s something wrong. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Alan: I love it. And one of the articles that was recently published was a report on VR as an empathy builder, through Tech Trends. Todd: Yeah. Alan: Here, I’m just going to read a quote from it: “Any profession that requires interpersonal interaction, such as education, retail, food service, call centers is better served with strong empathy.” Let’s start with that. Todd: Totally, yeah. Every one of those examples is a people example; people interacting with other people. I know we’ve got amazing technologies; we’ve got robots, we’ve got all these wonderful things that are making our lives better. But let’s face it, in the end, it’s about people interacting with other people and caring for other people, walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes. That is really just so critical. These technologies — in particular virtual reality, I would say — this is an immersive technology. I could be dropped into any environment. ThatR

We often talk about how XR technologies are great tools for education and training on this podcast. But why is that? Like, physiologically? Turns out, XR tickles the thalamus in ways traditional learning strategies never could, and that’s not us just whistling Dixie. Today’s guest — Cognitive Design & Statistical Consulting, LLC CEO Todd Maddox — has a PhD in Computational and Psychological Science, meaning there’s no one better to explain why XR and your brain are a match made in heaven. Alan: You’re listening to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is Todd Maddox. He is a cognitive design specialist. Todd is a PhD, and the CEO and founder of Cognitive Design and Statistical Consulting LLC. He’s also a learning scientist and a research fellow at Amalgam Insights. His passion is to apply his 25 years of psychological and neuroscientific expertise gained by managing a large human learning, memory, and performance laboratory to help build better education and training solutions. Todd has published over 200 peer reviewed scientific articles, resulting in over 10,000 academic citations and hundreds of speaking engagements. During his 25 year academic career, he’s awarded $10-million in federal grants from the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense to support his research. Since entering the private sector, Todd has embarked on a mission to translate the amazing body of research conducted in the ivory towers into plain English and help companies leverage this research to build better products. Todd is especially interested in applying his expertise in the psychology and neuroscience of learning, memory, and performance, and to use immersive technologies in manufacturing, health care, corporate training, and retail, to name a few. You can follow Todd on LinkedIn. Just look for “Todd Maddox PhD.” Todd, welcome to the show. Todd: Hey, Alan, it is fantastic to be here. Thank you. Alan: It’s such an honor. I’ve been reading your posts and your articles, and trying to get through some of your scientific papers is a challenge. It’s so much information there. Todd: Yeah, I hear you. And to be honest, my recommendation is to sort of skim the peer-reviewed stuff, because it does seem like it’s written in a foreign language, even though it is English. And the LinkedIn post and the more recent stuff, where I really try to talk in plain English, because if a scientist can’t present their work in plain English then there’s something wrong. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Alan: I love it. And one of the articles that was recently published was a report on VR as an empathy builder, through Tech Trends. Todd: Yeah. Alan: Here, I’m just going to read a quote from it: “Any profession that requires interpersonal interaction, such as education, retail, food service, call centers is better served with strong empathy.” Let’s start with that. Todd: Totally, yeah. Every one of those examples is a people example; people interacting with other people. I know we’ve got amazing technologies; we’ve got robots, we’ve got all these wonderful things that are making our lives better. But let’s face it, in the end, it’s about people interacting with other people and caring for other people, walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes. That is really just so critical. These technologies — in particular virtual reality, I would say — this is an immersive technology. I could be dropped into any environment. ThatR

Don’t let his impressive stature fool you; Virtual Reality Marketing CEO Terry Proto knows that, in an industry where there’s a ton of use cases and many roles to fill, it doesn’t hurt to be small. Heck, it usually pays to be! Terry joins Alan in a chat about how companies can best find their niche in the XR realm. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is the one and only: Terry Proto. He’s the CEO of Virtual Reality Marketing. Terry is an award winning digital imaging and digital games producer. He has over 15 years of production and sales experience in the US, Europe and Asia. And he’s been creating images since the very first version of 3D Studio back in the 90s, and has evolved over the years working on myriad projects, including agency work and other products and project endeavors. In a previous life, he struggled with getting clients and visibility consistently for his own creative studio, despite the quality of his work. And after connecting with a lot of CEOs in the XR space, he realized that his problem was a widespread problem. So for the past two years, Terry and his team have been on a mission to help studios and brands better connect for everyone’s benefit. To learn more about his company, Virtual Reality Marketing.com, go to virtualrealitymarketing.com. It is my absolute pleasure to welcome Terry to the show. Welcome to the show, Terry. Terry: Hey, Alan. Well, thank you very much. I love the intro. It’s really an honor to be on your podcast today. Alan: Thank you. It’s such an honor to have you on the podcast. I know we finally got to meet in person for the first time at AWE — Augmented World Expo — what, about three weeks ago now? Terry: Yeah. We connect with so many people, and it’s all digital and it’s all remote. So it truly feels good to shake someone’s hand now. [chuckles] Alan: I got a hug from you, which was awesome. Terry: [laughs] Exactly. Alan: You are a very strong man. I don’t know if you’re benchpressing Volkswagens in your spare time, but those of you who know Terry; he’s a very large, solid dude. Not just in physical stature, but in mindfulness and everything. And his passion shows through in the work that he does. I really want to start digging into that. So tell us about Virtual Reality Marketing, and talk about how you got into this. Terry: I think you nailed it in the intro. It really started with my problem as a producer. And you know, when you’re a producer, you’re in your own silo and you’re working on those products and you’ve got your clients, your team, you’re flying around for business meetings and events. And you connect with people, but it’s more superficial. And when I stopped being a producer, I took a step back and I started talking to a lot of people. And that’s when I realized that my problem was — I wouldn’t say everyone’s problem, but very common problem — and I looked around and I couldn’t find a solution for myself for years. And I figured it would be time to hack all this and solve this for everyone. Alan: So what is the solution that Virtual Reality Marketing is doing? You’re connecting agencies and big brands with studios. Is that correct? Terry: Yeah, exactly. Simply put, Virtual Reality Marketing, we’re the most comprehensive directory of AR, VR, 360 studios. And we are also focusing on building the largest XR case studies library. Right now we’re close to 150 on the site, and we are on track to have 500 by next year. The problem that we

Don’t let his impressive stature fool you; Virtual Reality Marketing CEO Terry Proto knows that, in an industry where there’s a ton of use cases and many roles to fill, it doesn’t hurt to be small. Heck, it usually pays to be! Terry joins Alan in a chat about how companies can best find their niche in the XR realm. Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is the one and only: Terry Proto. He’s the CEO of Virtual Reality Marketing. Terry is an award winning digital imaging and digital games producer. He has over 15 years of production and sales experience in the US, Europe and Asia. And he’s been creating images since the very first version of 3D Studio back in the 90s, and has evolved over the years working on myriad projects, including agency work and other products and project endeavors. In a previous life, he struggled with getting clients and visibility consistently for his own creative studio, despite the quality of his work. And after connecting with a lot of CEOs in the XR space, he realized that his problem was a widespread problem. So for the past two years, Terry and his team have been on a mission to help studios and brands better connect for everyone’s benefit. To learn more about his company, Virtual Reality Marketing.com, go to virtualrealitymarketing.com. It is my absolute pleasure to welcome Terry to the show. Welcome to the show, Terry. Terry: Hey, Alan. Well, thank you very much. I love the intro. It’s really an honor to be on your podcast today. Alan: Thank you. It’s such an honor to have you on the podcast. I know we finally got to meet in person for the first time at AWE — Augmented World Expo — what, about three weeks ago now? Terry: Yeah. We connect with so many people, and it’s all digital and it’s all remote. So it truly feels good to shake someone’s hand now. [chuckles] Alan: I got a hug from you, which was awesome. Terry: [laughs] Exactly. Alan: You are a very strong man. I don’t know if you’re benchpressing Volkswagens in your spare time, but those of you who know Terry; he’s a very large, solid dude. Not just in physical stature, but in mindfulness and everything. And his passion shows through in the work that he does. I really want to start digging into that. So tell us about Virtual Reality Marketing, and talk about how you got into this. Terry: I think you nailed it in the intro. It really started with my problem as a producer. And you know, when you’re a producer, you’re in your own silo and you’re working on those products and you’ve got your clients, your team, you’re flying around for business meetings and events. And you connect with people, but it’s more superficial. And when I stopped being a producer, I took a step back and I started talking to a lot of people. And that’s when I realized that my problem was — I wouldn’t say everyone’s problem, but very common problem — and I looked around and I couldn’t find a solution for myself for years. And I figured it would be time to hack all this and solve this for everyone. Alan: So what is the solution that Virtual Reality Marketing is doing? You’re connecting agencies and big brands with studios. Is that correct? Terry: Yeah, exactly. Simply put, Virtual Reality Marketing, we’re the most comprehensive directory of AR, VR, 360 studios. And we are also focusing on building the largest XR case studies library. Right now we’re close to 150 on the site, and we are on track to have 500 by next year. The problem that we

A plain room with a table, a few chairs, and a whiteboard has never sounded so…futuristic! But that’s one way to describe the technology behind meetingRoom, a VR space, where colleagues from around the world can gather and discuss business as if they were all in the same, plain ol’ multi-purpose room! meetingRoom CEO Jonny Cosgrove does a better job of describing it, so take a listen! Alan: Today’s guest is Jonny Cosgrove, founder and CEO at meetingRoom.io. Jonny is responsible for creating a new collaboration platform that allows anybody from multiple devices to be in one room and collaborate together. Jonny started his career volunteering and doing activism, before moving into events, marketing, and technology, operating in Dublin and Boston. He completed his MBA at Trinity College, Dublin, and began building the future of work, with a focus on sustainability, collaboration, and emerging technologies. You can learn more about Jonny and his team at meetingRoom.io. Jonny, welcome to the show. Jonny: Thanks for having me. Alan: Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure, Jonny. We’ve known each other quite a long time, through the VR/AR Association and through great calls like this. We’ve met in meetingRoom, and I’m really, really excited to share with the world what you guys are working on, because the work that you guys are doing is really pioneering how people will meet in the future — in now, not even in the future, but right now — how people are meeting and collaborating. And I think, as we move to a world where we start to really think about travel — not just international travel — but travel to and from work, having people drive two hours to work, back and forth every day. It’s really inefficient, and it’s a real time suck for everybody. Not to mention, creating disastrous effects for the environment, as well. So let’s dive into this. Explain who you are, and your company, and what does meetingRoom do? Jonny: No problem at all. So I agree. Pollution sucks. Unnecessary commutes absolutely suck. What we’re trying to do is make sure the collaboration is easier. One thing we found everyone can agree on is that collaboration is easier and more effective when teams work together in the same place. So, meetingRoom is a service that allows people to work with each other, using familiar meeting room facilities — like whiteboards — in a virtual environment, from anywhere. We’ve made this accessible from anywhere. We made it secure, and we’ve made these places in the spaces persistent. So, when you write in a whiteboard and you return next week, it’s still there, just like in real life. And what we found is, that it allows employees to feel a higher level of immersive engagement with what’s happening in the actual meeting. It keeps you focused in that time — in that moment — and lets you have more effective meetings. Even though employees are spread all over the world. Alan: You mentioned something… heh heh, I thought it was funny because as you said, “Oh, yeah, you know, you put all your notes on the whiteboard and just like the real world, they’re there when you come back.” I was thinking, no, that’s exactly the opposite of the real world! Jonny: [laughs] Alan: Somebody’s erased all your notes, and you’re like, “no! I didn’t take a picture of it!” Jonny: Thank you for helping me explain it. So, one of the thingsthat actually happens a lot is that exact issue. That’s one of our own internal metrics; we’re working to get this through this point, “how are you using their internal rooms ex

A plain room with a table, a few chairs, and a whiteboard has never sounded so…futuristic! But that’s one way to describe the technology behind meetingRoom, a VR space, where colleagues from around the world can gather and discuss business as if they were all in the same, plain ol’ multi-purpose room! meetingRoom CEO Jonny Cosgrove does a better job of describing it, so take a listen! Alan: Today’s guest is Jonny Cosgrove, founder and CEO at meetingRoom.io. Jonny is responsible for creating a new collaboration platform that allows anybody from multiple devices to be in one room and collaborate together. Jonny started his career volunteering and doing activism, before moving into events, marketing, and technology, operating in Dublin and Boston. He completed his MBA at Trinity College, Dublin, and began building the future of work, with a focus on sustainability, collaboration, and emerging technologies. You can learn more about Jonny and his team at meetingRoom.io. Jonny, welcome to the show. Jonny: Thanks for having me. Alan: Oh, it’s my absolute pleasure, Jonny. We’ve known each other quite a long time, through the VR/AR Association and through great calls like this. We’ve met in meetingRoom, and I’m really, really excited to share with the world what you guys are working on, because the work that you guys are doing is really pioneering how people will meet in the future — in now, not even in the future, but right now — how people are meeting and collaborating. And I think, as we move to a world where we start to really think about travel — not just international travel — but travel to and from work, having people drive two hours to work, back and forth every day. It’s really inefficient, and it’s a real time suck for everybody. Not to mention, creating disastrous effects for the environment, as well. So let’s dive into this. Explain who you are, and your company, and what does meetingRoom do? Jonny: No problem at all. So I agree. Pollution sucks. Unnecessary commutes absolutely suck. What we’re trying to do is make sure the collaboration is easier. One thing we found everyone can agree on is that collaboration is easier and more effective when teams work together in the same place. So, meetingRoom is a service that allows people to work with each other, using familiar meeting room facilities — like whiteboards — in a virtual environment, from anywhere. We’ve made this accessible from anywhere. We made it secure, and we’ve made these places in the spaces persistent. So, when you write in a whiteboard and you return next week, it’s still there, just like in real life. And what we found is, that it allows employees to feel a higher level of immersive engagement with what’s happening in the actual meeting. It keeps you focused in that time — in that moment — and lets you have more effective meetings. Even though employees are spread all over the world. Alan: You mentioned something… heh heh, I thought it was funny because as you said, “Oh, yeah, you know, you put all your notes on the whiteboard and just like the real world, they’re there when you come back.” I was thinking, no, that’s exactly the opposite of the real world! Jonny: [laughs] Alan: Somebody’s erased all your notes, and you’re like, “no! I didn’t take a picture of it!” Jonny: Thank you for helping me explain it. So, one of the thingsthat actually happens a lot is that exact issue. That’s one of our own internal metrics; we’re working to get this through this point, “how are you using their internal rooms ex

If you need well-researched info on the trends and changing tides of emerging tech to feel confident dipping your toes into the XR sea, SuperData’s Carter Rogers has you covered. As their chief analyst, Rogers specializes in turning data into actionable intelligence, tailored to the needs of businesses who are just starting to explore the space. In today’s episode, he chats with Alan about what all the data can mean. Alan: Today’s guest is Carter Rogers, and he’s the principal analyst at SuperData, a Nielsen company. He regularly advises Fortune 500 brands and Triple-A game publishers on how to succeed in the interactive media space. As SuperData’s lead XR analyst, Carter is responsible for the company’s reports on immersive technology. A sought-after authority on interactive media industry, Carter has presented at every event around the world, including Casual Connect, the LA Games Conference, and the VR/AR Global Summit. His commentary has also appeared in USA Today, Variety, The Guardian, and Verge. He creates and oversees interactive reports and segments, including virtual and augmented reality, eSports, mobile games, and he’s really amazing at pulling together all the data that businesses are using to make real business decisions, on where to invest their capital. You can learn more about this data at superdataresearch.com. I want to welcome Carter to the show. Welcome! Carter: Thank you very much for having me, Alan. Alan: My absolute pleasure. I’m really thrilled and excited to have you on the show today. I know personally, we’ve used your reports for our company several times, and every time it’s been pragmatic, not pie-in-the-sky numbers; really validated, well-thought-out reports on where the industry is, where it’s going, who the players are. I really want to start digging into this, and learn more about SuperData. For the people listening, I want them to walk away knowing more about the industry and know where they can find more information. So, what is SuperData? Carter: Well, yeah, glad you read all our reports; that’s what we like to hear! To give everyone a overhead view, we’re a market research firm. We’re part of Nielsen as of late 2018, and the original focus of the company was on digital games — video games, primarily. But we since branched out to cover other areas, like eSports, game streaming, and of course, augmented/virtual/mixed reality. Started covering those areas when they were very tied to games, especially when the original Oculus Rift was launched. But as the XR space has broadened to include more enterprise-focused applications, we have also adjusted our research accordingly, and really cover the enterprise space as well; providing things like market estimates and things like that, to a wide variety of companies in VR and AR. Alan: Ok, so, you provide market estimates. Where is this market going? What’s one stat that’s going to blow everybody’s mind? Carter: I’d say the main thing is augmented and mixed reality are growing fast, but mainly in the enterprise space. I’d say that through at least 2022, the enterprise will account for the majority of augmented and mixed reality headsets like Hololens and Magic Leap. Enterprise will account for the majority of those through at least 2022. It’s really going to be the enterprise that drives this very hot space in the XR industry. Alan: You think it’s following a similar trend to mobile cell phones? BlackBerry started off kind of as an enterprise tool, as well. Is that what we’re seeing here? The technology’s maybe not quite ready for the mainstream adoption, but it has very real, very useful bu

If you need well-researched info on the trends and changing tides of emerging tech to feel confident dipping your toes into the XR sea, SuperData’s Carter Rogers has you covered. As their chief analyst, Rogers specializes in turning data into actionable intelligence, tailored to the needs of businesses who are just starting to explore the space. In today’s episode, he chats with Alan about what all the data can mean. Alan: Today’s guest is Carter Rogers, and he’s the principal analyst at SuperData, a Nielsen company. He regularly advises Fortune 500 brands and Triple-A game publishers on how to succeed in the interactive media space. As SuperData’s lead XR analyst, Carter is responsible for the company’s reports on immersive technology. A sought-after authority on interactive media industry, Carter has presented at every event around the world, including Casual Connect, the LA Games Conference, and the VR/AR Global Summit. His commentary has also appeared in USA Today, Variety, The Guardian, and Verge. He creates and oversees interactive reports and segments, including virtual and augmented reality, eSports, mobile games, and he’s really amazing at pulling together all the data that businesses are using to make real business decisions, on where to invest their capital. You can learn more about this data at superdataresearch.com. I want to welcome Carter to the show. Welcome! Carter: Thank you very much for having me, Alan. Alan: My absolute pleasure. I’m really thrilled and excited to have you on the show today. I know personally, we’ve used your reports for our company several times, and every time it’s been pragmatic, not pie-in-the-sky numbers; really validated, well-thought-out reports on where the industry is, where it’s going, who the players are. I really want to start digging into this, and learn more about SuperData. For the people listening, I want them to walk away knowing more about the industry and know where they can find more information. So, what is SuperData? Carter: Well, yeah, glad you read all our reports; that’s what we like to hear! To give everyone a overhead view, we’re a market research firm. We’re part of Nielsen as of late 2018, and the original focus of the company was on digital games — video games, primarily. But we since branched out to cover other areas, like eSports, game streaming, and of course, augmented/virtual/mixed reality. Started covering those areas when they were very tied to games, especially when the original Oculus Rift was launched. But as the XR space has broadened to include more enterprise-focused applications, we have also adjusted our research accordingly, and really cover the enterprise space as well; providing things like market estimates and things like that, to a wide variety of companies in VR and AR. Alan: Ok, so, you provide market estimates. Where is this market going? What’s one stat that’s going to blow everybody’s mind? Carter: I’d say the main thing is augmented and mixed reality are growing fast, but mainly in the enterprise space. I’d say that through at least 2022, the enterprise will account for the majority of augmented and mixed reality headsets like Hololens and Magic Leap. Enterprise will account for the majority of those through at least 2022. It’s really going to be the enterprise that drives this very hot space in the XR industry. Alan: You think it’s following a similar trend to mobile cell phones? BlackBerry started off kind of as an enterprise tool, as well. Is that what we’re seeing here? The technology’s maybe not quite ready for the mainstream adoption, but it has very real, very useful bu

Alan and his guests often espouse investing in XR on this podcast, but that comes with the implicit understanding that you should expect a return on that investment. Cameron Ayres from Sector 5 Digital discusses strategies for maximizing that ROI. Alan: Today's guest is Cameron Ayres, the director of innovation at Sector 5 Digital, a digital agency specializing in augmented reality and virtual reality applications for the enterprise. His primary role is developing the strategy and implementation of emerging technology, to best enhance digital projects. Sector 5 Digital helps companies transform their brands by creating brilliant digital content for marketing, communications, sales, and entertainment. Clients include many Fortune 100 clients, including American Airlines, Bell, IBM, Intel, and many more. You can learn more about Cameron and Sector 5 at Sector5Digital.com. Cameron, welcome to the show. Cameron: Thanks for having me, Alan. Alan: My pleasure. I'm so looking forward to this. Some of the stuff you guys are doing is mind-blowing. I had a chance to look at some of the things you're doing -- bringing Bell helicopters, their new drones, to VR, and allowing people to experience these. You've done work with airlines, with car companies, with Harry Potter. Describe what Sector 5 digital does, and some of the projects and things that you're most proud of. Cameron: Sure. At a high level, what we focus on is coming into these companies that are doing a lot of great work, but they just want to kick it up to the next notch. They want to tell stories in a new way. They want to increase their ROI, is the bottom line to a lot of it. "How can we do things faster, with exerting less effort and less man hours?" That's where virtual reality, and augmented reality, and a lot of other different media come into play. We come in and we'll actually sit down and brainstorm around, "what are the problems, and how can we come up with solutions?" And it's funny how many clients you'll interact with that come to you with a solution. "We want a hologram," or "we want virtual reality." But what we specialize in is taking a step back and saying, "let's do a deep dive. Let's talk about what virtual reality accomplishes, and if that is the best medium." And then, if it is, we can move forward with brainstorming. But it's so important to not fall into the trap nowadays, of trying to make the next gimmick... or, to do it just because the technology's cool. Let's do it with a sense of purpose. A lot of what I do is try to take new and emerging technology -- obviously right now, VR/AR/XR; all that falls into it -- and using that to enhance messaging and storytelling, training, simulation, all of that type of stuff. It boils down to two words for me, which is "presence" and "experience." You have the presence, for things like training, for things like real-time engineering. You really feel like you're there. Then you have the experience side of it, which is more the storytelling, the marketing; let me actually go on a mission, and something that doesn't exist yet, and get a feeling for how that's going to change warfare, how that's going to change my ride to work every day. A lot of it focuses around messaging, storytelling, and training. Alan: You've done everything from -- like you said -- storytelling and training. What are the big, open spaces for companies? Let's say you're a medium-sized business. You see XR, you're going, "well, I have no idea where to get started." What is that low-hanging fruit for businesses to get involved, and just start with this technology? Cameron: I've noticed that -- and

Alan and his guests often espouse investing in XR on this podcast, but that comes with the implicit understanding that you should expect a return on that investment. Cameron Ayres from Sector 5 Digital discusses strategies for maximizing that ROI. Alan: Today’s guest is Cameron Ayres, the director of innovation at Sector 5 Digital, a digital agency specializing in augmented reality and virtual reality applications for the enterprise. His primary role is developing the strategy and implementation of emerging technology, to best enhance digital projects. Sector 5 Digital helps companies transform their brands by creating brilliant digital content for marketing, communications, sales, and entertainment. Clients include many Fortune 100 clients, including American Airlines, Bell, IBM, Intel, and many more. You can learn more about Cameron and Sector 5 at Sector5Digital.com. Cameron, welcome to the show. Cameron: Thanks for having me, Alan. Alan: My pleasure. I’m so looking forward to this. Some of the stuff you guys are doing is mind-blowing. I had a chance to look at some of the things you’re doing — bringing Bellll helicopters, their new drones, to VR, and allowing people to experience these. You’ve done work with airlines, with car companies, with Harry Potter. Describe what Sector 5 digital does, and some of the projects and things that you’re most proud of. Cameron: Sure. At a high level, what we focus on is coming into these companies that are doing a lot of great work, but they just want to kick it up to the next notch. They want to tell stories in a new way. They want to increase their ROI, is the bottom line to a lot of it. “How can we do things faster, with exerting less effort and less man hours?” That’s where virtual reality, and augmented reality, and a lot of other different media come into play. We come in and we’ll actually sit down and brainstorm around, “what are the problems, and how can we come up with solutions?” And it’s funny how many clients you’ll interact with that come to you with a solution. “We want a hologram,” or “we want virtual reality.” But what we specialize in is taking a step back and saying, “let’s do a deep dive. Let’s talk about what virtual reality accomplishes, and if that is the best medium.” And then, if it is, we can move forward with brainstorming. But it’s so important to not fall into the trap nowadays, of trying to make the next gimmick… or, to do it just because the technology’s cool. Let’s do it with a sense of purpose. A lot of what I do is try to take new and emerging technology — obviously right now, VR/AR/XR; all that falls into it — and using that to enhance messaging and storytelling, training, simulation, all of that type of stuff. It boils down to two words for me, which is “presence” and “experience.” You have the presence, for things like training, for things like real-time engineering. You really feel like you’re there. Then you have the experience side of it, which is more the storytelling, the marketing; let me actually go on a mission, and something that doesn’t exist yet, and get a feeling for how that’s going to change warfare, how that’s going to change my ride to work every day. A lot of it focuses around messaging, storytelling, and training. Alan: You’ve done everything from — like you said — storytelling and training. What are the big, open spaces for companies? Let’s say you’re a medium-sized business. You see XR, you’re going, “well, I have no idea where to get started.” What is that low-hanging fruit for businesses to get involved, and

Download PDF Welcome to Larisa English Club #17 What’s in The News? It’s True: Coffee Can Add Years to Your Life. Speaking Practice. Catching a Bus. English Grammar. Comparative Adjectives and Quantifiers. What’s in The News? What’s in The News? It’s True: Coffee Can Add Years to Your Life. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? For many Americans, the day begins by trudging to the coffee pot or stopping for a daily latte before rushing into the office. Coffee is a daily ritual in Blue Zones areas, as well. Sardinians, Ikarians and Nicoyans start their days with a cup, lightly sweetened without cream. In addition to a daily cup of coffee, Blue Zones centenarians drink water, tea and wine. While coffee is often a hotly-debated health topic, it’s shown to carry many health benefits. In all five original Blue Zones areas, people drink up to two or three cups of black coffee per day! The American Heart Association found that consuming coffee, both caffeinated and decaf, was associated with a lower risk of total mortality. Other major studies confirm that coffee drinkers live longer than those who don’t drink it, and have lower risks of early death. Five science-backed ways coffee benefits life expectancy and overall health: It provides essential antioxidants. Coffee, similar to Cannonau wine from Sardinia, leafy green vegetables and blueberries, contains polyphenols that are effective at neutralizing free radicals and helping to prevent some diseases. In a study published by The Journal of Nutrition, consumption of coffee, wine and vegetables reduced the risk of major chronic degenerative diseases. The antioxidant intake was most drastically affected by the intake of coffee. For most Americans, coffee provides more than just a jolt of energy—it’s where we get the majority of our daily antioxidants. Speaking Practice. Catching a Bus. Steve: Is this where I catch the bus for the zoo? Alan: You can take a T­30 from here, but then you have to walk about six blocks. Steve: That doesn’t sound too bad. Alan: Actually, if you go to the bus stop in the next block, you can take a Z­8 which will let you right off in front of the zoo. Steve: Maybe that’s what I’ll do. Thanks a lot. Alan: You’re welcome. These quantifiers can be used both to show a “more” difference and a “less” difference: This car is a bit more expensive than this motorcycle. This motorcycle is a bit less expensive than this car. This house is way bigger than that apartment. That apartment is way smaller than this house. These quantifiers CANNOT be used with the “not as_____as” structure: My brother is much not as old as me.(Not correct) My brother is much younger than me. (Correct) Jill is a little not as tall as Kim. (Not correct) Jill is a little shorter than Kim. (Correct) Bonus grammar! More polite ways to say something with tag questions. She is so short, isn’t she? (Not polite) She isn’t very tall, is she? (Polite) This room is so dirty, isn’t it? (Impolite) Read more here https://larisaenglishclub.com/pdf-resources/larisa-english-club

A Nonprofit is a Businesswith Alan Harrison [caption id="attachment_1275" align="alignleft" width="200"]     Alan Harrison, CDCF[/caption] Alan Harrisonis a nonprofit executive with over 25 years of for-profit and nonprofit experience in a diverse set of roles. Born in Pennsylvania, Harrison holds a B.S. degree in Biology from Geneva College and an M.S. degree in Biology (specializing in Ecology) from Lehigh University. There is a pervading view that nonprofits are somehow less serious than for-profits. I have run across this several times in many situations. Some people think that somehow the money just rolls in and work is a big party every day. There is also a view that everyone works for a pittance and you couldn't really support yourself or a family working for a nonprofit. These views could not be further from the truth. After many years of experience in nonprofit I have learned that a nonprofit is a business, just a different kind of business. For-profit businesses make goods or services in pursuit of money for shareholders or owners. This is the “profit” piece. Nonprofit businesses also make goods or services. The difference is that the nonprofit business is not in it to make money for an owner or shareholder, they are there to make good of some sort for a group of people that will benefit from the good or service. In simplified terms I like to think of nonprofits as business that make good not money. Nonprofits businesses are not a party. Everyone who works at a nonprofit goes to work every day and works just like anyone else. If you do your job you keep it and succeed, if you don't do it you get disciplined and eventually lose it. Nonprofit businesses have all the same functions as for-profit businesses. There are finance, HR and IT people. Someone cleans the offices and takes out the trash. Any function you can associate with a for-profit business is there with a nonprofit business. It may look a little different, but it is there. The fundraisers are analogous to the sales people in a for-profit business. Read the Interview Transcript Hugh Ballou: Welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. It's Hugh Ballou and Russell Dennis. It's kind of an interesting day here in central western Virginia. We're expecting some snow tonight and a storm on the weekend. How is it in the Rocky Mountain high of Colorado? Russell Dennis: Well, it's actually sunny today. It's a bit chilly, but it's very sunny. We're just going through a typical Colorado winter. I don't worry about it. If I don't like it, it will be different in five or ten minutes. Hugh: It may make people feel cool because they might be listening to this podcast in the heat of summer. Think about how cool it is. I got a little hair standing up here. Russell, you don't have that problem. You can't see him on the podcast, but he's a smart man – he doesn't waste any energy growing hair. Russell: I haven't had a bad hair day in a long time. Hugh: I'm thinking you haven't had a bad day. It's always a good day with Russell David Dennis. We have a person who is in the space of philosophy and practice that we are, Russell. It's Alan Harrison. We met on LinkedIn and had some conversations. He said he'd like to share his wisdom with nonprofit leaders. Alan, welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange. Alan Harrison: Thank you, Hugh, and thank you, Russell for having me here. I'm very excited to be here and looking forward to today. Hugh: Tell people a little bit about who Alan Harrison is. Alan: I've been in the nonprofit space for over 15 years now. Before that, I was in the for-profit space for almost that long. I spent a lot of time in the water treatment industry. I have a Masters degree in biology. Toward the end of that part of my career, I wanted to make a change and moved into the nonprofit space. I moved from technology into operations. Most of my nonprofit career has been spent in administration, HR. I have been vice president of administration. I have been CEO of a small nonprofit, running things from an administrative and financial standpoint as opposed to technology. That was a big change for me, but I have never looked back. I enjoy it and really love the nonprofit space. Hugh: We are talking about good sound business principles today. You've come from the business world. We use the funny terms “for-profit” and “nonprofit.” Right there is where we set up a false premise with the word “nonprofit.” We have had guests who talk about it being a social benefit or a tax-exempt charity. One guest gave us the title “for-purpose” organization. You and I spoke a little bit last week. You're very passionate about the principles that you teach and bring to this tax-exempt world of charities that are really cause-based. We're working to improve people's lives. The bottom line is ROL, Return on Life, the impact that we have in people's lives. Let's start from why do you think it's important that these kinds of organizations, which we will use the word “nonprofit” because that is the sector we're talking to—we're talking to clergy, leaders of associations that are tax-exempt like a chamber of commerce, or cause-based community nonprofits, all over. Why is it important for us as leaders in this sector to understand business principles? Alan: The first point that I would make is that a nonprofit is a business. I like the term “not for profit” because we can make a profit. There is nothing wrong with making money. Certainly we raise money. Nonprofits offer goods and services, and they charge for those things. There is nothing wrong with that. The difference is that they take that profit not to make money; they take that profit to make good. There is a principle they are trying to advance, whether that is feeding people who are hungry, trying to make people healthy, global health, or just the health clinic in your local community. It doesn't matter. They are taking that money, whether it's a profit or a donation, and using it to make good in that community. The reason we need to keep business principles in mind is because it is a business. All the things that a business does, a nonprofit does. We have finance people, and administrators. We sign contracts. We have buildings we need to upkeep. We have employees. We have HR departments. Everything that a business does, a nonprofit has to do as well. You might say they don't have sales, but they really do. Fundraisers are analogous to sales. Every function you find in a business or a nonprofit you would find in the opposite organization. Hugh: We set ourselves up for failure when we minimize those things you just talked about. We expect it's going to happen. Even at the detriment, we say we can't make a profit, or we can't charge too much money for that, or we have to dumb down. What are some of the scripts people tell themselves and others that make some of those things you talked about difficult? Alan: First off, when you talk to people about a nonprofit, they think somehow the money just comes. One of the biggest errors I see people make in politics and the nonprofit world is they assume that if they do good or the right thing, somebody will support that. That's not the case anymore. There was a time a lot of years ago where you could go to a donor and say, “Hey, I'm doing really great work. You need to support what I'm doing.” The donor would say, “You are doing good work. I do want to support what you're doing.” It's not that way anymore. We're well past that. We are in a time where it's an exchange of value. Just like if I buy a pair of pants from a clothier near me, I want to give him money. That is the value he gets; the value I get is a nice pair of pants. It's no different for a nonprofit. If I am going to a donor, I need to explain to them the value proposition: what they are getting for the dollars they are giving to me. It may be marketing. It may be publicity. It may be something that encourages their employees because employees are interested in social enterprises and organizations that make a difference. Whatever that value proposition is, I need to go to my donors with. A lot of people don't realize that. They think if they are doing a good thing, they will give me money. The great nonprofits, the ones that are really successful, understand that. Hugh: Those in business build a strategy. At least, some of them do. At SynerVision, we consider the strategy to be central. As you know, I'm a musical conductor. If we don't have a musical score, nobody knows what to play. We go into our space with all our volunteers and board members and staff and say, “Go,” and they don't know where to go. There is a lack of understanding where they can be engaged and what they are supposed to do. Part of that is understanding what our brand is and what our unique value proposition is. You just spoke about value propositions when you are making a presentation. I don't think we're very good at either defining it or expressing it. What do you say about how we get there? Alan: You mentioned brand, which is important for a nonprofit. As a nonprofit, you have your reputation and your brand. People need to be crystal clear on what that brand is. When you think of a good nonprofit, the Nature Conservancys, and the CAREs, and the American Cancer Society, people know what those organizations are about. They know exactly what the American Cancer Society is. They know exactly what CARE does. They understand that brand identity. Those organizations understand their brand identity is what is out there. It's no different than Google. People know Google's brand identity and Microsoft's brand identity. It's the same kind of an idea. It needs to be marketed the same way as those organizations would. One thing I always recommend to a nonprofit is get your values. Know what your values are. Understand what they are. Put them first and foremost on your webpage. If you go to the really successful organizations, one of the first things you will see on their webpages is what their values are. Lead with those values. Lead with that brand. Lead with that understanding. That is what a lot of nonprofits don't do. They don't have a 30-second elevator speech where they can distill their brand down into a few short sentences that make people go, “Oh, I'll get that.” That will allow you to understand whether you can connect with that person. Some people won't be interested in what your mission is, and that's fine. But it will allow you to connect with those who are interested in your mission and find out who those people are pretty quickly into the conversation. You don't want to spend six months or a year cultivating a donor who really isn't interested in your mission. You want someone who will be clued into what you're doing. Hugh: Russell, that's one of the messages you bring up very often with board members and donors. Find out what they're interested in. Do you want to chime in and come up with another question for him? Russell: Everyone has a different motivation. When you're talking about value, which is a word that is rarely used in nonprofit circles, the value is in the mind of the supporter. You're going to be talking to multiple audiences. You have a message for volunteers. You have a message for donors. You have a message for people in the community. Really what we're talking about is profit. With nonprofits, there is a profit. There is a social profit. There is a monetary profit. The discussion that Alan started with values, that is very important because when you look at where it is that you see yourself fitting, where you want people to go as a result of being exposed to your services and products, what is it that you ultimately want them to have? What is the experience they're going to get? You almost have to set the table for your own measures in a sense by explaining where people start and where they end up. That is something that you measure. Everything doesn't fit in a pivot table. There is a place for where Berny calls the dolphin story and the results. People want results. Donors are very sophisticated now. Are you delivering results? What do those results look like? As a business, it's really important to run a business like a business. It's about good stewardship. Alan is kind of like me. You had a different career, and then you transitioned into this career. What would you say was the biggest surprise when you got when you moved out of your old career into the nonprofit space? What was the one thing that was the biggest shock to you? Alan: I think for me, when I moved from the for-profit to the nonprofit world, I remember I was moving into the Nature Conservancy. Someone there called my old boss and said, “Can Alan do this job?” He said, “Of course he can. It's an NGO.” That's what surprised me. I have never been anywhere where people work harder or where people were more talented than the nonprofits I work in. People have this view that it's kind of a party or money somehow comes rolling in or we don't really work; we just lay around all day. That to me was the biggest surprise. When I went to the CDC Foundation, it was during the ebola crisis in Africa. I have never seen people more dedicated, work harder, more talented, than anywhere I have been in my life. This idea that people aren't working or people don't work hard really was a surprise to me. I was taken aback. I have become a nonprofit evangelist when I talk to people. We have analogous to sales. We have finance. We have HR. We have IT. Every function you can think of, people are working hard. You have to do your job just like anywhere else. If you don't do your job, you lose your job. There is this view that somehow it's not serious. Hugh: What Russell and I do as a resource for leadership and strategy and performance, it's harder in this sector. I served inside the church for 40 years. There is a really good case of dumbing down and not having the standards you're talking about. It's the same as any other generic nonprofit, except churches think people will walk in the door. We have lost in the mainline denominations our relevance. I still believe in it. I'm a critic of it to help it. But it's the mindset that we develop that is a scarcity mindset. With scarcity thinking, the mindset ought to be abundance. God has given you abundance, but you have to be a good steward of it. The piece that Russell brought in, one of our colleagues, Berny Dohrmann, runs a business growth conference for 25 years. It attracts entrepreneurs. They come in from the business side and the nonprofit side. There are characteristics that are the same. The dolphin thing he was referring to is “Here is my sweet little dolphin,” but there is no substance to your ask. You just are petting your dolphin, and you want everyone else to pet it. The point you're making is there is a quantifiable value you bring. Instead of talking about ROI, we talk about ROl, Return on Impact. It's really bottom line impact. We take your values. We have to be clear on what we value. As we do strategy, we take core values to another level. People write these words that they don't understand. We develop guiding principles. How do you make decisions based on these concepts? Being a principle-based organization, what we're now teaching nonprofits is how to develop your strategy and develop the principles. You will take that strategy and integrate it into performance, which is as you probably have experienced is a big gap. We have a lot of well-intended, passionate, dedicated people who are low on the performance scale. Really, these people want to do more. In many circumstances, they work harder here than they do in their day jobs. Do you want to come back at us with some other thoughts? Alan: I would agree that people work hard in nonprofits. Some of the people I have talked to who transitioned from for-profits to nonprofits are saying they work harder now than they ever did in the for-profit world. You have to wear a lot of hats. Money is scarce. There is a lot of challenges. Another challenge for nonprofits you touched on is the impact and measuring the impact. Donors want to hear about impact. That can be a challenge for nonprofit. In a for-profit, you can look at your balance sheet and your P&L sheet for the quarter. You can say you sold 27,000 widgets. I made this kind of gross margin and net profit. It's fairly simple. But for a nonprofit, if you are a single cause nonprofit, you feed hungry families for example, or you feed homeless people, you have one number to work with. But a lot of nonprofits do multiple things. It becomes extremely challenging to measure impact. I have been in nonprofits that had up to 80 or 100 active projects. How do you measure impact across 100 active projects? That becomes difficult. You start to focus on ones that are most important or most impactful. There is no question that you don't just have a number. We did 27% this year. Our gross margin is 12%. That is not how a nonprofit works. When you look at your impact, you have to break it down by project, by population you serve, by the areas you serve. It's a huge challenge for a nonprofit. Russell: I think the place people have to begin at is- I was looking at a book, The Social Profit Handbook by David Grant. A lot of times, when we think of having programs evaluated or people coming in and assessing, we look at it like other people assessing us. The model that we teach at SynerVision and where people bring to is look at how can we do what we're doing better once we decide what it is that we're doing. If we don't make a decision or try to measure what we're doing, other people will do that for us. The purpose of evaluation is not to get a grade to give a better check. The purpose of evaluating and benchmarking is to get better at what you're doing, deliver more impact, and find new ways to collect that information so people can understand that value. It's having the people you're working with talk about how being affiliated with your organization has made a difference. There is a lot that goes into storytelling. It captures that information that won't fit neatly on the pivot table that helps us connect with people emotionally that helps define some of that impact. That ROI is return on impact, or return on influence, these types of things. The thought pattern that people have around nonprofits really needs to change. You addressed that very well, Alan: how people seem to think it's quick and easy. There are a lot of people who are reluctant to write a check because they say, “I'm not interested in paying your rent. I want to make sure every dollar I give you goes into the program.” If you don't have an infrastructure to deliver it, you don't have a program. How do we create a shift in that focus with people? What are some things you've done to help shift that thinking around? Alan: I think your point about overhead is important. No one goes to Google and says, “You shouldn't have a finance department. Those should be all volunteers. You shouldn't have an IT department. Those all should be volunteers.” You know what you get with volunteers. You have very dedicated people who have little time, and they can't necessarily put in the time you need them to put in. Just like any other business, you have to pay for what you need. Imagine a large nonprofit depending on a volunteer CFO. It will be a mess. Or a volunteer IT department. It will be a mess. You have to have a well-oiled, well-run organization. You're competing in the same talent pool. There is a subset of people who want to be in nonprofit. They love the nonprofit, they love the mission, and I honestly believe the employees who stick around in nonprofits are the ones who love the mission. You're still competing for the same talent pool. If I need to hire a CFO, that CFO could go to another organization or for-profit. The idea that we shouldn't be paying for overhead, or whatever that number is, doesn't make a lot of sense. The finances need to be transparent. They need to be reasonable. You shouldn't be spending 90% on overhead obviously. But you have to have enough of a spending to hire people who have families and car payments and house payments and those kinds of things. I think we need to have honest conversations with the foundations, the corporations, and the other donors who seem to have this mindset that this should all be for free. It's not. They want a good product. They want excellent services to the population that we serve, or the cause that we serve, so they have to understand that comes with a cost. You have to have good people to have a good product. You have to have good people to offer a good service. You have to pay those people so they can live; they have to send their kids to school and pay their car payments. Russell: The flip side of that is there are some nonprofits who think, “Hey, we're doing worthy work. Why aren't people coming? Why won't they write us a check?” There is that other piece where from the side of the nonprofit, they don't always understand what people are looking for, what motivates them to support a cause. How do you have that conversation with nonprofit leaders to get them to understand the sort of things that will motivate people to lend that support? Alan: You touched on it when you talked about value. It's an exchange of value. There is some value that that donor has to be getting from the nonprofit, whether it's a demonstration to their employee base that they are making a difference in the world and they are a socially conscious organization, whether it's a marketing campaign that they can build around the work they're doing with an organization, whether it's something that makes them feel good. It doesn't matter what that value is. What you have to do as a nonprofit is understand what value they're interested in and determine if you can supply that value. If you can't supply that value a particular donor is looking for, stop talking to that donor. You're wasting your time, and you're wasting their time. Find a different donor that would be interested in the value you offer. If I sell suits and somebody is not looking for a suit, I probably don't need to talk to that person, and they probably don't need to talk to me. It's the same thing. Russell: Is there a point where you say a lot of nonprofit leaders hanging on beyond where they probably should simply say ‘Next”? Is it a common problem for nonprofit leaders to continue to try to implement strategies to attract donors that they might just not be the right fit for? Alan: I think it's harder for a nonprofit leader to say that. As nonprofit leaders, we care so much about what we do. We care so much about our cause that it's hard to imagine someone else wouldn't care about that. It's hard to see maybe that someone doesn't care about that. We'll keep pushing a value that maybe that other person isn't interested in. But there is somebody who is interested. Your time is better spent finding that person who is interested. Hugh: It's a good match. People have a philanthropic side. They want to volunteer. But really, they don't want to volunteer for everything. We sometimes talk people into volunteering when they really don't want to. Then they don't perform. We blame them when it's really our fault. We have a vision of what they ought to be interested in instead of having a conversation. That also goes with putting people on boards and putting them in slots, like a treasurer, secretary, communications. We put people in the wrong place. Going back to what you were saying about the misconceptions, I am not sure if you have seen the TED talk by Dan Pallotta, “The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong.” Have you seen that video? Alan: I haven't. Hugh: Look it up. It's the stuff you guys were talking about. We think we can't spend money on marketing. We think we can't take risks. We lose a few hundred dollars, and people will go insane. Disney has a $200 million flop on a movie or more than that today; that's just the cost of doing business. The other one is this overhead thing. It's a fallacy. You're paying people. We can't pay decent salaries. You're going to give up this big corporate job and work for less money, and we expect you to do the job of three people for a third of the pay. There are some really unreasonable expectations we have. Those are the biggest myths, which are totally wrong in my book. What do you think? Alan: I agree. I have seen people on boards that clearly weren't interested. They don't do anything. Six months later, they resign. It doesn't make sense. You have to understand what drives that person. You have to take the time. The myth that you can't spend money or take risks, one of my favorite quotes is from Samuel Johnson, who was one of the Founding Fathers of the country. He said, “If all danger must be removed, then nothing will ever be accomplished.” The idea is that if you reduce the risk to zero, you won't accomplish anything. That is an absolute fallacy that we can't have any risk in a nonprofit organization. All risks have to be considered. They have to be logical. You have to have reasons behind them. When things fail, you have to learn from them. I had a boss years ago who said, “Fail faster.” I thought that was crazy until I realized what he was saying was there is going to be failures in life. Accept them when you get to them, move past them, and get on to something else. Things are going to fail. You will try a program that won't work. You will try to serve a new population that doesn't work. You have to accept that risk you took in trying to serve that new population isn't working and get on to something where you really can have an impact. Hugh: Underneath of what you were talking about, this conversation of embracing good, sound operational principles, they are the same for a for-profit or a not-for-profit organization. But there are some subtle differences that actually we have a lot more regulations in the nonprofit arena. We have to be careful with how money is used. Especially if there is designated gifts. If people give us money for a certain thing. There is a public persona. You mentioned American Cancer Society, which is a curious organization to me. We are talking about overhead. But they raise tons of money. Only 12% goes to research. That is a classic example of exorbitant salaries and overbenefiting the employees. Every little goes to the end result. However, people look past that somehow and there is a lot of money donated to that organization. There is a persona, a marketing piece that is evidently very strong. But on the other side, we feel defeated because other organizations are taking all the money. Last time I checked, money is a renewable resource. Part of our thinking, it's fundamentally, where I'm headed with this, sorry to ramble, underneath this is leadership. Nothing happens without leadership. The organization is the reflection of the leader. There are organizations that do a very good job like American Cancer Society of presenting themselves in marketing, but there are other organizations who probably have 10% overhead and make a lot of impact, but they are vastly compromised by their lack of effective board and lack of revenue. What do you think of leadership as being an anchor for what we're talking about? Alan: There is no question that you need a leader who understands that all of these things are important. If you have a leader in a nonprofit who only focuses on providing the service or whatever good the nonprofit is doing and doesn't get out there and talk about the organization and market the organization, recognize how important branding and marketing is, you are not going to go very far. Another item that you touched on is accountability. It's holding people accountable. A lot of people in nonprofits think we need to be nice. I would argue that we do need to be nice and treat people with dignity. But treating people with dignity and being nice to them does not mean not holding them accountable. Accountability is a big piece in nonprofits that can be a challenge because everybody wants to be nice. Sometimes you have to say this person isn't working out, this project isn't working out, this department isn't working out, and make a change. You can do that in a kind way. You can do that in a way that preserves people's dignity. But if you just let it slide, like I have seen happen, then you get mediocrity. Every organization is as strong as its weakest link. Every chain is as strong as its weakest link. It breathes down the whole organization. I would argue that leaders need to be focused on that accountability that sometimes is an issue in the nonprofit world. Hugh: We cause some of those problems. We put the wrong person in the wrong place, and then we are nice to them. They're trying. They are bringing down your culture. They are representing your brand in a negative way. It's damage control at that point. Alan: The brand has to come first. The mission has to come first. Everything that you do in the nonprofit has to be focused toward advancing the mission and advancing the brand. You always as a leader need to be asking yourself the question: Does this advance the mission in the best way? Does this advance the brand in the best way? I think a good leader can recognize, this isn't working. We need to make a change. We brought this person on our board who isn't interested. I need to have a conversation with that person. It takes some assertiveness and guts, but the leader has to be willing to make those kinds of changes and have those kinds of conversations in an organization. For some reason, they are more timid in nonprofit organizations than people are typically in for-profit organizations because it's perceived as not being nice. Hugh: It's being honest though. We want to be honest with people. Alan: That's right. Hugh: Russell, it's back to you. Russell: I think that honesty goes a long way, but honesty without compassion is brutality. It's all in how you go about putting things out there. As we look at this environment today, there is the realization that business principles are so critical to being effective stewards of things that are entrusted to nonprofits. I think there is a whole lot of confusion, but there are still some very subtle and distinct differences between the nonprofit or social profit and the purely profit entity. What do you see as the most important distinctions to make between the for-profit and the social profit entity? Alan: It's obvious that in the for-profit world, you are in it for the profit. You are trying to enrich shareholders. You are trying to enrich management. You are trying to have quarterly profits that increase every quarter. Anybody in the for-profit world is familiar with that. I have been there. We can't forget what our mission is in a nonprofit. That ‘s the difference. You talked about having compassion. The nonprofit world is about manifesting that compassion in the larger world. That is really what we're trying to do. We're trying to take that compassion we have and manifest it in the larger world. I would argue that while we can learn from the for-profit, the for-profit can also learn from us. That compassion for employees, for the larger world, that goes a long way. I always use the word “dignity.” I think we need to treat people in a way that preserves their dignity, in a way that doesn't threaten their dignity as a person. I think that the for-profit world would learn from a lot in some places. I would never say that all for-profits don't treat people with dignity. But it's much more common in that world. I think they would learn a lot from what nonprofits do in terms of treating people with compassion and dignity. Russell: Where do you think that you see more of a collaborative type of leadership? Another question I would ask is do you see some pathways to create more collaboration in both worlds? We are in a society today where people are really getting locked into their differences. I think we are suffering from it. How can collaboration as a way of life in both types of entities help us with our larger conversations with how we approach each other as people? Alan: I think nonprofits and for-profits should be collaborating with each other. One thing I like about the millennial generation is they really want to make a difference in the world. They have a lot of passion for recognizing what is wrong with the world, and wanting to make a difference. That becomes important just to have a work force in the for-profit world. As nonprofits, we can bring them opportunities to engage their employees in causes that are important to them, whether that is environmental things, whether it's feeding the homeless, those sorts of things. We can give them direct volunteer opportunities. UPS has a goal to have 20 million hours of nonprofit volunteer time with their employees. Nonprofits need to step up and talk to all the organizations out there about the kind of opportunities we can offer them to engage their employees. In those kinds of volunteer efforts. Those things go a long way for both organizations. The nonprofit gets exposure and marketing. People come away saying, “Wow, this is great. I got to do this or do that.” The for-profit gets an engaged work force that says, “I work for a great company. They let me take a day off and go plant trees for this tree planting organization, or go feed people in the soup kitchen that didn't have anything to eat that day.” I think those kinds of collaborations, which happen but probably don't happen nearly as much as they should. Russell: If you get somebody that comes out of university, it was a little bit different when the three of us attended, but now you are looking at a situation where somebody comes out, particularly if they have done any graduate work, they have this massive debt that they have to deal with. You have career opportunities and private enterprise that are driven by stock prices. How would you make a case to get somebody who is very talented to choose a career in the social profit field knowing they are leaving all of these other things on the table, and they have this debt? How do you make a case that it's really worthwhile to go into the nonprofit sector? Hugh: One thing I noticed with people who are coming out of university now is they don't expect to work for the same company for 25 or 30 or 40 years and retire from that company. A lot of people in the millennial generation go into a job knowing I want to be here for two or three years. I want this to be a resume-builder. I want this to be a skill-builder. I want this to be an opportunity. Then I am going off to the next thing. I think as nonprofits, we have to accept that, not try to change it, not try to talk people into working somewhere for 30 years, but go into talking to them about what this opportunity is. This is an opportunity to build your resume, this is an opportunity to wear a lot of hats and gain a bunch of skills, this is an opportunity to be exposed to donors, some of whom are people you may want to work for someday. If we go into it with the idea that we understand what these people want, we understand what this particular market or employee wants, and offer them that, then you're going to get more people saying, “I could go there for three years. That would be awesome to work with these big companies who are their donors and have volunteers. Then I can go onto the next thing.” I think accepting that approach of how they want to live their lives, they will be more interested in talking to us. Hugh: There is a lot of comments in this interview about money. I find the common perception is nonprofit leaders say, “If we just had the money, we could do more.” I come back with, “Can we see your strategy?” “I don't have one.” “How do you define the board's engagement on a scale of 1-10?” I get a 4.5. That's the reason you don't have money. If you had money, you probably wouldn't get the results you want. Do you experience that as a definition of what is missing? Do you have a different take on what they need to do to earn it or attract it? Alan: I certainly agree with you that money is not the be all end all. An organization needs to be in a position to effectively use any money they get. If you have a board that is engaged at a 4, you're right. I serve on a board, and it's an extremely engaged board. The organization is doing very well financially. That is because the board is engaged, and the organization recognizes they need to do marketing and branding, and they need to measure impact, and they need to do all of the things that are important. It comes back to those principles. You have to be willing to accept things just won't come rolling in. You will have to work for it. You will have to understand your audience. Pick the right audience. Execute. And demonstrate you have executed. It's no different than a for-profit business in that way. There are a lot of differences about what we do and what we're trying to accomplish. In terms of execution, there are a lot of similarities there. Hugh: Sometimes people get excited when I talk about team execution. They think they are going to shoot people. Alan: Let's hope not. That's not a good nonprofit. Hugh: We do it to ourselves. We bring in people because we have a perception they ought to be doing something rather than what Russell's vestige is, is find out what they are interested in first. I talked about ROL, return on life. We have a mission. That is our intellectual property. We're doing this. This is the value we bring. We want to get the money. We have this middle capital. This value capital. We want money capital, financial capital. But in the middle is relationship capital. We don't invest in that. Part of what businesses do is they are really, the ones who are successful, building relationships with their customers. In our customers in the nonprofit world are our supporters, stakeholders, donors, board members, volunteers. We don't do a good job of nurturing them, do we? Alan: No. Some organizations do a very good job of that, but others, again, don't take the time, like you said, to really understand what they are. You need to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. You need to be willing to invest the time and effort in really understanding what people are looking for. Then you have to ask yourself the honest question of whether you can give them that. If you can't, you walk away. It's not the right fit. I think that because we love what we do so much, we project our love for what we're doing onto other people. That is a little bit of a pitfall for people in nonprofits. Hugh: It's common, isn't it? That's a common scenario, isn't it? Alan: Yeah, it's very common. I don't think it's any different than any other world. People tend to project their own loves and desires and interests on other people. But when you are running a business, it's dangerous, and it can be devastating. Hugh: I want to get one more thing on the table here before I go to the sponsor message. Russell and I serve leaders as an advisor. We don't customarily use the word “consultant” or “coach” because there is so much gray around what that means. 90% of those people who say they are consultants give us a bad name. We have gone from consulting to insulting to advising. We have a paradigm in SynerVision that is a WayFinder. We partner and have some strategies to guide the process. But our job is to help leaders step up their own game. I find that the people struggling are the ones who want to figure it out for themselves. I find by and large the successful leaders have someone like one of us as an advisor, whatever they call them. Why do you think people are reluctant to pay for somebody to help them learn, help them be accountable, give them a process, connect them in different ways? Why do you think there is a reluctance for people to do that? Alan: I think there is a little bit of a stigma attached to having a coach. There is some view that if we have to get this guy a coach, there must be something wrong. He's not doing his job. He's not performing. My view is that one of the greatest gifts that an organization can offer an employee is coaching, to help them get better on what they do, to help them understand how to get through the challenges they are facing. I think that's a huge gift an organization can offer an employee, whether it's a senior executive or a manager, to help them get better at their job. That is a stigma of we had to get this guy a coach, or we had to get this woman a coach, she must not be doing a good job. People will look down at that. I think we have to be very clear that coaching is a positive. Support is a positive. None of us are an island. None of us can completely be effective at everything on our own. Everything has strengths and weaknesses, things they will be good at and not. Giving someone support is a greatest gift an organization can give an employee. Hugh: That's a great answer. Russell, what do you think? Russell: I think having a trusted advisor is getting somebody that is outside of the scope of what you're doing and not so attached to it that they may have blind spots. I have discovered that for me. When I work with other people, they have what I call a superpower. We can't always define our superpowers. They are things that each of us do that are so easy for us that we tend to minimize it or blow it off. Or we may not even recognize it. When you talk to people around you and they say, “Oh, you did something,” and they will point out something you did. Having a system in place where you recognize everybody's superpowers and you recognize one another's superpowers is very important. Everybody's working to their strengths that way. It's honoring that. It's honoring what you're good at and having an outside perspective is how you can pull that genius that is right there in house. I find that when I'm working with organizations, they don't know how much they don't know. On the flip side of that, they don't know how much they already know. Having somebody to help them channel all of that genius is valuable. They will get more out of it. Taking that time over the long haul to really get better at what you do and to define what you do and to find the right people to collaborate with, to serve, to have pay for their services, taking that time is critical. If you don't take that time, you are serving the wrong people or reaching for the wrong people, you burn a lot of energy. Hugh: Alan, we have laid a lot of themes on the table today for people. You obviously have a lot of wisdom to share, a lot more than we can cover in this limited time. You have a lot of experience. You're taking some time off for family. You will go for your next venture next year. I'm curious to say where you end up. Whomever gets you will be lucky because you bring a whole lot of value and wisdom to their organization. *Sponsor message from Wordsprint* As we close out this really helpful podcast, Alan, what tip or thought do you want to leave with people before Russell closes us out? Alan: I think to boil everything down into a 15-second piece is that if you use business principles in a nonprofit and don't forget the compassion and the mission, you will be successful. You will maximize your chance for success. I hope people can take that away and cogitate on that a bit and apply that to what they do in the nonprofit world. Russell: Alan Harrison, it has been a joy to sit and speak with you. What is the best way for people to reach you? Alan: If they find me on LinkedIn and try to send me a connection request, I think that's probably the best way. I'm active on there. I would certainly love to make some new connections there. I want to thank both of you for today. This has been fun and stimulating for me. I always get my best ideas in conversation with other people who understand the subject. This was rewarding for me, and I hope it was rewarding for others as well. Russell: This is definitely rewarding work for us. That's why we do it. If you can't have any fun at it, why do it?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chemtrails - Admission in Europe of Spraying - Kyoto warnings - Climate Change - "Saving Us from Global Warming" - Years to Make Spray Chemicals - Drugging People during greatest changes in New System - Rumsfeld: "Aerosolized Prozac and Valium ready to go", Fluoridation - I.Q. drop - Teller (H-bomb): Deluge Air with Metallic Particles and Standing Wave Technology, Science-fiction - Predictive Programming - Futurist Societies, 54 HAARP facilities worldwide - EMP - Secondary Signals - Inducing Thoughts to Skull - Inducing Aggression or Passiveness, Open Skies Treaty - Commercial and Military Aircraft - Polymer used to carry drugs - Bouts of Irritability (like tranquilizer withdrawal), Zbigniew Brzezinski book: "Between Two Ages" - Technotronic Warfare, Cecil Rhodes - Lord Milner - War Creation - Boers of South Africa - Council on Foreign Relations - Trilateral Group - Council on Pacific Relations, Positive Thinking - New Age - Understanding of History - Breaking Through All Levels of Matrix - Understanding takes away Fear of Unknown, Born into a System - It's Not Yours - You Are a Number - Corruption from Top to Bottom, Debate of: What is Purpose of Life? - Blind leading Blind - Serving a System - Revolutionary Wars, Thomas Jefferson - Hereditary Dynasties in Government - Fear of Government = Tyranny, Money is Root of All Evil (1st CON along with Priesthoods) - CON - COIN - PRIEST, Phoenicians, New World Order - Robots to Serve - Brain-Chipping - Elimination of Thinking Individual, Deification of Leaders and Constitutional Papers - Removal of History in Education, Getting Beyond the World - Higher Aspects, Problem: One type of human always rises to the top (Psychopath) - Deviant Creation - Selective Breeding between Psychopaths, Tesla Technology, U.S. with One War after Another - Loot-Booty-Corporations - Halliburton - Looting and Robbery, Knocking the Capstone off the Pyramid - DARPA logo: Pyramid with All-Seeing Eye looking down on Masses below - Total Information Network, World of the Dead - New Testament: "Let the dead bury the dead.", Going beyond Data of World - Compassion for Others, Being Born in a Tunnel - Plato's Cave - Freedom starts with Individual Mind, Ultimate Truths - Levels of Consciousness - Preparation of Mind - Some are Born Aware, Churches - Ritual and Fancy Shows, Acquiescence by Silence - Building-Creating-Buying Our Own Chains, Testing "Leaders" for Psychopathic Traits, Objection of Taxation Spending - Coercion to Pay for Domination, British Department of Defence: Plans for next 30 years, Masters of War - Unorganized Public Mobs - Militias - Martial Rule, United Nations - Yearly Psychological Evaluations for Everyone - Looking for "Terrorist" and Leadership Qualities, Psychopaths respect Power - Military Organization, Voting in Multi-millionaire Lawyers (Left and Right wings) - "Devil's Advocate" movie - Takeover by armies of lawyers., Alan's books - Masonic Coding in Language - Bypassing Publishers and Editors to Print Books, (Think Tanks - Immediate Infiltration of Groups Started), -- Alan: "You don't win any battle until you've conquered yourself." - Change within Individual - Self-Analysis - Motivations - "Who are you?" - "What is life about?" - Natural Laws

Heavy Traffic on Alan's Websites, -- parallelnormal.wordpress.com article "RFID Will Protect You, Says Industry Lawyer" by Mark Baard -- RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) - Department of Homeland Security - "Public Safety - Chipping Business - ID Cards - Passports - Live Chips - 911 - British ID Passport - Lawsuits after "Terrorist Attacks" - Public-Private - New Feudal System - Psychopathic Terms - Approved Technology - Remote Tracking Devices to "Protect You" - Wal-Mart (5 Pointed Star Logo) - Walls - Wall Street - Wailing Wall - Wall is Law (Backwards) - Proctor and Gamble - Target - Tagging and Tracking Store Items from Factory Floor to Checkout Counter and Beyond - Data-Mining - "RFID Journal" - a Masonic Must-Be - Safety Act to Protect Large Corporations - Corporate Liability - "Backroom Deals" - Lobbying - Tort Reform - DHS "Certified Seal" - Private Councils of Unelected Members - British System - Public-Private Corporation running Democracy - Privatising Water-Natural Gas Supply - Taxes Finance the building of - One World Corporation - Pyramid Capstone at Top - -- Alan: "If You Don't Know Your History, You are Doomed to Repeat It" -- Movements toward "Democracy" - Holding Power by keeping Pulse of Public - World Elite and Feudal Serfdom - Specialized Priesthoods - Machiavellian Techniques - Guiding a Planned Future - New World Order is always becoming New, Commonwealth Countries - Public Servants - Allegiances Sworn to Royalty - Oaths - Double-think - Terms Used to Rule Public - Tribal Psychology - Expectation of Leaders to Speak to Us, Parallel Government - In Britain - "The Establishment" - Workings of the REAL WORLD, United Nations - World System - League of Nations - World Government - Planned Society - Population Reduction - Global Warming - Psychopaths will Blame Others - Rationalization of Anything, US Short-wave Radio - "Founding Fathers" many were verified Freemasons - Bill Cooper, Taxpayers' Honey-Pot - Lifetime Incomes, Unjust System - Those Who Want to Save the System - Great Depression - Bankers - Tax-men - George Soros' plunder of Bank of England - International Banking - Temporary Prosperity - Buying off Generations with Credit - Feeding Frenzy of Materialism, Legalistic Statements by Media - People Have Been Told - Everyone is Making Decisions, Super-cities of UN - Amalgamation of smaller boroughs - Migration - Rising Fuel Costs - Forcing Public off the Road - Habitat Areas - Agenda 21 - Cloning and Genetic Enhancement, Plato's "Republic" - Breeding Qualities In or Out - Animal Husbandry, Looking at Alternate Ways of Getting Through All This - Why Save an Illusion? - Property Taxes, Inhumane System - Psychopathy vs Decent People, Ignorance vs Stupidity - Ignorance is a Choice - Relationships - Awake Individuals - Conscience - Psychopathic Egocentric Culture - Conscience brings Responsibility, Pointing Out What Is- What Will Be- What Can Be, Not Caring is a Choice, Those through the Ages that could Understand with Clarity - Teaching Others, Age of Aquarius brings in Final Solution for Elite, Trinity of 2 in 1 - Duad - High Occult - 21 Century (2 in 1) - Completion of Part of Plan - Time to Pass On Knowledge is Running Out, Children's Conditioning for Chips and Virtual Reality, Infiltration of Mass Movements, Multi-faceted Structure of Agenda - Many Spokes of a Wheel, Personal Choices on a Daily Basis, Risk of Complete Oblivion of Conscious Mind, Silence is Acquiescence - Empathy for Others Ensures Your Own Survival - Caring About Others, Humanity and Genes are Building Material - Selection of Particular Qualities for Future Humans - Alteration then Chipping would bring Non-Persons, -- Alan: "You are Your Own Champion" - "No One can be a Hero for You, Except Yourself", (Song: "Turn, Turn, Turn" by Judy Collins), *Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - June 7, 2007 (Exempting Music and Literary Quotes)