Podcasts about metavrse

Julie and Alan transformed their unconventional paths into a groundbreaking tech journey, pioneering touchscreen technology, AI, and immersive XR. Their passion for education, community, and innovation continues to shape the future.00:09- About Alan SmithsonAlan Smithson is a father, founder, futurist, author and DJ.He makes creator tools including; METAVRSE: a 3D creation platform for the spatial web, Your Director AI: automatic AI video switching and EMULATOR: a touchscreen system for the music industry.

Join us as Julie Smithson, co-founder of Metavrse and XR Women, shares her journey in immersive technology and the vital role of community and education in the XR space. Key TakeawaysJulie Smithson's journey in immersive technology began with creating touchscreen technology for the music industry.She co-founded Metavrse, a 3D game engine for the Spatial Web, and is passionate about inspiring and educating the next generation.Julie emphasizes the importance of community and the role of XR Women in bringing people together from around the world.She discusses the impact of emerging technologies like AI and blockchain on society and the need for humans to adapt and build the right skill sets.Julie introduces the Unlimited Awesome Academy, a program focused on mental wellness and skill development for the digital age. Collaboration and community are key in the immersive technology industry.Immersive training can significantly reduce training time and costs.Retail experiences can be enhanced through immersive technology, such as gamified scavenger hunts.Follow Julie on Linkedin, and learn more about the XR Women meetups in immersive environments each Wednesday. Thank you for listening to Coffey & Code! EPISODE CREDITS:Produced, edited, and mixed by Ashley Coffey. Artwork designed by Ashley Coffey.Headshot by Brandlink MediaIntroduction music composed and produced by Ashley Coffey LINKSBe sure to follow and tag Coffey & Code on Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and Youtube! © 2024 Coffey & Code Podcast. All rights reserved. The content of this podcast, including but not limited to text, graphics, audio, and images, is the property of Ashley Coffey and may not be reproduced, redistributed, or used in any manner without the express written consent of the owner.

In this episode of Shift AI, Alan Smithson, the co-founder of Metavrse, shares his expertise on how technology advancements and AI will significantly impact the way we work in the future. Alan discusses the need to prepare for an age where AI plays a significant role and the challenge of keeping up with its rapid advancements. He also talks about the hype surrounding AI and how the lack of regulation poses risks for ethical concerns and the potential for exploitation. __________________________________________________________________________________________ In this episode of the Shift AI podcast, we cover the following topics: The history and evolution of work and the impact of the pandemic on the way we work and the potential value of blockchain and new technologies such as XR and AI The hype surrounding AI and the lack of regulation and the potential for exploitation The challenge of keeping up with AI advancements in light of all the hype and the volume of tools that are getting created every week The importance of mentors in navigating the entrepreneurial world The future of work and how technology advancements and AI will significantly impact it The need to prepare for an age where AI plays a significant role Alan's future goal of building an education system to prepare people for what's ahead. Connect with Alan Smithson Twitter LinkedIn Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy Twitter LinkedIn Email: shift@simplyaugmented.com Learn more about Simply Augmented --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shift-ai/message

This week we talk to Alan Smithson, founder of MetaVRse about his journey through DJing, into tech, and everything in between. He's played the biggest clubs on the planet, and developed hardware for the biggest DJs. We look at how the state of AI and how it can benefit DJs, and why we should be kind to robots.Find Alan online at: LinkedIn/Instagram/TwitterGot feedback or suggestions for the show? Get in touch on the Once A DJ Instagram page.

Alan Smithson co-invented the world's first touchscreen DJ system called 'Emulator'  - an award winning piece of performance kit used by some of the top DJs on the global dance music circuit. In a twist of fate, the company was taken from him the night his pitch on Dragon's Den for it aired. Since Emulator, Alan has built a company to make XR experiences more easily available to anyone, anywhere in the world. MetaVRse is a proprietary, code-optional web platform that makes it easy to create and share interactive 3D experiences instantly. In this episode of the StartWell Podcast, you'll hear from Alan's career history and get a sneak peak into the world's largest virtual shopping mall which his company built using their web platform that already has some interesting tenants like Starburst's Juicyverse space.

I sit down with futurist, inventor and founder, Alan Smithson, to explore the fascinating world of AI and the metaverse. We talked about the metaverse and its associated technologies and how AI is changing the landscape for virtual reality and augmented reality. Alan shares his vision for the future across many vectors, and he provides practical guidance for founders and brands thinking about how to incorporate the metaverse into their strategies. From blockchain to replicators in every home, Alan shares his insights on the next frontiers of technological advancement and their impact on the way we live and work. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that will inspire and inform! Timestamps: (0:00) Introduction (3:16) What is the Metaverse? (6:05) Defining XR, AR, VR and MR (7:57) Using AI to to map the world's interiors (11:15) Where are we on the hype cycle curve? (15:53) Age of abundance or dystopic future? (19:27) Chat-GPT and education (24:41) TikTok spying on Americans (26:05) Replicators in every home? (27:55) The future of energy (32:23) What's governments' role? (35:54) What does MetaVRse do? (38:06) Metaverse real estate (40:18) How should brands get started with the metaverse? (42:26) What's happening at Meta? (44:40) The lightning round Guest contact info: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/ https://metavrse.com/ https://themall.io/ Further reading: https://alan-smithson.medium.com/practical-guide-to-ai-in-the-metaverse-583020bbe61f https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/abcs-r-alan-smithson/ https://alan-smithson.medium.com/the-metaverse-manifesto-2206d893a3bb https://engine.metavrse.com/view?i=8399 https://alan-smithson.medium.com/a-brand-guide-to-the-metaverse-part-i-benefits-examples-a371bb74160 Sponsor: This podcast is brought to you by grwth.co. Grwth offers fractional CMOs, paired with best-in-class digital marketing execution to support early-stage startup success. With a focus on seed and series A companies, Grwth has helped a number of SaaS, digital health, and e-commerce startups build their go-to-market function and scale up. To learn more and book a free consultation, go to grwth.co. Get in touch with Mosheh: www.linkedin.com/in/moshehp twitter.com/MoshehP hello@pmfpod.com www.pmfpod.com

On this episode of HYPERSCALE by Briar Prestidge we are joined by Alan Smithson Co-Founder of MetaVRse, a low-code platform that makes it easy to create & share interactive 3D experiences instantly on the web. Named as one of the most prominent Digital Futurists to watch in 2022, Alan is also Co Founder of TheMall.io and on a mission to build now for the positive future of humanity. He explains how by changing the way we educate future generations, we will in turn empower them to create solutions to meet the greatest challenges that humanity has ever faced. Alan explains how we are currently in the growth phase in technology and how AI can make our lives easier and simpler. Building for the positive future of humanity. We also discuss the future of retail and how Alan is building the world largest 3D virtual mall (Mall.io), access to AR/VR in higher education and how the GenZ generation can find solutions to climate change.  FOLLOW ► Instagram: https://bit.ly/briarig.     LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/briarlinkedin TikTok: https://bit.ly/briartiktok WEBSITE: https://briarprestidgeofficial.com

Interested in the metaverse and need to know how to get started? Meet Alan Smithson, founder of MetaVrse, multiple TED Talk speaker, and builder of “The Mall” in the metaverse, but not just any mall! If there were a hundred-page encyclopedia of the metaverse, Alan would fill every page but you'd still need more room to cover his vast knowledge of all things metaverse. It's season 2, episode 4, and we're continuing our Retail Transformers series – you'll see why Alan Smithson is truly more than meets the eye!Alan tells you what you need to get started with the metaverse, but takes us on an even deeper journey that touches on the future of jobs in digital technologies, how education needs to change to keep up, how the metaverse could make the world a better place, and of course, why shopping should be fun again! Plus, we'll learn why asking children what they want to be when they grow up is the wrong question to ask. The real question is …News alert! We're back at #20 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we'll move our way further up the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University's Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring E-Motive, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.The Retail Razor ShowFollow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/TwRRazorConnect with us on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/LI-RRazorSubscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/RRShowYouTubeSubscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/RetailRazorShowRetail Razor Show Episode Page: https://bit.ly/RRShowPodHost → Ricardo Belmar,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twRBelmarConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LIRBelmarRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWRBelmarCo-host → Casey Golden,Follow on Twitter - https://bit.ly/twCaseyConnect on LinkedIn - https://bit.ly/LICaseyRead my comments on RetailWire - https://bit.ly/RWCaseyTRANSCRIPTS2E4 Retail Transformers - Alan Smithson[00:00:00] Pre-Show Intro[00:00:00] Alan Smithson: Good morning. Retail Razor. No, maybe too much. [00:00:05] Ricardo Belmar: actually we might, we might use that at the, in the intro beginning. [00:00:07] That was pretty [00:00:08] Good. ..That [00:00:09] Alan Smithson: like bit connect . I wanna go to a crypto conference and start doing that. Bit connect[00:00:17] Ricardo Belmar: Now that would be fun to see. [00:00:19] Alan Smithson: Too early maybe. Okay. We'll just start now. [00:00:21] Ricardo Belmar: Okay. All right, here we go. Here we go. [00:00:23][00:00:23] Introduction[00:00:23] Ricardo Belmar: hello, and welcome to season two, episode four of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.[00:00:49] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to retail's favorite podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everyone else in retail and retail tech alike.[00:01:01] Ricardo Belmar: And we have a truly special treat this week. Following up from our season debut episode on the Metaverse, we are back to talk more metaverse this week, aren't we?[00:01:10] Casey Golden: Yes, and I'm excited. Our listeners and viewers should be excited because this week we're not only talking Metaverse, but we're continuing our Retail Transformer series with special guest, Alan Smithson, founder and CEO of the company, Metaverse.[00:01:24] Ricardo Belmar: Yes. Our faithful followers will learn exactly why Alan is 'more than meets the eye'.[00:01:31] Casey Golden: Aww, you're gonna use that line, every time for these series, aren't you?[00:01:35] Ricardo Belmar: Absolutely, a hundred percent. I am totally here for that.[00:01:39] Casey Golden: Okay, so let's talk about Alan. There are few people in the early days of the Metaverse that can talk in depth about what retailers need to look at when building their metaverse strategy.[00:01:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, when we first talked to Alan, you know, when he first came to one of our clubhouse rooms, I was really impressed. And just like you said, he's got the knowledge about the metaverse. We'll also hear about his solution, the mall, that he's building, that will really change how retailers look at the metaverse.[00:02:03] And listeners or viewers are gonna come away with a really smart plan on, on how to attack the metaverse and get experimenting right away, just like we predicted back in season one episode four.[00:02:13] Casey Golden: And experimenting, and experimenting, trying things out is a matter of showing up and learning how to experiment. Alan hits on all of these topics and more honestly, each episode this season has been incredibly informative, but our guest energy is solid, true innovators. I don't know how we keep doing this from one episode to another, but keep those notepads handy.[00:02:35] You'll need it.[00:02:37] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. I mean, we could go on and on about all the juicy details Alan will talk about, but I think I can sum it up by saying if you were gonna write a hundred page Encyclopedia of the Metaverse, Alan would be on page one all the way through page 100, and you'd probably be asking for more pages after that.[00:02:54] Casey Golden: Agreed, so let's get to it then. Our interview with Alan Smithson co-founder of MetaVrse. [00:03:04] AlanSmithson Interview[00:03:04] Ricardo Belmar: And we are here with our very special guest, Alan Smithson, co-founder of the company MetaVrse, whose mission is to enable creation in the Metaverse for everyone. Following from our clubhouse session in our season one opener on the Metaverse and one of what's likely to be many more discussions we'll have on the metaverse going forward.[00:03:23] Alan, welcome to the Retail Razor Show. [00:03:25] Alan Smithson: Thank you so much, Ricardo and Casey. Thanks for having me. This is so, so exciting. You know, we we got to meet in person before these things, which is super cool, you know, and normally it's the other way around. You do all these podcasts and things, and then you finally meet somebody, you're like, Oh, yeah.[00:03:38] So it's really great to see some familiar faces and, and dive into the, the Occam's razor of retail .[00:03:46] Ricardo Belmar: exactly[00:03:47] Casey Golden: I'm so glad to see you Allen and having you here with us this morning. I'm just really excited to catch up and learn what's been going on since the last time we saw each other. [00:03:59] We're [00:03:59] Alan Smithson: many things. [00:04:00] Casey Golden: right. We're not casting from the, the metaverse yet. But who knows? This time next year, a seismic shift is taking [00:04:06] Alan Smithson: time next week we're gonna be releasing some cool stuff and we built in full video chat capabilities into our project. So we'll get into that later. But yeah, the three pushed some technology that will allow us to do this inside of virtual world.[00:04:21] Casey Golden: Interesting. Yes. Experiences on the internet are expected to be more immersive, three dimensional and virtual with the realization of web three . I believe the metaverse will will play , an integral role in product discovery and brand experiences.[00:04:36] Some people are saying it's dead and now it's like coming back. Some people said it's, this is just natural traction. So I mean, I think we're all here for the dips and we're all here for the eyes.[00:04:47] Alan Smithson: I really love the articles that say, you know, the Meta versus Dead or, you know, these are the same articles that in 10 years from now, people will look back and go, Oh yeah, you, you're the guy who wrote the internet as dead article. Good for you. You know, that really inspired a whole generation of people to build the internet, so, [00:05:04] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, it's like how many years ago when everybody was saying physical retail was dead,[00:05:09] Alan Smithson: I mean, yeah, like you can say everything's dead. Look, when we invented tv, people said, Oh, this is gonna replace radio. Every car still has a radio in it. [00:05:20] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. [00:05:21] Alan Smithson: like, radio didn't go away. It just changed and morphed. And you know, now we, now we have Spotify. Okay, maybe radio is not the primary thing, but it never died.[00:05:32] You know, TVs didn't go away when we got the internet. You know computers didn't go away when we got mobile phones. And, you know, mobile phones aren't going away anytime when we get VR and, and AR glasses. So, you know, adding new mediums does not necessarily mean that you, the other one fades away and dies, you know, it just becomes another medium.[00:05:51] There's, , let's say 10 years ago you had, I don't know, a billion people on the internet. Now we have 4 billion people on the Internet. Like, you know, the, the time right now is, is explosive growth. I mean, companies are raising, hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, tens and then hundreds of millions of dollars for internet technologies and metaverse technologies and web three technologies.[00:06:14] You know, this is just the money going in to invest to the future. So, I mean, we're in for a, a really, really interesting next, I guess, eight years now that we're almost kind of at the end of 2022. , By the end of this decade, the world will look very different than it does today,[00:06:30] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Yeah,[00:06:31] Casey Golden: I agree with that a hundred percent.[00:06:33] Ricardo Belmar: so, [00:06:34] Alan Smithson: none of the things will be dead.[00:06:35] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. No, none. None of it. We're just keep adding more and more I think as we're gonna get [00:06:39] into [00:06:39] Alan Smithson: more people coming on the[00:06:40] internet and more [00:06:41] Casey Golden: I'm [00:06:41] all [00:06:41] Alan Smithson: I like reading. [00:06:42] Casey Golden: web, like 6.0 already, right?[00:06:45] Alan Smithson: Why don't we have six G? I mean, my 5G phone doesn't really do anything for me. I'm like, 5g. I still have no signal. What the heck?[00:06:55] Casey Golden: It's still a marketing boy.[00:06:57] Alan Smithson: I bought a big phone that folds in half so that I can have all the things[00:07:02] Ricardo Belmar: And you're still waiting. And you're still [00:07:04] Alan Smithson: That's the wait. I still[00:07:05] Ricardo Belmar: so [00:07:06] Alan Smithson: but the technology's getting super fast. The the one thing that's exciting that. Most people are consuming the internet on a mobile phone now. Mobile phones and computers are the kind of dominant, but mobile phones kind of leapfrogged and it's places like Africa. They, they just bypass computers altogether and just went straight to phones.[00:07:22] Same with China. And so the phone technology is[00:07:25] Casey Golden: say, with 10 year olds,[00:07:27] Alan Smithson: exactly. 10 year olds in the Chinese, they, they just bypass computers all together.[00:07:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right. [00:07:33] Alan Smithson: But yeah, the, the world is using mobile phones to access the internet, and the mobile phones are getting so good. You know, the iPhone 14 came out y. These things are super, super computers now.[00:07:45] I mean, if you, One of the people that I, I really think highly of is a guy that runs this company called Otoy. They're a rendering engine and I can't remember the guy's name, but they came up with this concept of the render token. This was way before the whole crypto craze, and they said, What if we could tap into everybody's phone and computer and do batch rendering around the world?[00:08:06] So let's say Disney as a project, right? And they, you know, they need 500 servers to, to run this, you know scene of a Disney movie. Well, can't we then just push it out to a thousand phones, Have everybody, you know use the GPUs that are bit, you know, kinda sitting idle for most of the time on your phone.[00:08:22] Can we leverage that and then pay people for, for using this idle time on their phones?[00:08:27] seem to take off because I think it was a bit early, but that ability to tap into the billions of smartphones and computers out there and the processing power that is sitting idle, I think is going to be a key part of the metaverse moving forward in, in kind of the long term strategy. I mean, this is not, it's not an overnight thing. Nobody's really figured it out yet. But if we can do that, you think of how many computers around the world we could tap into for ai, for modeling, for protein folding for, you know, the good of mankind.[00:08:55] We can really use these these idle devices that are sitting idle for, you know, let's say most people, their phones are only sitting idle while they sleep, but[00:09:04] you know, it's, eight hours of sleep, depending on who you are. Casey, who only sleeps four hours a night,[00:09:12] What is MetaVrse & The Mall[00:09:12] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Well, Alan, so, diving into this space a little bit more, tell us a little more about what Metaverse is in your company and what you're doing and what you're and what that means for retailers and brands.[00:09:24] Alan Smithson: So we we started a company called Metaverse back in 2016, spelled M e t A V R s E, you know, for the vr idea, we built all sorts of projects in, in virtual, augmented, mixed reality, and 3d. We've done over 160 projects now but we've done everything from building retail locations virtual stores.[00:09:43] We've done virtual showrooms for automotive. We have built virtual training for, for medical, for consumer electronics. We did a lot of work for Samsung where we took their their new phone models, actually including this one, and then we animated them opening and you could turn it around and, you know, look inside and all this stuff.[00:09:59] We did a bunch of stuff for Samsung. We built virtual showrooms for MasterCard, but all of these things were actually built on our own engine. And so over the years we actually were building and working on our. What you would call a game engine or a creation platform. So similar to Unity and Unreal we have our own base, you know, rendering technology that allows us to render directly to the internet, directly to a web browser on a mobile phone.[00:10:24] So one of the, the claims to fame for us is that we have a low code, easy to create platform that bypasses the app stores. We actually don't have to go through Apple or Google. We just hit publish. It goes to a browser and works on any device. So this is super powerful and we really set up a goal in mind to build a platform that would let anybody participate and create in the Metaverse.[00:10:47] And so our mission is Metaverse creation for every. That's you know, that's always kind of been our ethos. It used to be XR creation for everyone, and then the whole world moved to the word metaverse. So we're like, Okay, well I guess we should jump on the bandwagon. Even though we started the bandwagon,[00:11:01] Casey Golden: What was xr [00:11:02] Alan Smithson: virtual augmented mixed reality or XR or extended reality is like a[00:11:06] Ricardo Belmar: yeah,[00:11:06] so it mixed, all of it[00:11:08] Alan Smithson: Yeah, I mean, we, we were all in on xr. We did the XR for Business podcast. We did the XR for Learning podcast. We did XR collaboration, which is a whole thing on, you know, collaboration platform. . We really, truly thought the whole world was going to xr and then outta nowhere Zuckerberg said, Hey, we're gonna be called Meta.[00:11:24] And the whole world went to Metaverse and we're like, Oh, well it's a good thing. We called our name That, and applied for the trademark before then[00:11:30] Ricardo Belmar: Ha. Good thing.[00:11:31] What moment led to creating MetaVrse?[00:11:31] Casey Golden: What was that one moment? Where you're just, cuz you've had some other businesses, you've had some worked in some other spaces. But what was that, that moment? Was there a special aha moment or something where [00:11:44] Alan Smithson: yeah. [00:11:44] Casey Golden: you're just like, I'm gonna build like the next version of the world,[00:11:48] Alan Smithson: It was a combination of things. Casey, honestly, it we owned a, a DJ product company called Emulator where it was a big glass, see-through touchscreen that you could play on and you could perform, but the crowd could see what you're doing cuz it was a see through piece of glass that you were DJing on.[00:12:01] We worked with, you know, infected Mushroom and Morgan page. And actually just recently a year ago Jean Michelle Jarre did a huge New Year's Eve virtual New Year's Eve party. It was huge. 7 million people attended and he used our emulator on stage in the virtual world as well.[00:12:15] So, I mean, we built this piece of tech.[00:12:17] We brought it to the world. We were working with big artists. And then we unfortunately brought on the wrong investor and so we lost that company. But right before that happened, I got invited to perform at Curiosity Camp by Eric Schmidt. And Eric Schmidt is, you know, obviously the former CEO of Google and he has this camp that everybody goes to called Curiosity Camp.[00:12:36] And so you go there and it's like camp in the middle of nowhere. I performed, it was kinda like a mini burning man for like 150 entrepreneurs, investors. AI nerds and a bunch of really smart people getting together just to have an UN-conference about what's coming in the world and, and, you know, new economic models and new technology models and these types of things.[00:12:55] So I got to perform. And then after that, I tried the R for the first time in this tiny little tent. And I remember putting it on, it was like a giant brick putting on my head. It was the DK one, the Oculus, and this was in 2014. Put on these giant headphones. And I sat there and they turned it on. And I remember sitting there going, Oh, like having this gasp of, Oh my God, this is amazing.[00:13:14] And I remember staring and I was looking at a concert, but it was so visceral that I felt like I was at the concert. The sound sounded right and, and I just sat there and I was like, Wow. And I remember somebody taking their hand and putting them on my shoulder, and I was on a swivel chair and they turned me around like this, and I realized that I could look everywhere. I was like, Oh my God. I could see the ceiling and the lights and the floor, and I just looked every. Then they hit a button and put me on stage, like I was up in the crowd. And then all, I was standing on stage next to Beck, looking at the artist, hearing it from my ears, looking up the crowd. And I thought, Oh my God.[00:13:49] And as a DJ myself for 20 years, I had this kind of moment where I was like, Holy crap. They just put me on stage in a place where nobody in the world gets to stand. Think about that. You know, like only the artists and the band or the DJ and maybe his manager get to stand on stage. Nobody gets to see this . And by transporting me in vr, I was there and I was like, This is gonna change everything, everything.[00:14:13] And that's, you know, right after that, we kinda lost the company, the, the DJ company. And I said, Well, let's just get into this now. And so in 2014 we started working in VR and we 3D printed our own cameras. We, we had 360 cameras built out of GoPros. We did everything. We did 360 videos. We did AR apps.[00:14:30] We did projection sandbox where you, you had connects and you, if you dug the sand out, it actually projected different things like topography of the sand. Did a VR photo booth for Samsung, which is super cool. We use their camera and you could take a picture with you and your friends and would Photoshop you into space, so you jump outta the machine and you could look at yourself in space with your friends in vr.[00:14:50] Casey Golden: That's great. So like as soon as you got like that one exposure hit, [00:14:54] it [00:14:55] Alan Smithson: that was it. That was.[00:14:56] Casey Golden: we're going this way,[00:14:57] Alan Smithson: Oh yeah. You know, I, I kind of had this thought that this is the future of human communication. This was like, okay, if I'm gonna communicate with somebody from long distance and we can stand there and like put these glasses on and be in the same room, this is gonna be the future of human communication.[00:15:11] And that was my whole ethos. I've since expanded that because, you know, and even if you go on our website, metavrse.com, we say that the Metaverse engine is the future of human communication, collaboration, commerce, and culture, because if you kind of take all of those four, that's really where we are right now.[00:15:29] The metaverse is impacting these things. So yes, we can communicate better, we can have a sense of presence, we can collaborate. You know, the, the new Bugatti was just designed in nine months rather than three years because they used VR to collaborate. You know BMW's been using VR to calibrate all the automotive companies are using it, not just to sell things, but to create.[00:15:47] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, to build,[00:15:48] to help them build faster. [00:15:49] Alan Smithson: so you know, collaboration is gonna be a big part. And then commerce, obviously 3D retail, duh. I mean, you know, Shopify's already showing in 96% improve, you know, uptick in conversion rates when using 3D on a site versus just 2D images and videos. So we're gonna go to 3D for sure.[00:16:09] Everything in the world, every brand, every company in the world will need all of their products and assets. Converted to 3D into 3D worlds, and over the next, you know, by the end of the decade, let's say. And that's a challenge because, you know, how do you convert them? Do you take CAD models and change them into 3d?[00:16:27] Do you take photographs and try to use photogrammetry? Do you use the scanners that are coming in the phones now? Do you use AI just using photographs to convert to 3d? So I think the biggest challenge over the next, you know, eight years or 10 years, end of the decade, This technology is showing massive upticks and, and conversion rates and all of the things from training to marketing to retail to e-com.[00:16:48] All of these things are being impacted positively, really positively, but it's still hard to make them. It's still hard to create the 3D worlds, the 3D environments avatars, clothing for avatars, these types of things. And so I think we're only just scratching the surface of what's possible. But AI is going to fill in a lot of the blanks over the next decade [00:17:07] Casey Golden: That's great.[00:17:08] Nexus of Three Technologies[00:17:08] Alan Smithson: I recently wrote an article called The Metaverse is the nexus of these three technologies. And the article, it, it's kinda like you have to read halfway through the article before I talk about them, because you know what, A little leading thing there. But the idea is that you have three technologies in addition to the internet we have today.[00:17:24] So the internet today, we have the ability to have video and audio and record and all these things that we're doing now, but then you wanna have depth, you wanna be able to walk around a virtual world. So it has 3D or XR vr, right? So you've that 3D component we call xr. Then you've got ai, which is gonna be, you know, natural language processing for maybe you wanna talk to a character, maybe you wanna get help in the store.[00:17:44] You can have conversations. Then computer vision, maybe you wanna see a product and you're like, What does that look like in my house? I hit a button, it changes the camera. Now I can see that couch in my house because the camera itself is using computer vision to understand my living room. Actually, IKEA came up with this really cool thing.[00:18:00] A quick video of your house and it blocks stuff out. Like it'll take your existing couch out and put the new one in for you. You're like, Whoa, this is crazy. So[00:18:08] computer [00:18:08] Casey Golden: love AR for home goods, like for furniture. I mean,[00:18:12] Alan Smithson: So you've got, you know, this 3D ar and then you've got ai, which, you know, kind of enables all that. And the new AI algorithms are allowing you to we have one called in World where you can talk to characters, and the other one that we're looking at right now is anything world.[00:18:26] And the idea is that, Use a text description and it will build a 3D environment for, you can say, I, I need a room with four walls, five windows, a tree in the corner, and a couch over here, and it will build it for you. Now it's very low poly and it's, it's not, you know, it's not perfect, but it's, it's automatic.[00:18:44] It's kinda like, you know, Have you seen Mid Journey and Dall-e yet[00:18:47] Casey Golden: I love Mid Journey. I've been playing on there until like I ran out of [00:18:52] Alan Smithson: credits [00:18:52] Casey Golden: could play [00:18:54] Alan Smithson: I was like,[00:18:55] What the amount of credits, Here's my credit,[00:18:57] my [00:18:57] money, [00:18:58] Casey Golden: do it again. I was having so much fun with it. [00:19:01] and it. [00:19:02] Alan Smithson: and licensing. So like, why would I ever go to a stock photography site ever again? Because I say, Okay, I need, the other day I said I needed a metaverse, whatever. I typed in whatever I, you know, description. It gave me a couple. I was like, not happy. I did it again. I was like, Oh, that one's nice. I up resd it and now that's the image for my article.[00:19:20] Casey Golden: Yeah,[00:19:21] Ricardo Belmar: it's exactly what you wanted. [00:19:22] Casey Golden: I, actually think that it's brilliant that if I could just go ahead and create one. and then it would create like 500 versions.[00:19:31] Alan Smithson: Oh, I'm sure that's coming. I,[00:19:33] I'm sure. [00:19:33] Casey Golden: I'm just like, okay, I like this, but like, don't gimme one now I want like a set of four. Well, you know what, just gimme a set of 500.[00:19:41] Alan Smithson: Yep. You know, this was a really good processing power at that point[00:19:45] because these images, so you know, instead of four it can generate 400. It's, this is the thing with ai, if people don't understand, it's just raw processing power. That's why if we can tap into the phones around the world, You know, use some of this idle processing power, then you just have more power available to do it.[00:20:01] Because right now it's kind of expensive, right? You, you put in a request through mid journey, it goes up to their cloud. Somebody's gotta pay for, you know, an actual computer to process that. Create these four or five or 400 images for incident em back. Anyway, the last technology that we didn't touch on, so xr, ai, and the last one's blockchain. know, how do you have a decentralized ownership of assets? How do you have a record of maybe, you know, maybe you just want something simple like a record of your employment or your record of the things you took for training. Cuz right now you go to university, you have a degree, right? That degree is held by, let's say, you know, let's just use Harvard, right?[00:20:36] Harvard holds your degree. You now put on your, on your LinkedIn, Hey, I went to Harvard at, you know, there Now does, do employers go and verify that? Do they go to Harvard? Chances are, or they. a lot of times. So maybe having a, you know, verified way to not only take your degree, but all the courses that you took.[00:20:53] Maybe you took a course on Udemy or Udacity or you, you did a side course. The side courses are really the skills that you're gonna need, because that's why people are taking, that's why people are learning on YouTube, because right now the world's moving faster than the universities, colleges, and high schools can keep up, and so the curriculums have to go through rigorous vett.[00:21:13] By the time they go through that, it's maybe two, three years, the technology's already passed and like moved on. So we're kinda in this weird technology meets, you know, learning model. And actually I did a TED talk called the, the Marriage of Technology and Education and where I just said, Look, we should be using all these technologies that are, that we're inventing not only to train people on those technologies and how to use them, but use them for this, for for learning.[00:21:39] So we should be using AI algorithm. To do this, and actually something I read yesterday, you know, the company Striver s Str r ivr, they do all the training in VR for Walmart. They've trained over a million people for Walmart. And one of the things they said in their early Stanford hit Human Interaction Lab, the, the early study they did was a teacher, very simple study.[00:22:00] They had a teacher and two students, and they were all represented as avatars in VR. Now the teacher is looking at a student, right? So they have eye contact with the student. But imagine the avatar can look at both students equally. So even though the teacher may not be looking at either student, maybe looking down the middle, the avatar looks like it's looking right at you.[00:22:19] And so you have this personal one-on-one connection, even though it's one to many. And so you imagine if a, a class of a hundred people, everybody feels like you're looking directly at them, and this is super powerful.[00:22:31] Casey Golden: That's [00:22:31] interesting. Yeah, I think that, you education versus application. It's definitely behind. I don't feel like we're, we're really preparing kids for work or to understand what the career opportunities are because it's just so antiquated of yet you don't have to do that anymore. Like, these are all the new jobs in that space, under that topic that literally nobody's talking about.[00:22:58] So I think it's very interest. I asked a, a nine year old before the pandemic, which I'm like, So what do you wanna do? Like when you grow up, right? The, the, the number one question. And she just like, shrugged and pushed back on the pool and like, went backwards. 11. She's like, It doesn't really matter.[00:23:19] It's not like they'll ex, they won't exist anymore by the time I need it. [00:23:25] I just mind [00:23:27] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. Wow.[00:23:28] Yeah. [00:23:28] Alan Smithson: think that the key to this is asking a different question. The different question is, is this instead of what do you wanna do when you grow up? Or what job do you want to get? Because we don't know what the jobs are gonna be. We don't, we're inventing them as we go. And something like, I read a stat, something like 60% of jobs over the next decade won't exist,[00:23:45] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, that's right.[00:23:46] Yeah. [00:23:46] Alan Smithson: So what are we training people[00:23:47] for? [00:23:48] We don't [00:23:48] Ricardo Belmar: Right. We don't [00:23:48] Casey Golden: a nine year old to tell me that.[00:23:50] Ricardo Belmar: we, We don't even know. That's why we need better tools, Right. To be able to do [00:23:53] What problem do you want to solve?[00:23:53] Alan Smithson: so here's the better question to ask in my opinion, is what problem do you wanna solve in the[00:23:58] world? [00:23:59] Ricardo Belmar: That's the [00:23:59] Alan Smithson: know, technology can be used. It doesn't matter if you have a problem you wanna solve, like climate change, I want to solve, I wanna stop sharks from being harvested for their fins. Okay? If you take that, that singular cue, you can use all sorts of technologies to disrupt supply chains to, you know sink ships. You could do everything in your power to people from fishing for sharks, cutting their fins off and throwing them back. I mean, imagine just one person had a singular vision on that and used every piece of technology to disrupt that industry. Of course, you do [00:24:32] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. It, it's like the, the number one thing, right, the technology brings is agility to do these things quickly. [00:24:37] Alan Smithson: we're not teaching people. that, one, they have all the technology at the fingertips as long as you have access to the internet and a phone or a computer. Two, you can make a big difference as an individual. And three, we're not teaching people to set goals and look at long term horizons. So when Julie and I got into Metaverse, this was actually not our long-term goal.[00:24:59] Our long-term goal is to build a new education system using this technology. But we're in year seven of a 30 year plan. mean, literally, you know, we started in 2014, we're now in, you know, 2022 and we're going out to, you know, 20, I think it was 2048 or something, was our kind of goal. So imagine looking 20 years out as a student instead of saying, What do you want to, what kinda job do you wanna get?[00:25:22] Well, I'll get a job and then six months later, my employer will lay me off and then I'll go through this thing. And once you get into the the rat race of having to pay rent, your opportunities to dream huge and solve world problems really diminishes. Because you just need to pay your bills. And I think this is one of the one of the things that we can do better as a society is, is give people a bit of a safety net so they can start to try to cha to take on big problems in the world.[00:25:47] But you have to tell them what the problems are and what are some of the solution opportunities, and then say, here dedicate your life to one, solving this problem.[00:25:55] Casey Golden: Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that that's a much better way of looking at it. And I think it's just gonna be inevitable. Like I will never ask that question again after I got that answer because I too realize that like, it's a wrong question.[00:26:09] Alan Smithson: You know, ask me, what are you gonna do when you grow up? And I'm like, Well, I don't know. I, I have been in my life, I, I graduated with a degree in molecular biology. I was a pharmaceutical rep. I owned a medical billing company. We owned a hostile, We we had a nutraceutical company.[00:26:26] We had a DJ business. I was a DJ for 20 years. We had a technology company and now we own a game engine. So who knows where life will take you. But now we have a, a singular vision and, and mission to, to create a new education system for the world using the technologies that we're talking about today.[00:26:41] And we, we actually settled on retail as a model to focus on that because all the technologies we need for retail at the highest levels. So, you know, we're building a virtual mall, which is insane, but we're building the world's largest virtual mall, and all the technologies in there are actually being built in mindfulness of what we're gonna need for education.[00:27:02] So the hundredth floor of the mall, each floor of the mall is a million square feet, so it's a hundred floors tall. Each floor is a million square feet, so you have a hundred million square feet of virtual space to build retail. Experiences and entertainment and all these things. But the hundredth floor is actually owned by the Unlimited Awesome Academy, which is Julie and i's trust to build this new education platform.[00:27:23] So the hundredth floor of the mall will benefit from the entire mall. The 20th floor of the mall is an education floor, so we have, you know, floor one to 20 is owned by the mall and leased to brands. So we've got like a luxury floor, automotive floor, consumer electronics, all these things. Floor 20 is actually reserved for education.[00:27:39] So we're gonna put education systems in there and let them have the, the floor, There's no charge for that. So we really do have this kind of long term vision of how we can leverage the, the retail world for the technology. Cuz we're, we're working with our partners to build insane amounts of technology, like crazy stuff.[00:27:56] We can, We built a technology recently called Infinite, l o d, or infinite level of detail that allows us to have an infinite virtual world. Meaning the mall's one building, when you leave the mall, it's vast. I mean, you could build anything you want in as far as you see. And it could be out in space like we designed it so that it doesn't, it, it loads on any phone fast and you can load and go anywhere in the world and walk around and it's just vast, right?[00:28:22] So that technology, I think is gonna revolutionize how. Build these things, because now what it typically happens is you build a scene and the scene is a fixed map, like, you know, Decentraland, a fixed map, sandbox, it's a fixed map. And then what you do is as you walk around the map, it's kinda loading different parts of the map.[00:28:40] Well, we don't have a fixed map. We have the fixed mall, but then the map is completely open to the world and what they wanna build. And so this is kind of our way of saying, okay, what does an open and unlimited metaverse look like? You know? And because that's really what people want. They want a persistent. Is never ending. It's kinda like Second Life, but you know, at a much, much larger scale available. And then Second, Life is still successful. They still have probably a million people a year on Second. Life doesn't work on mobile, Decent land, doesn't work on mobile Sandbox doesn't work on mobile. Roblox barely works on mobile.[00:29:11] So you know, having the ability to onboard billions of mobile phones into the Metas is gonna be the key. And then of course, we'll move to glasses over the next decade as well. You're seeing Oculus moved over to Meta now. Meta is introducing a new a new headset. So we're gonna see vast improve improvements of this. And then I would, I'd venture to say Apple makes their entrance into this space probably in the next year, would be my guess. We've been waiting for years and there's been lots of rumors over the years. I remember somebody in 2014 saying, Apple's gonna come out with VR glasses this year.[00:29:43] And I was like, I don't know about. Now, here we are, seven years [00:29:47] later. It's still [00:29:48] Why are brands coming to the mall?[00:29:48] Ricardo Belmar: So, so Alan, let me ask you more about the mall. I'm curious, when you talk to retailers and brands about the floors in the mall that you've got set aside for them, what, what's, what's your pitch to them? What, what's the selling point for the retailers to, Is it, for example, because you'd run on mobile where so many of these other platforms either barely do or, or don't what, what's the big selling point for the retail on the brand to, to be in the.[00:30:10] Alan Smithson: sure. I think it's, it's being part of something bigger. First of all, you know, you look. Brands are jumping into De Central and because it's, it's there and it works and it's bigger, right? It's a bigger community and there's gonna be more chance of eyeballs falling on. The problem is there's just not a lot of users there because the graphic fidelity is ma and there's a lot of barriers to entry.[00:30:27] If you wanna buy something physical, you cannot, If you want to use your credit card to buy something digital, you cannot, You have to buy with Manna, which is their in world currency. So we took a lot of the ideas from what these other platforms were doing. We said, Okay, well, how. Specifically make that for retail.[00:30:46] And really it was less about what we thought. And we've just had a lot of meetings with a lot of brands in the hundreds. And so when we, when we show them the mall, when we walk around, when we show them stores, when they say, Oh, well can it do this? Can it connect to our backend order management system?[00:31:00] Yes, it can because we use JavaScript. Can it, can we connect our loyalty program? Yes, absolutely. We have a, a backend system. And so it's just a really, a combination of. Having this idea for 'em all because we were building virtual showrooms for all different brands, and they were saying, Oh, I want a video chat on this one.[00:31:18] And this one would say, I want to dress the avatars and I, I want something over here. And so all these different disparate virtual showrooms that we're building, we built one for MasterCard, we built one for, for Samsung. We built all these things and they were asking for the same thing in different ways.[00:31:30] So we said, What if we built in a persistent mall so that if,[00:31:33] if we build a new piece of tech for one, one person, one brand, it now everybody in the mall. So you have the central part. Now brands can start driving people into their stores. So the mall.io/brand, it drops you right into the brand store. You can walk around, you get the full brand experience, but you can walk out the door as well. [00:31:52] So we've been meeting with, with hundreds of brands, and the brands that have interest in the mall, they want to get into the metaverse. And now here, here's the thing is it's a big cluster. You know, everybody's like, Oh, talking about the metaverse, the buzzword of the year. You know, do I make NFTs, do I not?[00:32:06] NFTs are kind of got like a, you know, negative connotation now that they've lost half their value. So it. Do we build our own virtual store? Do we go into Decentraland? Do we build something over here? Do we go into Roblox? And you know, the question or the answer's probably you gotta try all of the things, right?[00:32:23] And so you know, what we recommend is, look, take a budget, you know, whatever it is, 50 grand, a hundred grand, 200 grand, whatever your budget is, that's discretionary. You know, don't invest too much in this right now because nobody knows what's gonna work and whatnot. So we have like a 50 grand entrance package.[00:32:37] You get lease, you get, you know, kind of all the things included. We build everything out for you.[00:32:41] We have a full studio. And so the idea was how do we just get rid of all of the barriers to entry for a brand and then just get them into the mall. Because it's, it's all new for all of us, right? You know, people are saying, How are you gonna get any traffic in the mall?[00:32:53] Well, you know, of course we're the mall. We have to get traffic in there. But we're coordinating that effort with the brands. With the brands that we're working with, because really we don't have the brand gravitas of a, you know, of a, of a large shoe company or a, a large electronics manufacturer. You guys have, they have hundreds of thousands or millions of consumers. [00:33:12] And we're working with a candy company. They're gonna put QR codes on the candy, so that's gonna drive people directly into their store in the mall. And, they have multiple stores in the mall, so it's. It's really intriguing how, we've kind of realized that the marketing and getting people into the mall is, is less our responsibility is more of the brands, but where our responsibility is to have the right brands there and encourage them to build cool stuff because it's really less about, you, know, a store and it's more about an experience. And so, you know, one thing that I think the mall replaces or, or at least adjuncts is that, or not replaces, but adjuncts is that Amazon and Mall Walmart are the two largest retail stores on earth digitally, right? amazon.com and walmart.com. But you wouldn't invite your friends to go shopping on amazon.com.[00:33:58] You'd be like, Hey, we're gonna have a shopping date on, Go on Amazon. See what I'm ordering in my cart. It, it's taken the fun out shopping it, it's taken a front out. It's, it's just ruthless procurement of goods. Casey we'll go Amazon shopping[00:34:12] Buying vs Shopping - it should be fun![00:34:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yep. It's buying versus shopping. [00:34:14] Alan Smithson: it is. Procurement of goods versus shopping and shopping should be fun.[00:34:18] There is a reason why malls aim the cultural center of communities, and we wanna do the same thing. So our, our mall is multiplayer. You can invite your friends, you can go walk around. It's super fun actually. And we're putting little mini games in there. There's daily games that change every day so you can win prizes.[00:34:34] Just super cool stuff. So. [00:34:35] Casey Golden: That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think that big, that big benefit at the end of the day of participating. It may not necessarily be a conversion rate because that's not necessarily the goal Right. [00:34:48] now. What would you say is that roi? Because I don't feel that it's going to be money, like sales revenue, but I might be wrong.[00:34:59] Like today, if somebody wanted to go and have their first Metaverse experience with you, what is that main transformation or moment that you expect that that brand is going to be mentioning in the meeting to a hundred thousand or 800,000 next season? There?[00:35:19] Alan Smithson: I think you nailed it. Is, is really up to the brands to build some cool stuff and, and look, right now we made the mall look like, like a mall. It's got stores you can walk around. It doesn't need to look like a mall. It could be a, a field, it could be a space, it could be anything, right? So when you walk in your store, , Yes.[00:35:34] It looks like a store from the outside. And then when you walk in through the barrier of the door, it changes and, loads a new project. And the new project is like, Oh, now I'm in a, you know, basketball court, or now I'm like sitting court side watching you know, Nicks and nets, right? So it's one of those things that right now there's a term called skew amorphism, meaning we kind of tend to take what is already existing and build things like that.[00:35:56] So we. A mall. Looks like a mall. We put it into digital format so it feels and looks like a mall. Like you're walking around. You don't, it just feels right. It just looks like a mall or, Okay, great. I get it. I understand it this, really understand it. But that doesn't mean we can't push the absolute limits on the other end.[00:36:09] But what we need to do, and we need to do this for everybody, is make people feel comfortable in these virtual spaces and, and skew amorphism or, or bringing kind of the traditional world into the virtual world for now seems to. The right path. We've done some crazy, crazy stuff on the, on the, you know, way out there, NFT galleries and stuff. [00:36:30] And it doesn't really resonate with people. They don't know how to navigate it. They, they don't understand it. They're, there's a bit of a mix mix mash, so I think it's really gonna be up to the brands to build cool experiences that engage with their customers that. Really drive brand awareness. You look at Samsung's 8 37 store in New York. I think it's a prime example. And even Nike Store in New York City, I mean, yes, they sell shoes, but it's really about the experience of experiencing the brand. You go into Nike store and the whole first floor is the history of Nike. You can look at the old shoes, like it's just really, really cool. Yes, you can buy some shoes on, you know, one of the other floors, but it's not about that. It's about the experience of, oh my God, I was in New York and I went to this crazy store. And it, it, made me realize how how much research has gone into the Nike shoes and then like, you can really build these experiences and Samsung 8 3 7 in New York as well.[00:37:16] You go in there, you can't buy anything. You can literally just, you can look at the fridges, you can look at the kitchens, you can look at the, the mobile phones. You can, there's all these really cool experiences. There's lots of places to take selfies, which is fun. And you, you know, people's new selfie flex is gonna be, Hey, I gonna dress up my avatar.[00:37:33] And dripping in Gucci and and take a picture. But I think people's online personas are going to start being more important than their in-person personas. We're already seeing that. I mean, like, you know, people in virtual worlds are spending billion, billions on skins. [00:37:49] Ricardo Belmar: Oh yeah. Oh [00:37:51] Alan Smithson: You know, night skins.[00:37:53] I mean, I think Fortnite did something like $9 billion last year, Something [00:37:57] Ricardo Belmar: Hmm. [00:37:57] It's crazy. Yeah. So, Alan, let me ask you this. What, what would be your top advice right now for, for, let's say for this over this next year for retailers, DTC brands, I mean even retail tech businesses who are all looking at the metaverse and kind of thinking, Okay, how do I get in? What, what, what are my first steps?[00:38:17] What do I do to get started?[00:38:19] Alan Smithson: Sure. Find a, a decent partner who understands retail, who's done with this. There's, you know There's a company called Max, a Maxent. They do a great work on kind of, you know, for furniture companies, a bunch of retailers. [00:38:30][00:38:30] Alan Smithson: Marxent [00:38:31][00:38:31] Yeah, they, they do a great job. Converting things to 3d, you're gonna have to have teams that understand 3d.[00:38:36] And 3D is not easy. It's not as easy as creating a JPEG or a video. It's quite complicated. There's. You have a 3D model, then you've got layers and layers of of images that go on top of that to make it look realistic. You've got a bumpy one that makes it look bumpy. You've got texture files, all these things.[00:38:51] It's not, it's not really that easy a technology. Now, it's getting easier and we're getting there, but I think by starting now and starting small, taking a, you know, let's say 50,000 to a $500,000 budget, building something and then starting to have your teams internally. Understand how the sausage is made. How do we go from an idea or a concept or some photographs of a store to a fully, 3D environment with avatars, with products in there and everything, and, click to buy everything.[00:39:19] And so one of the reasons we did the mall is because we've done this a bunch of times for individual clients and it, it ended up becoming kind of rinse and repeat, right? We're like, Okay, well this, this client wants, and now we can build a virtual showroom in. Oh man, the last one we built, we took three days and it was beautiful. Just because we're getting really good at that. So I think the first thing is understand, learn a bit. So there's lots and lots of . I don't know how many guides to the metaverse there are, but there's probably at least a hundred that I know of. So go read some of those. You know, have somebody in your team dedicate somebody in your team to be the head of Metaverse, you know, and it's not just about, you know, 3D and that sort of thing, but you have to understand the crypto world as well.[00:39:58] People are gonna start buying in cryptocurrencies. What does that mean for you? How. How do you get paid in cryptocurrency and convert that to fiat because brands don't have accounting systems that that can take into account crypto. Right. So we have a, a partner named BitPay. So anybody can pay in any crypto they want using 95 different wallets.[00:40:16] It automatically takes their money, converts to U s D on at the end of the day and then settles with the brand at the end of the day. So you, the brands get settled in USD. . And, and the client doesn't know any, any difference in between and it's actually cheaper. So a stripe is like 3% for, you know, paying with credit cards or whatever.[00:40:34] With fiat and BitPay is only 1% because, and there's no chargebacks. Cuz once a crypto payment's paid, it's, there's, you can't reverse it. So I think there's gonna be a, a combination of. Onboarding customers or guests, we call them guests in the mall. Onboarding guests into, the crypto world slowly, but allowing them to pay in anything they want.[00:40:52] You pay credit card, PayPal, Amazon Pay, you know, it doesn't matter. We will, we will take any form of payment for physical and or digital goods in fiat and or cryptocurrency. And so from a brand standpoint, something like the mall kind of gives you. A boost because you don't have to reinvent the wheel.[00:41:10] If you're going into Decentraland again, there's a platform already there, there's people there. Roblox is great if, let's say, for example, you're a brand and your, your target customer is 25 to 30, well, your next target customer is, you know, 15 to 25. Right? Like that block. So if they're playing Roblox, and then I think something like 62% of Roblox players are under the age of 16. So if that's your next target demographic, like Gucci wants to be in the next, you know, they wanna be generationally relevant. [00:41:39] So if you're a brand that wants to be generationally relevant and be put in front of millions of people, go Roblox, you know that, that's a great starting point there. But it's, it's hard to get people's attention in there too. You've got, something like 10 million games on Roblox or something, or 4 million games on Roblox. So and then with the mall, it is a dedicated retail experience. You know, people are going there for that. They know what they're getting, and there's, there's gonna be a lot of, malls, digital malls, metaverse malls and these sorts of things.[00:42:06] But I don't think a lot of the startups that get into this realize the true depth of what's required. I mean, we spent seven years building a game engine for Enterprise. So when a, when a client says, What are your security protocols? We, we have a SOC two compliance and SOC two is not an easy thing to do.[00:42:23] It's, you know, it's eight months of, they basically take everybody on your team rip apart of their computers and you know, digitally [00:42:31] inside, make sure you don't have anything hidden. You gotta go through all these security protocols. So now that when we go to our clients, we say we are of SOC two, we also have Kronos compliance.[00:42:40] So Kronos is a 3D standard so that if you have a 3D model that you use on walmart.com, you can just pick it up and drop it into the mall and it will look the. This is important. Your product is not gonna look real in Roblox. It's gonna look like it's made out of Lego. You go, same thing with Sandbox, same with the Decentraland.[00:42:58] And they use a technology called voxels. So it's, very gamey looking like, like it's made out [00:43:02] Ricardo Belmar: Very [00:43:03] blocky. It's very [00:43:04] Casey Golden: of a standard of visual aesthetic that a lot, the higher end the brand, the less familiar that feels. And it's, but it's being adopted and it's, You don't have to be photorealistic all the time, [00:43:21] Alan Smithson: Yeah. You can have fun with it. And that's what I tell brands. Look,[00:43:24] You can use Unreal Engine for your commercials, your, your Hollywood movies. You know, they, they high, super high end. Maybe you want to build a film, a car, you know, driving through things. You can use the Unreal Engine for that. Then you can take the same asset. Down res it put it into Metaverse Engine. And now you can use it on the web, on, on the mall, right? You can use that same thing now it's interactive. You can drive it, you can, you know, on a mobile phone. Then you can take that same thing, pixelize it, and throw it into, into Decentraland or sandbox or, or Roblox or Minecraft.[00:43:51] And the idea is that you're using one asset to create several experiences and brands are gonna start doing this. I mean, it's just very few brands are doing it. [00:44:00] But I predict that you're not gonna be in one metaverse. You're gonna be in a bunch of different things, try different things, and some will be successful, Some won't.[00:44:06] Try things on your own website as well. I mean, our system. When you b build a store in the mall, you can actually build a hit, copy, paste, make a separate one and put it on your website as well. Now it'll link over to the mall, but it can reside on your know your brand.com website. We, we've taken out as many barriers to entry for brands as possible from, from our standpoint. [00:44:26] Casey Golden: Yeah. [00:44:27] Alan Smithson: We just, we've done so many meetings and it's been, I mean, our FAQ page is 50 questions long now for the mall [00:44:33] Casey Golden: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's hard enough to wrap your brain around it. At least once you make the decision. Let me take you right to it. [00:44:44] Alan Smithson: Let's just get it done, shall we? [00:44:46] And shouldn't be like one year thing. Oh my God, we're gonna build this thing in a year. Like what? No, man. If you can't build it in a, you know, eight weeks. [00:44:53] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. you'll be too late. [00:44:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah. maybe. Maybe. [00:44:58] Ricardo Belmar: You might be too late. [00:44:59] Alan Smithson: It's a crazy world we live in. It's moving so fast. That's why, one of our benefits of the engine is that it's low code.[00:45:04] We can build these things in in hours, you know like building the whole thing from scratch takes three days. You imagine how long that used to take? Six months ago, that took three weeks.[00:45:14] Ricardo Belmar: There's definitely a magic to to low code for sure, to really speed things up.[00:45:18] Alan Smithson: Yep. [00:45:19] How to reach Alan?[00:45:19] Casey Golden: what's the best way for someone to get in touch with you and follow the journey? [00:45:23] Alan Smithson: Sure. I, I, there's a couple ways. Metaverse Engine, which is, you know, the creation platform that is powering the, the mall. You can go to metaverse.com, m a t a v r s e.com. The mall is simply the mall.io. You can go sign up there, and if you sign up now for the mall, whether you're a brand or a guest, or an investor it'll ask you, you know, a dropdown for that.[00:45:43] You'll get put into a, an email funnel. So you'll have, if you sign up now, you'll have all early access to everything. So, for example, we're launching a new website for the mall, And that new website is fully built as a 3D world. So you scroll down the mall and you actually walk in and you end up inside of 3D website walking around.[00:46:00] It's not the mall, it's the website for the mall. we used our engine to build a revolutionary new website. So go to mall.io, the mall.io. And then you can just add me on LinkedIn. I can't add anybody from that, but you can follow me on LinkedIn. Cause I hit the limit of LinkedIn. Just use this my name alan Smithson. And you'll see fireworks above my head. I, I took a picture at the Formula one and that's my profile pick now [00:46:22] Casey Golden: Oh, [00:46:22] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, nice. [00:46:23] Alan Smithson: was like, this [00:46:24] Ricardo Belmar: cool [00:46:24] Alan Smithson: awesome. [00:46:25] Ricardo Belmar: Very cool . [00:46:26] Alan Smithson: Yep. [00:46:27] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I, I, I know I have really learned a lot today, Alan. Thank, thank you for that. I'm sure all of our listeners and, and viewers did too. Casey cause, you're already a, a Metaverse and, and web three advocate, so I'm sure a lot of this was old news for you after your debut event. Right. [00:46:40] Casey Golden: Yeah, I mean, we just had our second successful brand activation with Lux Lock on the 12th for New York Fashion Week. So with five brands everyone is enjoying. The experiences and looking forward to the future of commerce, like the brands are excited, the con consumers are excited. Making these early experiences is just critical into understanding like what these channels could potentially mean to your company.[00:47:06] Just do something And see what happens. [00:47:11] Alan Smithson: Yep. No, it's absolutely true. And look, one other thing that I, I didn't really mention is set some KPIs. What, what is it you want to get out of it? Because a lot of times, you know, for the last five years or six years, we've been building all sorts of marketing things, and they never really set KPIs.[00:47:25] They're just like, Hey, let's do this cool thing over there. And you're like, Yeah, I'll take your money and we'll do it. No, there's no measurement of success. So then you don't get a subsequent budget. And, and marketing teams are, they, they sometimes do this a lot, you know, they'll, they'll do things without measuring it, and that's fine.[00:47:41] Then maybe they want the media hits or whatever it is. But you have to have some metrics of success. Is it conversions? Is it time spent on platform? Is it, is it the number of visitors? What I, is the metric that you're measuring for success?[00:47:52] Because then, you can measure that. We can make changes. You can change completely everything or just some things, and you can get to the successful metrics. If you're not measuring it there's no point. So that's why actually one of the things in our mall is, complete analytics dashboard with, with everything from time spent on how much time somebody spent on a product. I mean, looking at it did they invite a friend? Did they convert from there? You know, these things are all really important.[00:48:15] And so we built, built this cool dashboard so that you can kinda look at your store and, and see a heat map of where people walked. Cause if somebody walks in your store and they all go right, and you want them to go left, well you can put a little display. [00:48:27] Casey Golden: they always, always go right. [00:48:29] Alan Smithson: Do they[00:48:29] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. [00:48:33] Casey Golden: apartment? Buildings. We'll go right[00:48:38] Alan Smithson: love it? Well, you know what? The heat map data will tell us where people go. [00:48:42] We'll find it. Yeah. Once we have this segregated data in the mall, we'll be able to tell, you know, okay. 57% of people went that way. 37 went that way. [00:48:50] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. And then you can keep adjusting, right? I mean, that's kinda the whole point is you want to keep adjusting and adapting to what, What's gonna work? [00:48:55] Alan Smithson: Yeah, you could put a plant there to make them sure. They go around it the other way. You just literally, and this is the other thing, you can re-merchandise your store for every day if you wanted to, you could be like, Hey, today we're gonna do, you know I don't know. It's October, so we're gonna do a Halloween theme, and for the month of October, it's Halloween theme.[00:49:10] And then, you know,

“ทุกบริษัทจำเป็นต้องหาสถานที่ใน metaverse ซึ่งช่วยให้ธุรกิจต่างๆ สร้างขีดความสามารถด้านความเป็นจริงที่เพิ่มขึ้น หากบริษัทไม่พร้อมสำหรับเรื่องใหม่นี้ พวกเขาจำเป็นต้องพิจารณาอนาคตของพวกเขาอย่างจริงจัง  เพราะทุกอย่างกำลังเคลื่อนไปในทิศทางนี้” Julie Smithson ผู้ร่วมก่อตั้ง MetaVRse กล่าว แม้จะมีความท้าทายเป็นอย่างมาก แต่วิธีการเชิงรุกและความอยากรู้อยากเห็นสามารถช่วยให้องค์กรต่างๆ สามารถใช้ประโยชน์จาก metaverse ซึ่งกลยุทธ์ที่ดีที่สุดคือกลยุทธ์ที่มุ่งเน้นการมอบผลประโยชน์และการสร้างสมดุลระหว่างผลประโยชน์ของโลกทั้งสองได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพสูงสุด เลือกฟังกันได้เลยนะครับ อย่าลืมกด Follow ติดตาม PodCast ช่อง Geek Forever's Podcast ของผมกันด้วยนะครับ ========================= ร่วมสนับสนุน ด.ดล Blog และ Geek Forever Podcast เพื่อให้เรามีกำลังในการผลิต Content ดี ๆ ให้กับท่าน https://www.tharadhol.com/become-a-supporter/ ——————————————– ติดตาม ด.ดล Blog ผ่าน Line OA เพียงคลิก : https://lin.ee/aMEkyNA ——————————————– ไม่พลาดข่าวสารผ่านทาง Email จาก ด.ดล Blog : https://www.getrevue.co/profile/tharadhol ——————————————– Geek Forever Club พื้นที่ของการแลกเปลี่ยนข้อมูลข่าวสาร ความรู้ ด้านธุรกิจ เทคโนโลยีและวิทยาศาสตร์ ใหม่ ๆ ที่น่าสนใจ https://www.facebook.com/groups/geek.forever.club/ ========================= ช่องทางติดตาม ด.ดล Blog เพิ่มเติมได้ที่ Fanpage : www.facebook.com/tharadhol.blog Blockdit : www.blockdit.com/tharadhol.blog Twitter : www.twitter.com/tharadhol Instragram : instragram.com/tharadhol TikTok : tiktok.com/@geek.forever Youtube : www.youtube.com/c/mrtharadhol Linkedin : www.linkedin.com/in/tharadhol Website : www.tharadhol.com

Alan Smithson is an #AR #VR #Evangelist #Investor & Host of #XR For Business #podcast, he spoke about the hype vs ground reality of Immersive technologies plus the need for startups to build products/solutions that add value right now. metavrse.com MetaVRse – Bringing the power of AR/VR/XR to global ... https://ca.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson https://twitter.com/alansmithson1?lang=en https://xrforbusiness.io/podcast/welcome-to-xr-for-business/ XROM- Home of Extended Reality India's 1st AR/VR Focussed Podcast Kindly subscribe to our youtube channel www.youtube.com/xrompodcast Music Credit: Adam Avil Track Title: Shiv

This week the hosts are reporting live from AWE 2022. In this special episode of TWIXR, Charlie and Ted will be interviewing the following: Alan Smithson, CEO, MetaVrse, Pearly Chen, VP, HTC, Devon Copley, CEO Avatour.Thank you to our sponsor, Virbela!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Website Link: MetaVRse.comCompany/Podcast Name: MetaVRseAlan Smithson, B.Sc. - Co-Founder - MetaVRse, Inc. Alan Smithson's purpose in life is to inspire and educate people to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way. Mr. Smithson is a Co-Founder of MetaVRse, a low-code platform that makes it easy to create & share interactive 3D experiences instantly on the web. He is a proud Father, Business Leader, TEDx Speaker, and Podcast Host. Mr. Smithson co-invented the World's first touchscreen DJ system, Emulator — featured on Dragons' Den and winning DJ Mag's Innovative Product of the Year in 2011. His 10-year-old daughter invented sandals that leave a heart-shaped tan line on your feet called Love Sandal winning Top 20 Under 20 at only 10 years old. He is an Independent Global Advisor on the Business of XR for Fortune 500 Companies and UHNW Family Offices.

The idea of the metaverse has captured the attention of brands, retailers, media companies, marketing agencies, and technology platforms. Pioneering business leaders, Investors, and entrepreneurs see new opportunities to stake their claim in an as yet-to-be-defined space that promises to revolutionize the internet and what it means to be online and completely change the way people work, play, and shop. During this 1 hour recording of a webinar, PSFK iQ researchers will help frame how our audience understands and thinks about the metaverse by unpacking consumer sentiment to identify key insights and looking at the experimentation taking place to highlight emerging trends in retail and marketing, as well as the tools and services underpinning the virtual economy. They'll also talk to experts to get their POV on the meaningful opportunities and innovations in the metaverse space. This session will includes: - Presentation of key insights from new PSFK Research - Expert discussion with Liz Bacelar of Estée Lauder Companies and Alan Smithson of MetaVRse *Liz Bacelar of Estée Lauder Companies* Our expert brand-side speaker on the webinar is Liz Bacelar. Liz is the Global Executive Director of Innovation for Estée Lauder Companies, powering NFT, Metaverse and emerging tech opportunities for their 30+ brands in the US, China, Europe and LatAm. Prior to her career in beauty, Liz was credited with powering the evolution of “fashion and tech”, connecting technologists and executives through her consultancy and global industry events. *Alan Smithson of MetaVRse* Also joining the conversation will be Alan Smithson from MetaVRse, a universal, web-based 3D creation platform that enables anyone to leverage the power of spatial computing. With MetaVRse's proprietary, code-optional web platform, retailers and companies can easily create and share interactive 3D experiences instantly. By harnessing the power of billions of devices from a one-click publish, MetaVRse is helping build an open, universal and democratized Metaverse. https://metavrse.com/ For more information about this event: https://retailinnovationweek.com/event/psfk-metaverse-webinar/ For more information about the associated research driving this event: https://www.psfk.com/report/brand-strategies-for-the-metaverse https://www.psfk.com/report/retail-strategies-for-the-metaverse https://www.psfk.com/membership --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/psfk/message

This week we are joined by Julie Smithson, Co-Founder of MetaVRse and Ben Erwin, Creator of The Polys - WebXR Awards and WebXR Summit Series. Ben, Julie and Sophia worked together this past February to present the second annual Polys WebXR Award Show and WebXR Summit Series. Listen as they give us a recap of the show and discuss what the future looks like for this program. Links: https://thepolys.com/  Guest LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-smithson/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/powersimple/  Twitter: @tylerhgates @sophiamosh  Visit the VR/AR Association at www.TheVRARA.com for more information about how you can get involved with this worldwide organization to help gain exposure and share ideas and best practices with other experts in the industry. Subscribe to the podcast wherever podcasts are found or listen to past interviews at www.TheVRARA.com/podcast Do you have an interest in being a guest on our podcast or have a guest recommendation?  Email vicki@thevrara.com and let us know!

Thanks to Meta (formerly Facebook), the term metaverse became the hot new buzzword. But, what is the metaverse and how does it work? For most, it is believed to require special hardware to create an immersive experience. However, that is not always the case. In fact, MetaVRse has a concept that will allow you to … Continue reading MetaVRse: Bringing the future of mixed reality to you @ CES 2022 → The post MetaVRse: Bringing the future of mixed reality to you @ CES 2022 appeared first on Tech Podcast Network.

Thanks to Meta (formerly Facebook), the term metaverse became the hot new buzzword. But, what is the metaverse and how does it work? For most, it is believed to require special hardware to create an immersive experience. However, that is not always the case. In fact, MetaVRse has a concept that will allow you to join in right from your tablet or computer.What is MetaVRse?MetaVRse is the future of mixed reality. It's a code-optional platform that makes it easy to create and share interactive 3D experiences instantly on the web. With the platform, anyone can be a creator. You don't need any coding experience - just make your experience in MetaVRse Studio, and it will deploy across multiple operating systems, browsers, and devices. The company is bringing the future of XR to you.MetaVRse is based on web technology, so it runs in your browser without any special hardware required. You can access the platform from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. MetaVRse uses WebXR - a standard for how browsers should work with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) devices. MetaVRse is also built on the Metaverse SDK, which makes it easy to create & share interactive experiences without any coding experience.MetaVRse works with any VR, AR, or MR device. It is currently available on the web and mobile devices (iOS and Android) but will be coming to other platforms soon.What is the Metaverse?The metaverse is a virtual world that you can explore, interact with, and create. It's a shared space where people can come together to socialize, play games, and work on projects. Think of it as a cross between the internet and reality - a place where you can be anyone you want to be and do anything you want to do.While many speak of it as a single experience, there are multiple approaches to the concept. Each one has its own ecosystem, as well as system requirements. Meta's metaverse runs natively on the company's Oculus hardware. Microsoft's metaverse implementation lives mostly within Teams for now but will expand into Xbox and more. MetaVRse brings the concept outside of a locked ecosystem and into the wild, through browser-based interaction.What Can I Do in MetaVRse?In MetaVRse, you can socialize with friends, play games, work on projects, and explore the Metaverse. You can also create your own experiences to share with others. It is a great way to connect with people from all over the world and explore new things together.MetaVRse is also a great place to shop. You can find items that are not available in the real world, or you can buy items from the Metaverse to use in the real world. The ecosystem has a wide variety of shops and products to choose from.SummaryMetaVRse is changing the way we interact with the world. With its easy-to-use platform and code-optional design, anyone can be a creator. To learn more about the platform and how you can get involved, head to the company's website.Interview by Christopher Jordan of The Talking Sound.Sponsored by: Get $5 to protect your credit card information online with Privacy. Amazon Prime gives you more than just free shipping. Get free music, TV shows, movies, videogames and more. The most flexible tools for podcasting. Get a 30 day free trial of storage and statistics.

Thanks to Meta (formerly Facebook), the term metaverse became the hot new buzzword. But, what is the metaverse and how does it work? For most, it is believed to require special hardware to create an immersive experience. However, that is not always the case. In fact, MetaVRse has a concept that will allow you to join in right from your tablet or computer.What is MetaVRse?MetaVRse is the future of mixed reality. It's a code-optional platform that makes it easy to create and share interactive 3D experiences instantly on the web. With the platform, anyone can be a creator. You don't need any coding experience - just make your experience in MetaVRse Studio, and it will deploy across multiple operating systems, browsers, and devices. The company is bringing the future of XR to you.MetaVRse is based on web technology, so it runs in your browser without any special hardware required. You can access the platform from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. MetaVRse uses WebXR - a standard for how browsers should work with virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) devices. MetaVRse is also built on the Metaverse SDK, which makes it easy to create & share interactive experiences without any coding experience.MetaVRse works with any VR, AR, or MR device. It is currently available on the web and mobile devices (iOS and Android) but will be coming to other platforms soon.What is the Metaverse?The metaverse is a virtual world that you can explore, interact with, and create. It's a shared space where people can come together to socialize, play games, and work on projects. Think of it as a cross between the internet and reality - a place where you can be anyone you want to be and do anything you want to do.While many speak of it as a single experience, there are multiple approaches to the concept. Each one has its own ecosystem, as well as system requirements. Meta's metaverse runs natively on the company's Oculus hardware. Microsoft's metaverse implementation lives mostly within Teams for now but will expand into Xbox and more. MetaVRse brings the concept outside of a locked ecosystem and into the wild, through browser-based interaction.What Can I Do in MetaVRse?In MetaVRse, you can socialize with friends, play games, work on projects, and explore the Metaverse. You can also create your own experiences to share with others. It is a great way to connect with people from all over the world and explore new things together.MetaVRse is also a great place to shop. You can find items that are not available in the real world, or you can buy items from the Metaverse to use in the real world. The ecosystem has a wide variety of shops and products to choose from.SummaryMetaVRse is changing the way we interact with the world. With its easy-to-use platform and code-optional design, anyone can be a creator. To learn more about the platform and how you can get involved, head to the company's website.Interview by Christopher Jordan of The Talking Sound.Sponsored by: Get $5 to protect your credit card information online with Privacy. Amazon Prime gives you more than just free shipping. Get free music, TV shows, movies, videogames and more. The most flexible tools for podcasting. Get a 30 day free trial of storage and statistics.

In this episode of the DevReady Podcast, hosts Andrew Romeo and Anthony Sapountzis have an insightful conversation with Alan Smithson, Co-Founder at MetaVRse which is a proprietary, code-optional web platform that makes it easy to create and share interactive 3D experiences instantly. Know of the iconic performance by the French DJ and pioneer of electronic music, Jean Michel Jarre on the 31st of December, 2020 where he performed live in a 3D visual reconstruction of the emblem of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris? Well, that immersive event that was available on the social VR platform VRChat, accessible via a personal computer or in virtual reality for those who have a VR headset was made possible courtesy of Alan and his team. Topics Covered: · Touch Screen Technology · Virtual Reality · Overcoming Challenges Faced · Building World-Firsts · Working in Training and Marketing · Creating Value · Being Creative

On 29th December I hosted the 2021 Immersive Tech Review with panelists Alan Smithson and Julie Smithson from MetaVRse and Judity Okonkwo from Imisi 3D. Our discussion was wide-ranging covering events such as new launches from Snap, Niantic, no and lo-code game engines, Microsoft Mesh, acquisitions that made headlines including Wikitude, Pico and Sketchfab, the growing participation of women in XR, hardware launches from HP, Pico and Varjo.  And of course the big story of 2021, FB morphing into Meta.... #metaverse #immersivetech #xr2021 #immersivetechnology #ar #vr

Alan Smithson, CoFounder of MetaVRse  joined me for a discussion about the evolution of the Metaverse. He's been involved with building Metaverse technologies since the companies founding in 2016. MetaVRse is a Cloud Platform that makes it easy to Create, Curate & Consume interactive 3D Experiences across every device through a drag and drop, code optional editor Their short to mid term focus is on marketing, retail and ecommerce solutions. He's got a podcast “XR for Business” that's worth checking out. Give it a listen and let us know what you think?   Podcast Guest Alan Smithson CoFounder of MetaVRse  https://metavrse.com   Podcast Hosts Jeff Roster Twitter https://twitter.com/JeffPR LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-roster-bb51b8/ Website https://thisweekininnovation.com Brian Sathianathan Twitter  https://twitter.com/BrianVision Website https://www.iterate.ai Podcast Website https://www.podbean.com/pu/pbblog-f8asf-af2782 https://thisweekininnovation.com Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-innovation/id1562068014 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2QDqTUnt6jebdRHbRzSTJN LaunchPadOne https://www.launchpaddm.com/pd/This-Week-in-Innovation?showAllEpisodes=true Listen Notes https://lnns.co/2QPSfnizE5K     #Startup #Retailers #innovation #Analysts, #professors, #reporters, #economists #Founders, #VC's #blockchain #IoT #retail #blockchain #IoT #retail innovation #retail startups #startup strategies #retail apocalypse #retail #future of retail #this week in innovation #retail trends #clubhouse #unified commerce #social commerce #mobile commerce #e commerce #supply chain #data #loss prevention #returns management #computer vision #wms #warehouse management systems #data science #machine learning #Inventory 

Have you ever played around with an Instagram or Zoom filter? Maybe you're an experienced gamer who's created and avatar to represent your online identity. That's augmented reality (AR). And, unlike virtual reality, it launches the virtual world into our tangible, physical world. This unlocks infinite opportunities for real people to connect in unique ways. Listen in as our guests, Catherine D. Henry, Senior VP of Growth at Media.Monks, Alan Smithson, co-founder and CEO of MetaVRse, and Galit Ariel, author of Augmenting Alice: The Future of Identity, Experience, and Reality, discuss how brands should embrace the immersive experiences of AR to get ahead.   Key Takeaways: [1:47] What is the metaverse? Catherine tells us that it is essentially a universe where the physical and digital worlds meet. We are already living in it, and AR, VR, and AI bring a multitude of opportunities for both businesses and consumers. It can sound complicated, but Catherine feels it can be truly and deeply magical. [3:40] How do you help build a virtual economy when you don't know the first thing about building a virtual experience? Alan explains how he needed to solve this at his company, MetaVRse. It was his job to make virtual reality experiences easier for anyone to build, which makes them more successful. [4:46] Virtual reality puts us right into the virtual world, but augmented reality casts the virtual world onto the physical world: It brings the movie right onto our very real and tactile lives. [5:20] Galit explains why she loves augmented reality, and how this technology is becoming an indigenous piece to our physical reality. She created a filter called “Being Galit Ariel”, where people could go into Snap and try on her look, full of funky glasses and bright lipstick. During COVID, she found this filter created an easy way for her to represent herself in the comfort of her own home. [8:09] The metaverse can help democratize the internet because there could be less judgment when you don't know who you are speaking with. This allows people to create an identity that they feel really reflects who they are. [10:31] Alan walks us through a tutorial of his MetaVRse platform, and helps us imagine the strange new spaces we might be able to create, whether for art, fun, work, or socializing. [14:01] Galit explains how the wonders of virtual reality might distract us from the beauty and joy that comes from living in our tactile world. [15:30] How will branding and advertising work in these spaces? Brands should get ahead of the trend by being the ones to create their own space, hold events, and engage with fan-created branded experiences. Otherwise, you may have a chicken in Subway trying to sell you a foot-long sandwich. [20:07] Galit explains the need for regulation, even if it slows things down. Companies and users must also be aware of the data that is collected from their extended reality experience, and how it's being used. Not only could your unique digital signature be tracked, but your body language, physical information, and even inside your home. [24:47] We need to make sure that everyone has access to the virtual internet or metaverse, and that people get an equal chance to build their skillsets in order to participate in the virtual economy.   Quotes: [10:20] “I love the creative properties because people build worlds that conform to their wildest imagination.” - Catherine [14:01] “We still have this inherent need to touch and experience things, and if we can add richer layers to this world, the beauty of augmented reality will create a deeper experience of our real world, without losing contact with it.” - Galit [19:09] “Every surface is a potential media content platform. So, we need to think about the different ways in which people are engaging with media and meet them there.” - Catherine [21:57] “I think we all need to kind of buckle up and be more responsible about what we're doing, how we're doing, and why.” - Galit [24:24] “As the metaverse continues to become a more prominent part of our lives, privacy and regulation will become a more prominent part of the conversation. But who gets to participate in that conversation depends on who has access to the tech.” - James [24:48] “We need to make sure that there are standards that allow for everyone to access this virtual internet or metaverse and get an equal chance to build their skillsets to participate in the virtual economy.” - Catherine   Continue on your journey: pega.com/podcast   Mentioned: Catherine D. Henry Media.Monks Alan Smithson MetaVRse Galit Ariel Augmenting Alice: The Future of Identity, Experience, and Reality.

* Talking with Flipp about its app and website that shows local store ads, coupons and deals.* Nexit is back to discuss new features of its unique navigation app (install before your Thanksgiving travels)!* You heard Mark Zuckerberg chat about the ‘metaverse' last week, tied to Facebook's future, but we get the O.G. Alan Smithson to sit down with us, from MetaVRse to give us the deets on this next generation of the Internet

Julie Smithson's personal mission is to ‘inspire and educate people to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally responsible way'. It is through this lens as co-founder at MetaVRse, one of the world's leading virtual, augmented and mixed reality (XR) consulting & product development companies. Julie is leading her teams through project development for multiple industries changing the way we educate and design spatially through implementation of immersive technology with the MetaVRse game engine. Also inspired to promote gender equality, advocacy & inspiration, Julie is the Board Chair for XR Women, a global community of women working in XR.

  "We've really tried to design this, so it's not just for hard-core coders," says MetaVRse Co-Founder Alan Smithson. He's talking about the MetaVRse 3D content creation engine.  Designed by Alan and his wife and company co-founder Julie (who is Chair of XRWomen.com), this web-based platform enables anyone to design interactive 3D experiences. No code is necessary, and the MetaVRse engine has both free and paid accounts available. The MetaVRse engine, meanwhile, is a means to accomplishing the main goal of the Ontario-based company Alan and Julie have created. Also named MetaVRse, the company's mission, as stated on LinkedIn, is to unlock the power of spatial computing for everyone. Users of the MetaVRse engine drag and drop, to create their content.   With the engine, Alan and Julie have created a number of virtual applications.   Just recently, they introduced their virtual showroom!  Shoppers can view a product, virtually, in numerous colors, or even (as in the case of the athletic shoes pictured) customize what they would like to buy. Alan shared the story of MetaVRse, explained several ways users can create content with the platform and offered a look at the ways immersive content will be incorporated into the world of the future. On this edition of Over Coffee®, we cover: How XR first came on Alan's radar; How the pace of innovation is accelerating (and where it's going!); The story of the MetaVRse 3D creation engine; How to create 3D files, without code; A look inside the MetaVRse virtual showroom; A projection of job skills for the future; The ways in which Alan foresees spatial computing evolving; What Alan has enjoyed most about both MetaVRse (the company) and the MetaVRse engine in the last six months; How Alan's talks, including his TEDX talk "The Marriage of Technology and Education", serve as "yardsticks" for the way innovation has accelerated; And, one more resource for keeping up with the future--plus a great book!      

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

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

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

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

Tyler and Sophia chat with Julie & Alan Smithson about their newly launched game engine, MetaVRse, that allows anyone to create 3D models and environments faster and easier than ever! See a snapshot of this podcast with what we made wiith MetaVRse in under 4 minutes! Connect with Julie: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-smithson/ Connect with Alan:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/ Visit the VR/AR Association at www.TheVRARA.com for more information about how you can get involved with this worldwide organization to help gain exposure and share ideas and best practices with other experts in the industry. Subscribe to the podcast wherever podcasts are found or listen to past interviews at www.TheVRARA.com/podcast

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

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

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled podcast for this special announcement, where Julie introduces the XR Collaboration project. MetaVRse, along with other major players in the XR space, have come together to develop an easy-to-use guide for the newly-home-office-bound to navigate the many telecommunication tools available from the industry.

Alan Smithson is an #AR #VR #Evangelist #Investor & Host of #XR For Business #podcast, he spoke about the hype vs ground reality of Immersive technologies plus the need for startups to build products/solutions that add value right now.

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

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

Tonya Hall and Alan Smithson, CEO of MetaVRse, sit down to talk about the importance of education corporate employees to utilize resources. FOLLOW US  - Subscribe to ZDNet on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2HzQmyf - Watch more ZDNet videos: http://zd.net/2Hzw9Zy - Follow ZDNet on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZDNet - Follow ZDNet on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZDNet - Follow ZDNet on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ZDNet_CBSi - Follow ZDNet on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ZDNe... - Follow ZDNet on Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/add/zdnet_cbsi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In between your regularly-scheduled XR for Businesses episodes, Alan has a brief update and recap of his recent trip to the Ritossa Family Office Summit in Dubai Hey there, it’s Alan Smithson with the XR for Business Podcast. And today’s episode is a very special recap of a conference that I just spent two days at, called the Ritossa Family Office Summit. This is a gathering of elite family offices, a total of 600 prominent business owners, sheiks, royal families, private investment companies, and international business people, getting together to discuss the future of investing. Now, to put it in perspective, the people that attend this represent about $4.5-trillion in investable wealth. And this conference is the world’s largest and most exclusive gathering of elite family office decision makers. This year’s topic was “East Meets West”, and the theme of Dubai summit will act as a bridge between Middle East families and their European, Asian, US, and Latin American counterparts. This was an amazing experience for us. We were there as a vendor. We were the only company there bringing virtual and augmented reality to these people. And the interest level around virtual and augmented reality was insane. People were asking all sorts of questions, “How long is this going to take? What is the roadmap now? Who’s using it? What companies are doing it? How can we involve our company portfolios in this?” And really, we came at this from a training standpoint. Virtual and augmented reality training is the most effective, efficient training solutions we’ve ever created as humans. Everything from being able to track where the user’s looking, to their biometrics, their heart rate, all of these things combined create what we are hoping will be the future of all education and training. And at MetaVRse, what we’re really focusing on now is building out a platform marketplace to help businesses navigate the technology, figure out what technology works best for the needs of their employees. Because as we enter into this kind of age of exponential growth, what we’re seeing now is a massive change in how we work. Over the next three years alone, IBM estimates that over 120 million people will need to be reskilled and retrained due to AI and automation. And from a strictly monetizable standpoint, PWC — the global conglomerate — they’ve just earmarked $3-billion to reskill, upskill, and retrain their staff. AI and robotics and automation are coming faster than we can possibly think about. And virtual and augmented reality give us this kind of unique perspective as to how we can train people in a way that is easier, faster, more efficient. And I think we’re going to need that as we enter into exponential growth. Back to the Dubai summit. First of all, I want to say a huge thank you to Anthony Ritossa — the host of the summit — who brought together these incredible people. It was under the patronage of His Highness, Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum, the ruler and prime minister of Dubai, and the ruling family. And it was really amazing to meet their chief investment officer, Mohammed Al Ali — who actually today is being knighted in London — and he is the CEO and advisor of their International Investments Enterprise. We met with Adam, the judge from the private office of His Highness, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Nahyan. We met with Faris, and his team from the office of Sheikh Sultan Bin Abdullah Al Qasimi.Qasimi. And all of these sheikhs represent family offices from different parts of the UAE. You have Dubai, you have Sharjah, you have Abu Dhabi, and all of these different emirates. There’s investments where they’re looking not just to invest in oil and gas and these things, they’re really looking towards investing in world cha

In between your regularly-scheduled XR for Businesses episodes, Alan has a brief update and recap of his recent trip to the Ritossa Family Office Summit in Dubai Hey there, it’s Alan Smithson with the XR for Business Podcast. And today’s episode is a very special recap of a conference that I just spent two days at, called the Ritossa Family Office Summit. This is a gathering of elite family offices, a total of 600 prominent business owners, sheiks, royal families, private investment companies, and international business people, getting together to discuss the future of investing. Now, to put it in perspective, the people that attend this represent about $4.5-trillion in investable wealth. And this conference is the world’s largest and most exclusive gathering of elite family office decision makers. This year’s topic was “East Meets West”, and the theme of Dubai summit will act as a bridge between Middle East families and their European, Asian, US, and Latin American counterparts. This was an amazing experience for us. We were there as a vendor. We were the only company there bringing virtual and augmented reality to these people. And the interest level around virtual and augmented reality was insane. People were asking all sorts of questions, “How long is this going to take? What is the roadmap now? Who’s using it? What companies are doing it? How can we involve our company portfolios in this?” And really, we came at this from a training standpoint. Virtual and augmented reality training is the most effective, efficient training solutions we’ve ever created as humans. Everything from being able to track where the user’s looking, to their biometrics, their heart rate, all of these things combined create what we are hoping will be the future of all education and training. And at MetaVRse, what we’re really focusing on now is building out a platform marketplace to help businesses navigate the technology, figure out what technology works best for the needs of their employees. Because as we enter into this kind of age of exponential growth, what we’re seeing now is a massive change in how we work. Over the next three years alone, IBM estimates that over 120 million people will need to be reskilled and retrained due to AI and automation. And from a strictly monetizable standpoint, PWC — the global conglomerate — they’ve just earmarked $3-billion to reskill, upskill, and retrain their staff. AI and robotics and automation are coming faster than we can possibly think about. And virtual and augmented reality give us this kind of unique perspective as to how we can train people in a way that is easier, faster, more efficient. And I think we’re going to need that as we enter into exponential growth. Back to the Dubai summit. First of all, I want to say a huge thank you to Anthony Ritossa — the host of the summit — who brought together these incredible people. It was under the patronage of His Highness, Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum, the ruler and prime minister of Dubai, and the ruling family. And it was really amazing to meet their chief investment officer, Mohammed Al Ali — who actually today is being knighted in London — and he is the CEO and advisor of their International Investments Enterprise. We met with Adam, the judge from the private office of His Highness, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Nahyan. We met with Faris, and his team from the office of Sheikh Sultan Bin Abdullah Al Qasimi.Qasimi. And all of these sheikhs represent family offices from different parts of the UAE. You have Dubai, you have Sharjah, you have Abu Dhabi, and all of these different emirates. There’s investments where they’re looking not just to invest in oil and gas and these things, they’re really looking towards investing in world cha

EPISODE 008 SHOW NOTES: ​In Episode 008 Antony Vitillo of The Ghost Howls and Wise Realities discusses how VR changed his life, his experience as the co-founder of a VR startup, the Mixed Reality game HitMotion he’s developing, advice on attending China’s World Conference on VR Industry, VR for physical and mental rehabilitation, and who to follow for XR news and insight. Also discussed: Roy Kachur's XR4Media, Amena Hayat's VR Documentary and the NYVR Meetup on Artificial Intelligence. ​Antony Vitillo: ​LinkedIn Twitter ​The Ghost Howls ​New Technology Walkers XR Consultants ​Wise Realities VR for Mental Health ​HitMotion Mixed Reality Game ​World Conference on VR Industry - China ​WCVRI Advice ​Antony's XR Information Recommendations: ​XR for Business: ​Alan Smithson,MetaVRse, XR for Business Podcast Alice Bonasio, Inside.com AR and VR Newsletter ​Cathy Hackl, Futurist ​Robert Scoble, Infinite Retina ​Location-Based VR: ​Kevin Williams, KWP Limited ​Gaming: ​Virtual Reality Oasis ​Nathie ​Cas and Chary ​Reviews: ​Benjamin Lang Road to VR ​And: ​Charlie Fink XR Consultant, Author, Columnist for Forbes ​Alvin Wang Graylin China President HTC ​Also in this Episode: ​XR4Media Media-Focused XR News by Roy Kachur, NBCUniversal ​Hugh Seaton Adept Reality VR Training New York Artificial Intelligence Meetup Group ​GeoPipe ​Amena Hayat The Language of Silence VR Documentary ​Tony Parisi Unity ​Brian August 110 Stories ​The RLab: ​Justin Hendrix ​Adaora Udoji ​Laura Barker ​Ilena Parker ​ ​ ​Call Recording: Anchor Podcasting: Anchor Recording: Logic Pro X ​ Music: "Are You There?" by DR. MARS on Spotify --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

XR Connections is an Extended Reality (XR) podcast discussing Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality. Episode 004 of XR Connections features an interview with David Ripert of Poplar, a collaborative platform connecting AR creators with brands and institutions aimed at making the creation of AR experiences quick and affordable, and XR items of interest including Modelo's Day of the Dead out of home AR experience and the VR/AR Association's Global Summit and Everything VR and AR podcast. MODELO DAY OF THE DEAD AR EXPERIENCE: Modelo Brings the Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Celebration to Life with AR Campaign Dan Ferguson of GrooveJones - LinkedIn VR/AR ASSOCIATION: VR/AR Global Summit Event - October 31 - November 2 Summit Speakers mentioned: Ross Finman, Niantic Labs @rossfinman Cathy Hackl, Magic Leap @CathyHackl Charlie Fink, XR Consultant and Author @CharlieFink Jason McDowall, The AR Show Podcast @mcdowall Alan Smithson of MetaVRse, XR for Business Podcast @AlanSmithson1 VR/AR Association Everything VR and AR Podcast October 3rd Guest: Gabriel Rene of Verses on the Spatial Web @GReal1111 Hosts: Tyler Gates @tylerhgates Sophia Moshasha @SophiaMosh GOOGLE PLAY SOURCES APP: ARCore App is 8th Most Downloaded in August from AR Insider Mike Boland @ArInsider ANTONY VITILLO: The Ghost Howls Ben Lang's Review of Oculus Hand-Tracking Examples of Hand-Tracked UI @SkarredGhost DAVID RIPERT INTERVIEW: Poplar David Ripert ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Podcasting: Anchor Recording: Logic Pro X Music: "Are You There?" by DR. MARS on Spotify --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Alan Smithson is the CEO of MetaVRse, a company helping businesses leverage the transformative power of XR. He’s also the co-founder of XR Ignite, a community hub and virtual accelerator for startups, studios, and developers wanting to connect with enterprise customers and their large business problems.On the side, Alan is also the host of the XR for Business Podcast, where he goes behind the scenes with the leaders who are transforming yesterday’s prototypes into scalable solutions for some of the world’s biggest challenges.As if that wasn’t enough, Alan is also a founding member of the VR/AR Association, an IEEE Mixed Reality Ethics Committee member, and a LinkedIn VR/AR thought leader with millions of views of his articles and videos.In this conversation, Alan talks about his background as a DJ and his experience inventing the world’s first touchscreen DJ System.He shares his first experience in virtual reality, and how that set him on a new path in life. We discuss some of the most innovative projects he’s worked on, and the impact VR and AR are having across enterprises, as well as the community and services he’s building around XR Ignite.He also exudes his passion for education, and describes the potential for spatial computing to make it better.Alan proclaims his purpose in life is to inspire and educate future leaders to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable way.You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

* Alan Smithson from XR Ignite and MetaVRse talks about the business of augmented and virtual reality* Marc discusses smart home tech, including Amazon Key for MyQ garage door systems* Michelle Boockoff Bajdek, the CMO for IBM Watson, enlightens us about women in the artificial intelligence (A.I.) space* Learn all about Ingram Micro’s strong distribution and logistics offerings

We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time. My name is Alan Smithson, and I am going to be your host for the XR for Business podcast where I will interview industry leaders who are either making or using immersive virtual, augmented and mixed reality solutions for business. From marketing and sales to logistics and training to design and remote collaboration, you will learn how the world’s largest organizations are implementing an XR For Business strategy and why you should too. We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time. Anyone of these technologies on their own would be revolutionary but used together, we begin racing towards the Singularity or the point where the exponential curve of technology goes straight up, unlocking unprecedented value in the market. Over the next 10 years, more than $1T in value will be created by virtual, augmented & mixed reality (XR). Our goal is to be the central community hub for XR for business and XR For education. Our mission is simple: Hyper-Accelerate XR For Business & Education. The XR for Business podcast will interview leaders from marketing, manufacturing, retail, training, HR, banking, insurance, emergency services, IT, and of course from virtual, augmented and mixed reality professionals creating the tools we will use to enter into the age of spatial computing. The podcast is aimed at inspiring and educating business leaders who are looking for an advantage by leveraging the transformative power of XR. This is our way of sharing our years of research, knowledge, successes and failures with you, our listeners in hopes that you will be better able to make sound investments in this technology to help you solve problems that affect us all; unnecessary business travel, retiring workforce, environmental impacts, job upskilling, automation, rapid employee onboarding, knowledge retention, remote operations and so many more. XR is solving these challenges in spectacular order. This podcast interviews the world’s top brands across industries from retail and e-commerce to food service, telecommunications and education so you can glean information that is relevant to you. Some of the technologies encompassed by the term XR include; 360° video, 3D Volumetric capture, photogrammetry, 3D modelling, virtual, augmented & mixed reality, computer vision, machine learning, and spatial audio, haptics, and even scent machines. A little bit about me and how I came to host the XR For Business podcast: I am the Founder and CEO of MetaVRse alongside some very talented people including one I am particularly fond of, my wife and Co-Founder, Julie Smithson. We have been working in XR since 2014 when I first tried the Oculus Rift DK1. MetaVRse is a leader in XR Solutions for business. Over the past 4 years, we have made some incredible world firsts; We built the first VR Photobooth™ for Samsung. We built the first Augmented Reality Teleportal for Genesys and Adobe. We made the first commercial WebAR project for Shoppers Drug Mart. We even built an AR app for HBO's Westworld launch and a augmented reality sandbox for Kubota Tractors. We filmed Niagara Falls, Pride, Groove Cruise, and the Queen’s Plate in 360° video. We have consulted for firms in almost every industry; telecom, mining, food service, retail, marketing, e-commerce and education. It has been through these experiences that we have built

We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time. My name is Alan Smithson, and I am going to be your host for the XR for Business podcast where I will interview industry leaders who are either making or using immersive virtual, augmented and mixed reality solutions for business. From marketing and sales to logistics and training to design and remote collaboration, you will learn how the world’s largest organizations are implementing an XR For Business strategy and why you should too. We are about to see the largest transformation in human history. Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, quantum computing, 5G, blockchain and virtual, augmented & mixed Reality are all maturing at the exact same time. Anyone of these technologies on their own would be revolutionary but used together, we begin racing towards the Singularity or the point where the exponential curve of technology goes straight up, unlocking unprecedented value in the market. Over the next 10 years, more than $1T in value will be created by virtual, augmented & mixed reality (XR). Our goal is to be the central community hub for XR for business and XR For education. Our mission is simple: Hyper-Accelerate XR For Business & Education. The XR for Business podcast will interview leaders from marketing, manufacturing, retail, training, HR, banking, insurance, emergency services, IT, and of course from virtual, augmented and mixed reality professionals creating the tools we will use to enter into the age of spatial computing. The podcast is aimed at inspiring and educating business leaders who are looking for an advantage by leveraging the transformative power of XR. This is our way of sharing our years of research, knowledge, successes and failures with you, our listeners in hopes that you will be better able to make sound investments in this technology to help you solve problems that affect us all; unnecessary business travel, retiring workforce, environmental impacts, job upskilling, automation, rapid employee onboarding, knowledge retention, remote operations and so many more. XR is solving these challenges in spectacular order. This podcast interviews the world’s top brands across industries from retail and e-commerce to food service, telecommunications and education so you can glean information that is relevant to you. Some of the technologies encompassed by the term XR include; 360° video, 3D Volumetric capture, photogrammetry, 3D modelling, virtual, augmented & mixed reality, computer vision, machine learning, and spatial audio, haptics, and even scent machines. A little bit about me and how I came to host the XR For Business podcast: I am the Founder and CEO of MetaVRse alongside some very talented people including one I am particularly fond of, my wife and Co-Founder, Julie Smithson. We have been working in XR since 2014 when I first tried the Oculus Rift DK1. MetaVRse is a leader in XR Solutions for business. Over the past 4 years, we have made some incredible world firsts; We built the first VR Photobooth™ for Samsung. We built the first Augmented Reality Teleportal for Genesys and Adobe. We made the first commercial WebAR project for Shoppers Drug Mart. We even built an AR app for HBO’s Westworld launch and a augmented reality sandbox for Kubota Tractors. We filmed Niagara Falls, Pride, Groove Cruise, and the Queen’s Plate in 360° video. We have consulted for firms in almost every industry; telecom, mining, food service, retail, marketing, e-commerce and education. It has been through these experiences that we have built

Alan is the CEO of MetaVRse, a global leader in Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality (XR). MetaVRse is also building the XR Learning Centre and was recently accepted to the Museum of the Future Accelerator in Dubai. Alan is a LinkedIn VR/AR thought leader with millions of views of his articles and videos every month.He is an Independent Global Advisor on the Business of XR to a select group of the world's largest companies, chief investment advisors, and ultra high net worth family offices. Alan is a founding member of the VR/AR Association, IEEE Mixed Reality Ethics Committee member, Mentor for a youth entrepreneurship program called 'The Knowledge Society' (TKS) and a mentor for Techstars Toronto and is on the SXSW Pitch Advisory Board for XR. Alan is also a TEDx speaker and a judge for the global Auggie Awards.Prior to MetaVRse, Alan invented Emulator, the world's first touchscreen DJ System; used by Linkin Park, Armin Van Buuren, Microsoft, Sony, Heineken and more.- https://metavrse.com/- https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/Please do NOT hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email mark@vudream.comLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-metry/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/markmetry/Twitter - https://twitter.com/markymetryMedium - https://medium.com/@markymetryFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/Humans.2.0.PodcastMark Metry - https://www.markmetry.com/Humans 2.0 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Humans2Podcast

Alan is the CEO of MetaVRse, a global leader in Virtual, Augmented & Mixed Reality (XR). MetaVRse is also building the XR Learning Centre and was recently accepted to the Museum of the Future Accelerator in Dubai. Alan is a LinkedIn VR/AR thought leader with millions of views of his articles and videos every month.He is an Independent Global Advisor on the Business of XR to a select group of the world's largest companies, chief investment advisors, and ultra high net worth family offices. Alan is a founding member of the VR/AR Association, IEEE Mixed Reality Ethics Committee member, Mentor for a youth entrepreneurship program called 'The Knowledge Society' (TKS) and a mentor for Techstars Toronto and is on the SXSW Pitch Advisory Board for XR. Alan is also a TEDx speaker and a judge for the global Auggie Awards.Prior to MetaVRse, Alan invented Emulator, the world’s first touchscreen DJ System; used by Linkin Park, Armin Van Buuren, Microsoft, Sony, Heineken and more.- https://metavrse.com/- https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/Please do NOT hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Instagram, or via email mark@vudream.comLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-metry/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/markmetry/Twitter - https://twitter.com/markymetryMedium - https://medium.com/@markymetryFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/Humans.2.0.PodcastMark Metry - https://www.markmetry.com/Humans 2.0 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Humans2Podcast

Hi there! Welcome to Social Snippets! In this fire-round The Social Impactors Podcast episode, I simply ask the top players, the best of the best, the Elon Musks of their fields of work, their quickest answer to this simple question: "What is your advice for others to begin making a positive social impact in their communities?" In this episode, I talk with Alan Smithson, thought leader in Virtual & Augmented Reality (VR/AR), North America's Leading Virtual & Augmented Reality Consultancy, and CEO of MetaVRse. Want more? Leave a review on ITunes to help The Social Impactors Podcast reach more people around the world! Apple Podcasts: lnkd.in/dbFawVT Original Anchor Podcast Link: http://bit.ly/2FH5GeH #SocialImpactEverywhere #SocialSnippets --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/theimpactorspodcast/support

Alan Smithson, CEO of MetaVRse joins us to talk about MetaVRse and their vCommerce (Virtual & Augmented Reality for Retail and eCommerce). MetaVRse is also building the XR Learning Centre and was recently accepted to the Museum of the Future Accelerator in Dubai. Alan is a LinkedIn VR/AR thought leader with millions of views of his articles and videos. We also talk about his upcoming keynotes at the VR/AR Global Summit in Vancouver with topics including Virtual Conferences of the Future, and Enterprise XR use cases. Alan’s purpose in life is to inspire and educate the next generation of young entrepreneurs to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable way. This is a fun and informative discussion with Alan. Find him on LinkedIn searching Alan Smithson, or email him at alan@metavrse.com.

Ready for a reality check? This week’s episode of Brandstorm features XR Futurist Alan Smithson. Alan talks about the differences between Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR) and Extended (XR), what they can do, what you will need to participate, and how it is changing how companies market brands. Alan Smithson Alan is an XR futurist, inventor, author of DJ Prophets, mentor for Techstars, and CEO of MetaVRse, North America’s largest VR and AR consultancy. More than 20 years ago, Alan started his interest in technology while working as a DJ. The convergence of his love for music and technology led him to invent the Emulator, the world’s first, multi-touch application for Windows that let musicians create music using a giant, see-through touch screen. Alan began working with huge brands and musicians like Lincoln Park, Infected Mushroom and Armin Van Buuren. In 2014, Alan saw VR for the first time and realized this was the start of everything, in his mind. He learned everything he could about 360 videos, AR apps and VR training. He invented the first VR Photo Booth and is currently working with the Museum of the Future, in Dubai, and the Ontario Science Center to develop the XR Learning Center. MetaVRse North America’s largest Virtual and Augmented Reality consultancy, the mission of Alan’s company is to inspire and educate the next generation of young entrepreneurs to think and act in a way that is socially, economically and environmentally sustainable. With that in mind, MetaVRse is working on two initiatives, XR for Education and the XR Learning Center. Reality 101 What is the difference between VR, AR, MR and XR? Alan says virtual reality is when you put on headsets and it transports you to a whole other destination or world. The technology takes over your hearing and vision senses and immerses you into where you are. Augmented Reality is when you can take your phone and hold it over something and you can see data overlaid on it. Google Maps is a good example of AR. Mixed Reality takes elements from both VR and AR. Extended Reality covers all of the immersive technologies and puts them under one umbrella. Is Immersive Technology for Real? Alan believes we are in the third phase of adopting these technologies. The first was making sure the technology works. The second was when marketers started using the technology to create gimmickry the drew attention to their brands. Now in the third, or utilitarian phase, we are just scratching the surface of what immersive technology can do. For example, IKEA has an application called “Place” that lets you place their furniture in your home in real sizes, so you can see how everything fits. Cases like this will allow consumers to make better purchasing decisions and help brands to better connect with consumers. Alan says we are currently seeing a shift to 3-D everything. Facebook recently announced 3-D assets that let you turn your shoes, sunglasses or other products into 3-D. Snap Chat has millions of viewers under the age of 30, and is pushing the limits of what you can do with mobile phones. AR/VR Uses In the next three to five years, Alan believes there will be a significant uptick in using VR in marketing and sales, as well as training. He also sees great potential in mobile-based AR. By the end of 2018, more than 1.6 billion mobile devices will by AR-enabled. Alan thinks this is an untapped market. While the U.S. has been slow to adopt, China has invested trillions of dollars in mobile e-commerce. Amazon and Wal-Mart are also making great strides in mobile e-commerce. Alan has coined the term “v-commerce,” intersecting VR with AR in e-commerce for retailers. AR and VR Costs Creating an AR or VR experience doesn’t have to be expensive. 360 videos are relatively cheap. Car companies are using what is called “3 Degrees of Freedom” to allow the customer to look left, right, up and down and see what it’s like to be in their car. Not enough of an immersive experience, there is now “6 Degrees of Freedom,” where customers can move left, right, up and down to feel more of what it is like to drive the car. From something as simple as placing a camera in the car while you are driving, the cost can be as little as $10,000 to $100,000. Creating a full-on motion-simulated experience can be anywhere from $500,000 to several million dollars. In AR, companies are spending anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 to do things like bringing a label to life. A company in Australia, makes a wine called 19 Criminals. Each of the 19 people on the bottle have committed a crime and if you hold your phone over the label, their stories are told. AR/VR Devices A VR experience can be as simple as having a computer or phone to pan around 360 videos. The next step up is Google Cardboard, which costs about $10 - $20. It is a cardboard box with a pair of lenses that you put your phone in and use the phone’s onboard technology. For mobile phone-based VR, there a what is called a Google Daydream. Alan says it’s just a nicer cardboard box made of material. The next step up in investment are VR headsets like the Focus, Pico Neo and Oculus Go. With the Vibe, Oculus Rift and PlayStation headsets, you can actually move around in a VR space. The various headsets run anywhere from $100 to several thousand dollars. When will XR become Commonplace? Apple is very quietly working on XR technology with its Apple Glasses, but Alan feels it will be some time before the company can create glasses that are small and comfortable enough to wear for extended periods of time, possibly five to seven years. In the meantime, both Apple and Google have released its developer’s kits, putting all of the technology in an AR-enabled mobile phone to help developers begin to think in 3-D and eventually create this technology. AI or Artificial Intelligence AI is a broad term for computer vision and machine learning, which is vital to Mixed Reality, or MR. Headsets with 3-D scanners collect point cloud data and convert the data into 3-D objects. It maps the world around you in real time. AI needs to be able to distinguish a cat from a dog, or a car, or a person. Once AI can do that, there will be no delineation between AR, VR, 5G, MR, IOT, or Quantum Computing. Everything will just be computing. L’oreal recently purchased technology from Modiface that uses AR-enabled phones to map a customer’s face in real time and allow an individual try on makeup. The company has seen a 60 percent increase in mobile shopping, just another example of the potential in v-commerce, according to Alan. AR/VR Education and Expertise Unfortunately, schools lag way behind in teaching XR technology to marketing students. Alan knows of no other university that does so. It’s one of the main reasons Alan and his company are working on XR for Education and developing the XR Learning Center. As a consultancy, MetaVRse is always looking for the best and brightest in this field. If you have an idea and don’t know how to execute it, Alan's team can help you find someone who can. Or, Alan recommends that you reach out to a local chapter of the AR/VR Association, to help find experts in your market. Contact: Email: alan@metavrse.com (Y) to make public Website: http://metavrse.com/ Social Media: @MetaVRse #MetaVRse  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/metavrse Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/metavrse 

Hear what’s happening in VR, AR and machine learning with Alan Smithson, CEO at MetaVRse   CompTIA Communities leader Jim Hamilton talks with Alan Smithson, CEO at MetaVRse about what’s happening in VR, AR and machine learning. They talk about use cases, ideas people are dreaming up and what our XR Future might look like in the next 3 to 7 years. Stay tuned to the end of the episode to hear how MSPs and solution providers can maximize the potential of emerging technologies.

Welcome to The Social Impactors Podcast! Where we highlight impactful individuals making a positive social impact in their communities, and shares their stories/lessons to help others.

Alan Smithson is the CEO of MetaVRse, North America’s leading virtual and augmented reality product development company focused on the intersection of VR/AR/3D and e-Commerce. Alan is a globally recognized thought leader in business applications for AR/VR. MetaVRse was named Top 100 Rising Startups by Techweek and nominated Global VR Startup of the year by VR Awards. Alan is on the Forbes Council, Founding Member of the VR/AR Association and Techstars MentorPrior to MetaVRse, Alan invented invented Emulator, the world’s first touchscreen DJ System; used by Linkin Park, Armin Van Buuren, Microsoft, Sony, Heineken and more.Alan’s purpose in life is to inspire and educate the next generation of young entrepreneurs to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable way.https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/VU Dream - http://www.vudream.com/VU Dream's FB - https://www.facebook.com/VUDreamOfficial/VU Dream's Twitter - https://twitter.com/VUDreamOfficialVU Dream's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vudreamofficial

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are forecasted to be a $108 billion market by 2021. Now's the time to understand the world of VR/AR, how these technologies can improve your organization, the unique challenges and opportunities they present, and the growing industry in Alberta.Join Lethbridge College and the VR/AR Association (VRARA) for Merging Realities: An event of multiple perspectives - the first full-day VR/AR conference held completely in virtual reality.This is a full-day event that has been planned by students and features speakers from the VR/AR industry in Alberta and abroad. The day starts with two amazing keynote presenters: Alan Smithson from MetaVRse and Alex Katzen from Google. Presenters and participants will be connected in a virtual conference session, powered by Rumii. The full-day conference concludes with an amazing closing keynote from Cathy Hackl.Following the full-day conference, an in-person VR mixer will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. at Lethbridge College. This mixer will bring together Lethbridge College students who have created 360-degree experiences and VR video games; VR businesses including Mammoth VR, VRKade and CTRL V; the Regional Innovation Network of Southern Alberta, Economic Development Lethbridge, the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce; and many more participants.Due to the high demand for this event, a limited amount of people will be able to participate in the VR sessions, but every attendee will be able to participate via the live-stream. Live-stream viewers will get to ask questions of the presenters as well. In addition, you can also watch the live stream on campus at Lethbridge College's IB Theaters (lunch will be provided). Registrants will be sent information prior to the event on how to view the live stream.Engage with people from around the world, learn from industry professionals, and explore the capabilities of VR/AR.For more information, contact Kris at 403-320-3202 ext. 5489 or kris.hodgson@lethbridgecollege.ca.Mike McCready is a Multimedia Production Instructor at Lethbridge College in Alberta, Canada.Mike's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmccready/Please contact us if you have comments, suggestions and guest inquiries - mark@vudream.comVU Dream - http://www.vudream.com/VU Dream's FB - https://www.facebook.com/VUDreamOfficial/VU Dream's Twitter - https://twitter.com/VUDreamOfficialVU Dream's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vudreamofficial

Alan Smithson, the CEO of Metavrse.com (North America's leading virtual and augmented reality consulting firm), shares his wisdom on The Business Blast! This podcast is brought to you by Authors Unite. Do you want to become a published author but don't have enough time to write your own book? Check out the 100 Person Book Program here: http://authorsunite.net/100-person-book Want your own book published and marketed for you? Learn how Authors Unite can take care of everything for you here: https://authorsunite.net/success Thank you for listening to The Business Blast Podcast! Tyler --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/authorsunite/support

The best video games of 2017, with gaming critic Chad SapiehaUnderstanding virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, with Alan Smithson from MetaVRse

On this episode we are joined by Alan Smithson, an entrepreneur and investor and currently the CEO of MetaVRse, one of North America’s leading consultancies for virtual reality and augmented reality. Alan is a globally renowned keynote speaker on the topics of VR and AR. On the show today we talk with Alan about VR and AR and how it’s impacting training, marketing, and enterprise. We discuss Magic Leap One, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook and the rapidly changing ecosystem. Connect with Alan on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson or with Metavrse at http://metavrse.com/. Have a listen and let us know what you think about this episode by sending us an email to podcast@thevrara.com.   Connect with Alan Smithson and MetaVRse: Web - MetaVRse.com LinkedIn - Alan Smithson on LinkedIn   Full shownotes available at http://thevrara.com/podcast-posts/alansmithson  

Alan Smithson is an entrepreneur and investor who has always been on the cutting edge of emerging technologies. After graduating from University of Guelph with a Molecular Biology degree, Alan realized technology and music were his passions. He pursued a career in the DJ industry which developed into an AV Production & DJ Company, Star Productions Inc; leading to the creation of the EMULATOR, the world's first touchscreen DJ System. His latest endeavor as Co-Founder & CEO of MetaVRse has entered him into the world of virtual and augmented reality experiences, becoming a leader in business applications for AR/VR and providing insight into this exploding field of technologies. Alan has been recognized as an industry pioneer, and was recently mentioned in an article on “10 Virtual Reality Leaders you should follow in 2016”. Equally comfortable behind a turntable or a group of Fortune 500 executives, Alan continues to evolve MetaVRse and its innovations, and is working on his third book, “Immersive Technology for Business”.

Alan Smithson is the CEO of MetaVRse. He's also the Inventor of the SmithsonMartin Emulator and the 360° Photo Booth. Alan and I talk about his early days as an entrepreneur and some core life principles Alan teaches. MetaVRse is North America's Leading Virtual & Augmented Reality Consultancy. Virtual Reality Enterprise Business Solutions creating 360° Content, Virtual Reality Content, Augmented Reality Content and Hololens Development. Also providing Event Solutions using HTC VIVEs, GEAR VRs, and the World's First 360° PhotoBooth.If you would like more information on Alan please check out the following links below:MetaVRse - http://metavrse.com/Alan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/Alan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlanSmithson1Humans 2.0 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Humans2PodcastTwitter - https://twitter.com/markymetryMedium - https://medium.com/@markymetryFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/mark.metry.9Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/markmetry/My Website - https://www.markmetry.com/

Alan Smithson is the CEO of MetaVRse. He's also the Inventor of the SmithsonMartin Emulator and the 360° Photo Booth. Alan and I talk about his early days as an entrepreneur and some core life principles Alan teaches. MetaVRse is North America's Leading Virtual & Augmented Reality Consultancy. Virtual Reality Enterprise Business Solutions creating 360° Content, Virtual Reality Content, Augmented Reality Content and Hololens Development. Also providing Event Solutions using HTC VIVEs, GEAR VRs, and the World's First 360° PhotoBooth.If you would like more information on Alan please check out the following links below:MetaVRse - http://metavrse.com/Alan's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alansmithson/Alan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlanSmithson1Humans 2.0 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Humans2PodcastTwitter - https://twitter.com/markymetryMedium - https://medium.com/@markymetryFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/mark.metry.9Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/markmetry/My Website - https://www.markmetry.com/

Learn more about how MetaVRse continues to establish themselves as an industry force to be reckoned with from two of the companies founders, CEO Alan Smithson and President Dan Flatt. We also talk about what brought these two together along with what they see as challenges to the growth of the industry based on their conversations with current, and prospective partners. Make sure to have a look at their blog as well which is full of wonderful industry information such as articles like this.   Let us know what you think about this episode by sending us an email to podcast@thevrara.com. Full shownotes can be found at http://thevrara.com/podcast-posts/metavrse

Virtual Reality is a hot topic and this technology is soon to be in our personal and professional lives. It is going to CHANGE supply chain forever so join Alan Smithson from Metavrse and the 2 babes as he tells how we can prepare for the near future. FYI - Nick is in studio for this episode but he is literally in a different world. In this episode you will learn about the various uses for VR, the future of VR in supply chain AND how it will affect YOUR life. If you are thinking about how to incorporate VR tech into your company, check out this episode! Check METAVRSE out at metavrse.com Tags: business, technology, virtual reality, augmented reality, supply chain, future, logistics, change, hot topic We hope you enjoy this episode! REMEMBER to write us a review on itunes, stitcher and Google Play and follow us on social media: @2babestalksc

Alan is an entrepreneur, investor, as well as the Co-Founder of MetaVRse. Through MetaVRse Alan has entered into the world of virtual and augmented reality experiences, becoming a leader in business applications for AR/VR and providing insight into this exploding field of technologies. Before starting MetaVRse, Alan developed an AV production & DJ company, Star Productions Inc, which lead to the creation of the EMULATOR, the world’s first touchscreen DJ System. This week on #BridgingTheGap, Alan will discuss where the future of technology is headed, and what that means for entrepreneurs and business professionals.

Augmented reality and virtual reality platforms are moving on at a rapid pace. More and more mobile devices are being launched as ‘VR ready’, and as the technology becomes more accessible it is inevitable that consumers become more accustomed to using it. For our industry, the obvious effect of consumers becoming more accustomed to using it is that organisers will also become more aware of how to incorporate it into their events. Discussing the subject of virtual reality on the latest Talking Events podcast was CEO and Co-Founder of MetaVRse Alan Smithson. Alan joined the podcast on the line from his headquarters in Boston, USA. During the episode, he highlighted the significant advancements in hardware that he thinks will open up the marketplace and make virtual reality more accessible at all levels.  “Wind back just a couple of years and the cost of producing VR content was quite prohibitive. Despite having the mobile phones and related headsets to access it, the content itself couldn’t be produced fast enough to satisfy demand. Fast forward to now, and you’ve got off the shelf cameras like the Samsung Gear 360 and Nikon Key Mission 360 that are VR ready. You literally film it, stitch the footage together on your computer using software that comes with the cameras – or even on your phone – and post it directly to Facebook. We’ve come a long, long way in just a few years and the tools are now trickling down to the prosumer and consumer level.”  

Alan Smithson is no stranger to innovation. As the CEO of MetaVRse, a trailblazing XR (Extended Reality) consulting and product development company, he has positioned himself as a vanguard in the realm of VR, AR, and MR. With predictions pointing to XR becoming a $1 trillion industry by 2030, Alan's expertise and vision are more crucial than ever. But beyond the numbers, it's his passion for the transformative power of this technology that truly stands out.Alan's journey into the world of XR might seem unorthodox at first glance. From the beats of his DJ company to the digital landscapes of VR, his path was shaped by a serendipitous encounter at a tech conference. This pivotal moment made him realize the boundless potential of XR – not just as a novel entertainment medium, but as a tool that could reshape industries, redefine education, and revolutionize our interaction with the digital world.But what does this all mean for us? For Alan, the answer is clear: education and training. He envisions a world where students can step into the heart of ancient Rome, feel the pulse of a bustling 20th-century metropolis, or explore the depths of space – all from the safety of a classroom. This immersive learning, he believes, is the key to a more engaged, informed, and inspired generation. XR also has the potential to give people access to training on complex devices in safe environments that would normally take months to train on. And with the rapid advancements in haptic technology and the rollout of 5G networks, this vision is closer to reality than we might think.So, as we stand on the brink of this digital frontier, let's take a moment to appreciate that the future isn't just something that happens; it's something we create. With XR, we have the tools. Now, all we need is the imagination to unlock their potential.The Biggest Helping: Today's Most Important Takeaway“Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. I think that's the best advice I have, because it allows you to focus on the positives in your life, not the negatives. And that's where the real magic happens.”--Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Podcasts to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.Resources:Connect with Alan Smithson on LinkedInLearn more about MetaVRse at metavrse.comLearn more about TheMall at themall.ioProduced by NOVA Media