The AR Show: Jon Gray and So-Hee Woo (Encore) on Elevating and Democratizing Musical Performance | Otter.ai

The AR Show: Jon Gray and So-Hee Woo (Encore) on Elevating and Democratizing Musical Performance

Jason McDowall1h 26min

Jason McDowall

00:03

Welcome to the AR show where I dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. Today's conversation is with John Gray. And so he Woo. John is the co founder and CEO and CIO. He is the head of xr at Encore, a company building a live streaming interactive AR infused music performance app. John is an entrepreneur and software engineer who prior to encore was the founder and CEO of cask, a big data analytics platform, which was acquired by Google in 2018. Before that, he was a software engineer at Facebook, where he worked on messages and several other large scale data platforms. Prior to Facebook, John founded streaming a content oriented social network of the web to Dotto era. So he has experienced across many areas of transmedia industrial design, focused on experimenting with the future of products and experiences. Her special interests include AR and VR, of course, as well as the implications of AI in tech fashion, John, and so he are both graduates of Carnegie Mellon University, John with a BS in electrical and computer engineering, and Sohi with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in industrial and product design. She went on to receive a master's degree in industrial product and design from the Art Center College of Design. In this conversation, John and so he talked about how they empower musicians to create engaging AR art to complement their live musical performances.

Speaker 1

01:21

To me, what really attracted me to Encore is being able to use augmented reality as a medium to circumvent cost and feel creativity to extend beyond the rules of what reality is in general, and give room for really quick iteration and creative expression. And I'm really excited to put these tools in the hands of artists in hopes to give them the opportunity to create additional layers of richness or creative richness to every point of their musical artistry wherever they are, in terms of popularity and fan base.

Jason McDowall

01:57

They go on to discuss how they're establishing a middle class of performance artists through the Encore fan experience app and the Encore Studio app for artists. We get into the business strategy and even some philosophy about art and experience. As reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show calm. Let's dive in. Donna, so he all three of us actually attended Carnegie Mellon. But John, you add an extra element to your educational experience you took a year off after your freshman year? What motivated the time away? And how did you how did you spend it?

Dana Chermesh

02:31

The motivation for my time away was the shock and awe to my psyche and system of spending the first 18 years of my life in Los Angeles, and moving to Pittsburgh and having my butt handed to me in a way I didn't know was possible. And I was also freezing cold. And a whole bunch of different things around culture shock and personal shock around thinking I was really smart knew what I was doing. And then realizing that I wasn't that smart and had no idea what I was doing. It definitely, you know, rocked me. And I was fortunate to make a lot of really great friends. And that's probably one of the big reasons I ended up coming back. But in that year off, I moved to the beach in Santa Barbara, and didn't do that much. I went to Santa Barbara City College, and I took art history, and I took beach volleyball. And about halfway through that experience, I was reflecting on where it was heading, and decided that I was handed this an amazing opportunity to go to Carnegie Mellon and to get a computer engineering degree, to not take that incredible opportunity to see where it goes would be a colossal waste. And something that I don't think I would have reflected positively later on in my life. It was literally one of those singular moments where I was sitting on the couch with my friend, and didn't want to be sitting on that couch for the next 10 years of my life. And that really, really lit a fire under me to really look at the things in front of me less as things that I had to do, which so much of my life to that point, felt like I had to go to high school and I had to go to college. And these were the things I had to do. And it came a lot more about my choice about really wanting to seize the opportunities that I had to see what I could do with it, how hard I could push myself where I could actually go. And I didn't really stop working until three years ago, and I finally sold one of my startups and I had a moment of time to stop working for a little bit. It definitely lit a bit big fire under me, made me really hungry to go see what was possible and how much I could do. And also I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, you know, and Carnegie Mellon rocked me a little bit at first and

Dana Chermesh

05:00

You know, you either get back up, brush yourself off and go again or you walk away. And for me, I wanted to get back up, go back to battle and win the battle. And, you know, I've tend to be somebody who doesn't reflect and like, get that proud of things, because I'm always going to the next step. But for sure, as I think back to the entire process, and anyone who's been there can have some, some compassion for the feeling. It's like, no, it was hard. It took a lot. I had to do, you know, over and over and over again, concerted efforts to get myself over the hump, to put myself into the position to actually be able to pass the classes, do the homework, get through the education. And you know, it's one of the most proudest moments of my entire life, and certainly had I not made that decision. I would not be here right now. I had a similar introductory experience to Carnegie Mellon.

Jason McDowall

05:54

I grew up in a small town in a small town state. And I didn't have to work very hard to get through my high school experience in going to Carnegie Mellon, doing also the computer engineering program, the C program. That program prided itself on humbling. Students press off on being the most challenging program of its type in the world. And they they relished it. The professor's relished this so much like, okay, how can we crank it up just a little bit more, a little bit more this year. And I don't think I had learned how to learn Intel, I went through the CMU experience. And similarly, after my freshman year, I didn't take time away. But I did spend a little of time reflecting. And I realized also that I, up to that point had made a lot of choices, because my parents suggested it was the right choice to make. Yes. And it was around that same exact point where I realized that I was making these choices because I wanted to make them there for me, and I was living my own life. And that was was also equally transformative. I started my first startup at CMU, which I think you did as well. Yeah, around exact same time. My sophomore year of college, I started my first web company. This is 1994. At the dawn of the web, we started on the first first web companies, and people asked me, Hey, can I be an intern at your company? Like, it was me and my roommate, like, we don't even know what do you have me suggest that you should be doing anything for us? Anyway, good times back then. For sure. So how about you did you? Did you have an awakening when you're at CMU as well,

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