The AR Show: Kris Kolo (VRARA) on Mapping, Positioning, and Insights from the VR/AR Association

9:35PM Sep 3, 2021

Speakers:

Jason McDowall

Kris Kolo

Keywords:

ar

vr

people

vr ar

startup

worked

maps

verizon

kris

big

mapping

industry

navigation

google

healthcare

app

technology

association

enable

experiences

For those following along with each episode, I'm back to work and back to the podcast after a summer break. My family and I logged over 11,000 miles in the car saw 39 states and had a fantastic time this summer. I'm looking forward to a slate of great interviews this fall starting with this one.

Welcome to the AR show right 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 Kris Kolo. Kris is the global executive director of the VR AR Association, an international organization designed to foster growth, knowledge and connections between its members. Previously, Kris was an executive at Verizon and Toys R Us applying AR technology to business needs. at Toys R Us Kris was working on digital in store initiatives and shopping solutions, piloting the AR solution for Metaio which went on to be acquired by Apple. At Verizon. Kris was responsible for media entertainment and location based apps and platforms, where he collaborated with wiki tude to integrate AR into horizons GPS navigation. As an entrepreneur, Kris was the co founder of spine Inc, a Silicon Valley startup focused on geolocation technologies that was acquired by Trimble and Kris published a groundbreaking book local positioning systems on geospatial and location based services. Kris also holds graduate degrees from MIT. In this conversation, Kris and I chat about mapping and positioning in the early days of mobile, as well as the challenges and benefits of remapping the world for AR. Based on his insights from the association, Kris talks about what's working for VR and AR and healthcare and enterprise. He describes what he sees is a big challenge hindering adoption, and the impact of Facebook's commitment to VR and AR on the rest of the market. As reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show calm. Let's dive in.

Kris, where did your obsession your fascination with maps originate?

So Jason, I think my parents working with our CAD made me fall in love with maps, they brought overtime work home. And there was maps everywhere in the living room, or their bedroom. They were printed maps, and it just got me, I guess interested?

What are they doing with those maps? What sort of mapping what they're doing?

Yes. So they they were land surveyors. And those were maps of, you know, the city, the agency they worked for. The agency worked for the coal mines. And they were surveying the elevation, if you will, of streets, making sure you know, things are stable and don't collapse.

And so they are responsible for keeping the city safe. And they're constantly mapping and remapping the town. It sounds like, Yeah, actually, the way you put it, it sounds like you had a very important job. They didn't feel that way. I don't know, to call them and ask them after this interview. But that fascination kind of stuck with you. Because in college graduate school, you ended up really focusing on this notion of geographic information systems.

Yes. So I actually majored in Geography Now I'm not embarrassed to say it because it was an embarrassing thing to say back then, like, what are you gonna do with geography? Well, geography departments offer the geographic information system specialty, and that's what I did. But before I decided on GIS, I actually wanted to go for being a meteorologist to predict the weather because it also fascinated with maps and like light data, you know, the weather forecasts being shown on a map. So always something with maps. Yeah.

Even after graduate school, you ended up pursuing that sort of that industry. You joined ESRI, which is one of the really big positioning technology companies that's out there.

Yeah. So after my undergraduate at Rutgers, in my first summer job after after college was ezri in Redlands, beautiful campus there, they have grown substantially these days, they're actually getting into AR or doing AR already leveraging the map. So yeah,

from there, you begin to see, I think, some some market opportunities around but as he was doing what he was doing, and you ended up going and starting your own company, as a co founder and head of product, what did you see that was missing? Kind of from what was going on back then? 2005 or so?

Yeah, I mean, I was very captivated by by digital maps, that old information being captured and organized and the utility that maps provided for you on a personal level and for businesses. Now, we know that majority of smartphone apps use location or maps, but back then, you know, Google Maps started in 2005. I think. So that was just the map right? And, and then you know, the blue that came about to enable you know, where am I use cases? And then you know, the turn by turn navigation came. And also, you know, directions to get me from Point A to Point A to Point B, with using traffic data, live traffic data, historic traffic, which is so fascinating how much you can do with maps and all that information for consumer applications, for example. So this this startup was, you know, let's do something in mapping and GPS, because that was the hot thing. Little that we know how difficult it was to deploy your apps on different devices. Because the location wasn't really, or the location data that GPS data wasn't really so seamlessly integrated with the device or the OS, which is today. So yeah, so that all of the startup was to kind of make the following applications easy on different devices across different devices.

So it sounds like there's really a developer tool oriented thing, how do you reduce the friction for applications themselves to incorporate mapping and position data?

Yeah, so actually, the product of this startup was like a widget framework and a map SDK. Yeah. And then the startup got acquired by Trimble

grayness. And from there, you ended up being responsible for similar sorts of things at Verizon. So this was what 2010 ish? II Yes.

So yeah. So from the Silicon Valley startup mindset, we actually try to work with big carriers. And then I ended up at a carrier. And I think the reason was like, I wanted to find out what was going on inside a carrier, how they upgraded applications back then, like GPS navigator. So I came to Verizon, at the Golden Age of vz. navigator was an app with I think, 50 60 million users, people back then were paying $10 a month to subscribe for these apps. And the annual revenue for just this one GPS app was 300 million. And yeah, so those were the golden days. And then Google, Google Maps was around but then Google Maps offered launch the navigation component, which was free and that made everybody everybody panic. At Verizon. Now basically, everybody was running around like chickens with their with their heads cut off. What are we gonna do

overnight, they completely transformed the industry. There were a whole bunch of mapping navigation oriented startups are dedicated devices to navigation. That's right. The TomTom pnds. Yes. Yeah. Personal navigation devices. Yeah. And here, that was a one of the big companies at the time with the now called here. What were they called back then? Oh, yeah. Here was Navteq. Yes. Navteq. That's right. So the major players, and then Google suddenly for consumer use anyway, changed everything when they said, Oh, yeah, here's all that data and it's free. We're gonna monetize in other ways. Yeah, Google changed the game for maps. Yeah. What did you do at Verizon? How did you help horizon through that time,

it was interesting to see how users that were paying for the app, were continuing to pay. I mean, a lot of them maybe did not know, there's a free alternative. But once they knew they still continued with vz. navigator, because they trusted Verizon more, you know, up to up to some point that Verizon app was still more accurate, you know, the map was more accurate, because we were using someone like, like nastic that specialized in gathering the data. But then Google Maps, you know, over time, got actually better in quality. So the quality feature, if you will, was not in our favor. But still, you know, people were paying they you know, the app is still around these days, I think it's like at 499 right now, but yeah, it was it was very difficult to compete with the free Google.

So did you begin kind of exploring? What did you do so that it didn't completely die? Game changed overnight, didn't believe I had to go for Google to catch up. And even you know, today, you can still buy it technically for $5 a month, which, which implies I guess somebody is buying it for $5 a month?

Yeah. So what we did was, you know, innovate with with features. So, you know, some features were better in terms of like, I remember, we were the first ones to launch a feature with, you know, on this road, the the speed limit is 50 miles per hour. Also, the app could actually tell you, you know, safety, you know, quicker sometimes there is no science on Twitter, or highways, right, and you don't know how fast you can go. So that was kind of like the new feature. But then, of course, you know, Google came up with that feature as well. So it was hard to compete feature by feature. But the other thing we did was open up the app to summarize and also decided to launch a developer ecosystem. You know, open up the location API's and enable third parties to Develop on top or integrate with with the Verizon properties. So that was, you know, that was kind of the hot thing for a while, but then developers realized or we had Verizon realized that it was a little bit too late. Because developers were thinking globally, by then already, you know, he didn't develop just for Verizon he developed for a global audience. And, you know, Google was a global

platform for developers. And so is you were looking for what comes next, beyond maybe the developer platform beyond the the feature race that was happening on the Maps Navigation side? What did you discover?

Yeah, so that's a good position, because, you know, mapping location became kind of embedded in the device. So you know, there's still some innovation, I mean, then ways came, and we've got acquired by by Google, you know, people are still innovating with location and maps. But the next big thing that got me fascinated, was augmented reality. And actually, this was still at Verizon, when we were doing research with with our users, you know, with such a big revenue for the app, we have the budget to do very comprehensive user studies and research. And some of the feedback from users came, you know, you want me to use this phone while I'm driving and look at it, look down or look on the map, very distracting, and Verizon, and all the carriers were very, you know, distraction, free driving, right, no texting, distractions. And so it was kind of like, you know, come on Verizon, you can produce something more safer. And I was looking for technologies that can kind of solve that distraction issue. And there was this company wiki tool, which is still around out of Australia, that the first AR navigation, basically, it was using location based navigation AR to display arrows or directions on the camera, right? So you placed your phone on the windshield, the phone was displaying the real world using the camera and it was in the app was displaying visual markers, if you will, you know turn right or 15 meters, you know, but it was overlaid on the real world. It wasn't, you know, on the map. So that was very, that was very useful, kind of a new new thing that he captivated with AR

did you end up doing anything between Verizon and wiki to the time

being that such a large corporation you couldn't really move fast enough? So that kind of died out died off? But here we are. With AR being the new thing now.

Yeah. decade plus in the making? How did you then kind of take that AR interest that interest you found an AR forward? How did you kind of have that manifest for you?

After Verizon, I switched to retail. So I actually worked at Toys R Us. And you know, back then Toys R Us had 800 stores, it was making $12 billion a year. And mobile e commerce, you know, the stores were a big, big component of the business. And I was hired to kind of explore how mobile can help with the in store digital experience the COVID. You know, of course, I looked at AR use cases, I actually was demoing Matteo and others to the Toys R Us leadership team. And it was fascinating. Like you could come into the store, you can point out a Lego box, or even a playground. There's not enough room on the on the ToysRUs on the store floor to show the whole playground assembled. So you could point your camera and the app, you know, Matteo, for example, would display how the Lego set would look fully assembled, or the playground, how would the playground fully assembled? It was just just fascinating because a lot of the shoppers wondered, well, how does this look when it's assemble? How big is it? And of course we know these days, you can use the IKEA app to remodel your your your house right? Because it's it measures and it shows you how things will look. So you're doing this already but 567 years ago

at Toys R Us right? Right? That's pretty amazing. So you have a chance to experience and help envision and deliver what AR looks like for physical retail for e commerce as well.

That's right yeah, I mean the mobile you know in store also then move to to e commerce and now we know IKEA and others are using AR as their kind of tables. It's table stakes these days.

Yeah. One of the companies that I saw on your profile that you kind of became involved with was fly by media.

Yes. So there was a poser us and I was in New Jersey fly by media was in New York City and They called me up, because they were interested in in capturing or getting into the retail business basically, using the sort of case of flyby media was specializing in, in augmented reality indoor location. They kind of develop algorithms that were actually using Google Tango, back in the day. So very smart guys. And they wanted to get into retail to AR enable e commerce, right? Which, which, these days we see with Snapchat or you know, the IKEA app, basically using the camera to take pictures of products or even one crazy use case was navigating inside the retail store using what using AR. That's always an obsessive use case, right? People want to just do the navigation as the killer killer use case even inside a store.

Even inside of a store, I still see that use case going strong today, right? As you've been engaging with fiber media fiber media is notable, I think for two reasons, at least in my in my mind. Number one, they were part of the early acquisition spree that Apple had done flyby media and Matteo are both acquisitions by Apple which came which formed the basis for for a market. Exactly. And the other thing that's notable is that Henri Inbar, who's Another notable in the industry, who started augmented World Expo ewe, and runs that organization, he was one of the co founders there. That's right. So now you and Henri, both were together at that time and how you each run, the two largest organizations focused on on AR and VR and immersive within the industry. That's pretty amazing.

Yeah, we were both passionate people. And you know, the goal is to promote AR and make it as common as you know, from from my from my history as location, right.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about your organization, the VR AR Association. Where did that idea sparked for you, and what motivate you to kind of create and grow a global Association,

you know, the VR AR Association, it's a birth child of Nathan 30, john, Nathan, and I know each other from the toys r us days, even Verizon days, when we worked in the mapping industry, education industry, and we knew AR was kind of the next big thing. And the challenge back then was like, Okay, I have this problem, you know, which vendor can can solve it for me, or which vendor I partner with? Or who has the solution or you know, who has the same problem? So, the first idea for the VR AR association was really connecting people. And really, the real mission is basically around three things, growth, knowledge, and connection. So it's, it's all about helping individuals or companies or schools to, to grow their knowledge in VR, ar that means, you know, what are the best case studies, the best guidelines, you know, learn from each other, so people don't repeat the same mistakes. It's also about gaining knowledge. So we have a lot of online courses, workshops, that teach managers or developers VR AR, and is also about growing your connections. So, you know, we'll, we'll talk about in detail, but one of the great things about the VR AR association is that weekly online meets where people can join online on different topics verticals, and talk to other executives or colleagues, partners, customers about common problems, and you know, what are the common solutions and then partner up or become, you know, a vendor brand new, new relationship, new business opportunities?

Let's talk about those weekly meetings a little bit. How have you kind of split up? I imagine it's not the entire global VR AR population that's joining the same weekly call, how do you kind of divide those up and how are those managed facilitated?

Yeah, so it really you know, it really came about from you know, what are the hot topics in the industry, so of course, you know, it was healthcare and actually healthcare was our kind of a first subgroup within the association, enterprise training. We have about 20 different committees if you will, and all of them hold these online weekly me beats. And you know, they are every two weeks or three weeks for different protocol topic. And you know, of course there for for North America, Europe, and then we have an APEC side to this as well. And, you know, the 30 minutes long. The goal is to keep it short and sweet people pay attention, they don't get bored. We usually have a guest presenter that presents you know, what they're working on people give feedback, ask questions, people really We kind of learn from them and network with each other. And they're like discussions, right? They're not recorded, mainly because people feel safe. I've been told they feel safe. And these online needs to, you know, to ask any questions to challenge each other, if you will. And of course, we have some executives attending them. So we don't really want to record them. So yeah, they're they're very popular.

That's pretty amazing. And besides healthcare, what are some of the other groupings that you have these days?

Yes. So enterprise, you know, which includes industrial manufacturing, then we have education. We have actually specific online meats for training, which spans across you know, all the different, different verticals. We have Energy Committee and online meats, we have sports, fitness, storytelling, entertainment. So you know, it's it's kind of everything. And what's interesting is, you know, we hear again and again, that someone from the energy sector partner with someone from the storytelling secretary, if you are on a project, so you know, it's just amazing to hear how how people connect.

That's very cool. One of the other big things that you do on a regular basis are these global summits. That was the North American global summit back in June, and they have the European summit this September, right?

That's right. So we, we started the summit on site in Vancouver. And, you know, we had I think, 1000 people attending the conference in Vancouver, and then, you know, COVID hit. And you know, of course, everybody thought it's the end. And we, you know, like many others took a risk with doing virtual events, we also took a risk with our virtual events platform called happen. But you know, we were shocked because the first virtual summit that we did, this was 2020, right? Last year, we had 11,000 people attending from around the world. So it made us the largest immersive tech event. And it was just amazing. I'm not sure if you attended that one. But we didn't sleep for three days, because the conference was actually non stop for three days. So there was, you know, continent speakers during North American hours, European hours and APEC hours. And after that, we said, No, we can do that again. So we split the soundbuds into, you know, the global summit in North America. And now the golden summit, European edition is coming up in September, with European hours, timezone.

And is the summit hybrid summit in person and online, or is it online only.

So it's still online only. We were thinking of doing like a hybrid component. But you know, you hear now and then more and more closures, you know, yeah. So for now, it's still fully online.

Got it. I think that was at that last live in person global summit in Vancouver. And, and then I did attend that one in 2020, as well, the online one. But I really enjoyed the global summit experience. It's different, different sort of vibe than AWB has. And but one of the things that that really stands out also is that the it was an emphasis on this getting together meeting new people, this networking element, which you kind of emphasize and talking about the association in general has that has one of its core tenants of its mission, but I felt that in person and online as well. And I really

like that. Yeah, so in Vancouver, we call this speed networking, speed dating was five minutes, we had tables line up, and we had executives rotating around five minutes, there was a whistle, and, you know, in person, so we obviously had wine or beer. And people were rotating every five minutes and basically meeting the next person. Right. So that's one of the main reasons why we also pick the happen virtual events platform because they had the networking feature, if you will, from day one, where you know, you have 1000s of people coming online to the half an event. There's a networking room, if you will, that you enter, and it matches you with the next available person. So that was, you know, a big winner for us. And thank you happen, you know, it was a six person startup back then. I think now they're at 300. There are 600 people and I you know, they just got another round of investment LinkedIn invested in them. They're valued at a billion dollar. So you know, we took a risk with them and it's just amazing to be part of their of their journey,

I suspect that you were a big part of their journey. Success because I remember seeing happen. Maybe this was the first event of this one a little bit before that, that I had us that had used happen. And they they definitely it felt like a six person startup. Yeah. And the technology, but they haven't raised an absurd amount of money. And that product has gotten so much better over the last probably 18 months.

It did improve, you know, on a weekly basis, both for the attendees and the organizers, as well as for the exhibitors. Yeah, it really is amazing what they're doing.

Yeah, that's very cool. So I'd love to jump back. So you have this really beautifully broad perspective on what's happening across the industry, or you had noted there's 20 different verticals or so within the VR AR Association right now across healthcare and enterprise and education and defense and all these other things. And you yourself have this deep passion and experience in in these mapping and positioning technologies. And I was reading an article by the CEO of Niantic john Hankey. Yes. And he was the founder of keynote, which became Google Earth. That's right. So I was reading this morning a blog posts from from Mr. Hankey, who, who, as you just noted, was, was the founder of keyhole, which became Google Earth. He worked early at Google Maps. And Niantic itself came out of Google. And he was writing this kind of an update on Nyan ticks perspective on the market and the opportunity. And he highlighted once again that mapping for augmented reality is very different than the mapping that was done 10 1520 years ago, before we're trying to help people move around the real world. And you know, the introduction of the blue dots, this notion that you understand where you are in the world and answer the question, Where am I? But now the challenge is, how do we get a computer or a phone to truly understand where that person is in the world and what their perspective is in the world, what they're looking at, and down to a level of resolution that is substantially finer grain than they might we have enabled with GPS or lean at some sort of urban environment. And, and we have a ton of startups that are working this area, right? Yeah. pentos mon starfy, in scape, which Facebook acquired dent reality. And they're the ones focusing still on the indoor navigation thing with AR, you know, insider navigation out of Europe, there's tons of them, Niantic bought sixty.ai last year to help them with their effort. It's just its own interesting piece of infrastructure that is not yet done to enable a real world AR sorts of experiences. From your perspective, what's what's hard about the problem here specifically related to AR for kind of getting accurate and precise mapping and positioning? Right. I

mean, it sounds like we are remapping the world again, right. But you know, the most important challenge for for this AR this digital mapping is the registration problem. Right. So the registration in AR is, is a process, which merges the virtual objects generated by the computer with the real world image caught by the camera. And, you know, as good as the iPhone Samsung's waterways are getting with the image recognition that then needs to be matched with the database, either on the device or on the cloud. So yeah, the registration problem is a real challenge. And since the virtual information needs to be precisely supplemented on the map, it is crucial that both you know the information matches precisely in their position, right, so we're back to the blue dots again. And you know, the blue dots with with AR can be solved by markers, right, they're location based they are. But this this solution is not really scalable, you know, cannot be used in many real life applications for for several reasons. You have harsh, harsh environments, indoor, outdoor, the sun, or the light is dark in this room right in that room. So there's just so many still functional or computer related challenges that need to be solved and improved.

When we do kind of figured out and figured out at scale. What are the sorts of use cases or experiences that we're going to be able to unlock with this sort of technology? Hey, gosh,

I mean, I keep thinking what are what's what's the end here? What are the possibilities? Is it you know, is it for for humans? Is it for robots? You know, what's what's going on here? I mean, you know, Niantic you know, the games that they're producing Pokemon Go for example, that is just so much so much data. And it started with the location based markers, right. That's how the pokemon go first started with AR but to make it more accurate, more more seamless, you know, so the monsters don't kind of look like they're off? Kind of. They're not accurate. I mean, that looked when you look back that look very silly Erica was just so not accurate. So yeah, I think just the experience would be so much nicer if it's more accurate even for Pokemon Go and other games and experiences that are enabled on top of this digital AR map.

Yeah, given that you had built a startup that was solving, the specific thing you're trying to solve was to reduce the friction to make this sort of technology more accessible for application may makers? Do you think kind of given where we are today, given the level of consolidation, we've seen today that the startup can deliver a meaningful service or a meaningful set of capabilities here? Or do we need to rely on a Nyan tech or a Facebook? Or some other multi billion or trillion dollar company to solve these problems?

Yeah. I mean, you never know someone might emerge and be the next big player. But from my experience, you know, you can, the startups are essential, because that's where the kind of the IP gets generated the talent, the expertise, the the focus, right, like you actually dedicate your entire startup to one particular problem. That might not be so easy at big companies that need to juggle different problems at the same time, and be revenue driven. So startups can actually take, you know, take a risk, they get funding to take take a risk and solve particular issue. So there's still a lot of room for startups in the AR VR location mapping space. But I think, yeah, we need the big players to then kind of scale, right. So the apples, the Google's the Microsoft's we need them to support infrastructure, and then enable everyone.

So you think it's ultimately going to be even if the innovation comes from the startups that the scale comes from the larger entities, and so there'll be some consolidation, some acquisitions, that happens. Right? Right. Acquisitions? Yeah. Maybe we can shift? Can I hear your perspective on some of the other industry verticals that you have help and support and nurture their VR era? What is you know, maybe within healthcare, ya know, that that was one of the first carve outs? What seeing within this area real traction in ROI Right Now?

Yeah, I mean, the big one for healthcare in terms of ROI is training, right. So training nurses, doctors, students, then you know, how to do the procedures, you know, even that with haptics, you can feel the the the tools that you would use for surgery and feel like, you know, you're cutting a body or a bone. But just kind of the training aspect of VR, specifically for healthcare enables, you know, faster training mean, instead of reading books or going to seminars, workshops, being immersed in VR, is just faster and better for learning. Also, with VR, you can take risks, I mean, you will not kill anybody, if you're cutting a body and make a mistake, I think it's also cheaper, then then kind of the traditional training used for for doctors and nurses. So training, definitely a big one. And it's proven to deliver the ROI. The other interesting aspect within healthcare is VR experiences for anxiety or PTSD, where, you know, members like like helium, or we had this sponsor for our healthcare summit, the care channel, they have a VR x application that is used for meditation, relaxation, and cure channel, it's actually interesting, because they are the providers of those meditation videos that you see in hospital rooms. So it's interesting to see them getting into into VR. The other interesting aspect is, you know, by attending these online means for healthcare that we have, a lot of these applications are now talking to healthcare insurance providers to make these apps deductible or covered by health insurances. So it's interesting to see that happening.

The industry as a whole is beginning to embrace and acknowledge that it's legitimate tool. Exactly. Yeah. Even the parents, how do you think that is you can look out with your crystal ball over the next 12 to 18 months, this part of the market will change or evolve.

The year I think, you know, we will see kind of those VR experiences being offered, you know, as a standard in hospitals or clinics. I've even seen dentists use use VR to maybe educate the patient on the procedure but also to relax them during a procedure. So it's just interesting how it how VR is used, if I can say as a as a drug as a relaxant. So I think it's just going to become better known that VR can be used as a as a treatment for for medical issues. Yeah.

Yeah. Within the VR era, are there any notable companies that are focused on healthcare there? Yeah. So

we have, you know, Pfizer, Medtronic, Children's Hospital, many other, you know, hospitals, clinics participating, you know, doing these online meets as well, you know, a lot of vendors and startups as well. But yeah, those are kind of the ones that come to my mind, actually, Bosch is a member as well, they're also in the medical field as well. So a lot of manufacturers of medical equipment, as well, as you know, the end users or brands, if you will, and hospitals are participating.

Now, that's great. That's great mix. So maybe we'll just pick one more here. When you look at the enterprise space, and you noted that there are some separation with even within enterprise around manufacturing and warehousing in some of these others, but what's notable for you, what stands out within the the enterprise verticals, that units are there? Yeah, I

mean, enterprise. So you know, we have the energy, vertical, if you will, that's kind of enterprise demand, manufacturing, training, you know, all these kind of talk about the enterprise sector. And we have, you know, participants from, from Honeywell, or Lockheed, or, you know, Siemens, they're doing VR AR already. And actually, you know, there was a big research done, I think back in 2018, by Capgemini, that already stated in 2018, that 82% of companies implementing VR or AR, back, then were seeing VR to either match or exceed their expectations in terms of the ROI. So, you know, the famous examples or Walmart or shell, you know, using VR for, for training, but specifically, you know, I think an enterprise with a problem is the workforce, right? The Honeywell, for example, they know VR is necessary for for training and for simulations, because they realize that 50% of their industrial plant personnel would retire within the next five years. So with that talent, kind of gap, right, that that knowledge gap, you know, how do you train your people in a relatively fast test taker,

knowledge transfer is critical. Knowledge Transfer. Exactly. Training is a huge enterprise use case, this notion around knowledge transfer, which I guess kind of ties into this, this notion of training, in some ways.

Yeah, the other one that comes to mind that is talked about, you know, every week is on the job, right? So you're trained, and now you're actually working. And you can use VR or AR, with with smart glasses and head worn equipment, you can use these technologies to make you a better, more effective, efficient worker on the job, right. So either on the factory floor in a warehouse, or, you know, out in the field, you can use AR remote assistance, to be you know, better equipped. And, and, you know, so for example, you you have your iPad, or your smart glasses, and you're looking at an equipment, and you're not sure you know what, what to do what to press, you know, what button to press. So you can use AR to kind of visually see what this button does, what's you know what to do. And you can actually also call people now, you know, using Google meats, you know, this, this actually ties back to the new Google Glass, right? And that works with Google meats. So it's just amazing technology that can make you a more more efficient worker. Yeah.

So now it's from the moment you start the job, you get trained up. And then as you kind of learn how to do your job, you then get to leverage different bits of AR and possibly VR at the actual execution of your job. Right. It's becoming slowly a key productivity tool, as the mobile devices of, of the past have become.

Yes. So you know, the smart glasses are coming. It's great to see Google Glass kind of coming back from the dead. And it was it was, was exciting to see that you can now use Google meets with Google Glass. It's just so simple, stupid, right?

Yeah, it's great. As you can look out, you've been nurturing this organization, this association for over six years now, I guess. And you've seen a lot of growth. And you have large companies that are excited you have small startups who are innovating, what remains, in your opinion, the biggest hurdle or set of hurdles for growth and adoption in VR and AR

Yeah, so we you know, we will continue to improve our our existing programs, which are all about growth, knowledge, and connections with with onside online networking opportunities, you know, to enable people to come together and share their experiences and, and nurture potential business opportunities. But it's also about, you know, the education from best practices. And there's guidelines, you know, we will continue publishing those publications. Yeah, there's, there's still a lot to be done, you, you still hear that education and awareness is still kind of the biggest problems in VR AR, given, you know, all these amazing success stories with Walmart and other big players. There's still a lot of people out there at big corporations and small organizations that are still afraid of VR, AR, they haven't used it. So still a big education, awareness factor on all of us to, to push forward.

Yeah, we got to educate the market more broadly, we're still at that point in the kind of growth curve, where, even though there is proven ROI, for several of these use cases, there's still not a lot of awareness, broadly across the industry across the various industries in which these tools can help you kind of observe the interactions, the companies that are part of the association that you serve, or the interactions of those that are showing up at the various events. How do you think startups find success alongside the massive spending from Facebook, and these other giants like Facebook themselves are pouring, it seems billions of dollars a year 1000s of employees dedicated to building out VR, where they seem to be selling the devices on the cheap in order to build out that ecosystem and to build out their their place in the market. And they're investing heavily an AR and all the related technologies there. How does the startup find successful on that sort of massive spending? That's a

great question. And then at the end, so you know, Facebook is definitely doing us a favor. I mean, they're spending, as you said, millions, billions of dollars promoting these technologies. I mean, I love their their ads, you know, in New York, that billboard ads, you know, showcasing you know, Oculus is your new gym, right? Like, you don't have to go to the gym anymore. Use Oculus and the fitness apps that come with it. I mean, it's just amazing, you know, how, you know, they believe in this technology, and they're pushing it forward. So I think that's actually, you know, also helping a lot of startups, because other investors and other opportunities then will wake up and be like, Oh, we need to be in this space. But you know, on the other hand, you know, not everybody wants to use Facebook or partner with Facebook for for several reasons. You know, that's how the market operates. The she always has worked. There was an opportunity for for everyone.

There's an opportunity for everyone. That is that is the case, specifically within the VR AR. What are your vision, your ambitions for the association over the next five years,

we definitely are missing the onside in person events. We miss people we miss seeing each other. We know these online meets or using Google meets actually, so people are on camera, and they can talk to each other. And be very friendly. But I think people actually are missing the in person event. Some of our chapters, you know, we have 70 chapters around the world, some of them have started doing in person events. And people are like, you know, hugging each other, almost killing each other. Well, in Europe, they kiss each other anyway. So yeah, it's just it's just amazing to see that. But yeah, we will continue enabling the opportunities that you have for people to come together and learn from each other. And we will promote the industry by, you know, more publications, more events, more partnerships, etc.

Great. Let's wrap up with a few lightning round questions here. What commonly held belief about spatial computing Do you disagree with?

That's an interesting one, and actually a tough one. I mean, certification. Special computing kind of is similar to what we are now hearing about metaverse, right? Yeah, it's a hot new thing. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, I think launched a new team. And the department is called metaverse, some people like Charlie and others have been using this term for a while. And I think, you know, it's, you know, metal versus like the internet or it's like the internet's that's what I'm hearing these days, people are kind of arguing amongst each other within our community, like, you know, what is better versus the internet or Internet's like, what do you mean by it? But I think, you know, we need one of metaverse spatial computing platform, if you will, just like the internet. I mean, it's like web point web 3.0. Now with a spatial computing, right, so You know, a lot of challenges for interoperability for making sure no, there's no silos or silos can integrate with each other. You know, a lot of lessons learning history repeats itself from the location days, you know, the GPS location based services, days where you had all these silos being built. And then they came together to produce standards. So data can connect the exchange among each other. And users can flow between, you know, one silo with the other silo. So this means, you know, Facebook with Google, or Facebook with Microsoft, or, you know, Facebook with Niantic Meadow versus so you know, a lot, a lot of work to be done. You think there needs to be interoperability between whatever, whatever this concept really means in practice, but there needs to be interoperability between all the major players and whatever it is that they're creating some kind of plug and play, right, just for the sake of the of the user. So when you have one headset and you want to, you know, go into the Facebook metaverse, well, we'll see what happens to we might end up with silos. But I think, you know, we see with old space, you know, he used to work only on PCs, right. And I used to have a Mac and I never could use old space. But now they enabled back computer. So you know, I think for the for the users sake, we need to kind of enable that plug and play the friendly plug and play.

It reminds me of the 90s 1990s. And America Online, I was the big internet web provider of the day where they focused really on building a walled garden, their own separate version of the web, where they had a bunch of curated content and experiences. And they were extremely successful for a number of years. And they had some of the highest quality experiences, but ultimately, open beat close. Yeah. And the evolution of the internet. Yeah. But there for a little while, it worked out fine, worked out great for them. But in the end, interoperability is critical for the has been critical for the broader success of the internet. And perhaps we can expect the same for spatial computing or whatever this new branding Facebook is trying to put on. It is called over the potential uses of AR What are you personally most excited about?

Yeah, this I like this question, because I'm still waiting for my killer use case, which would be smart glasses for four consumers. I mean, I work prescription glasses, so I cannot wait for the day where I can use my daily glasses that I wear today for night vision. And people think I'm crazy. And I visually mean militaries that envision. And I'm like, I need night vision for driving at night. Because surprisingly, as I get older, I see less and less, especially at night. And I think night vision would be a killer app for for AR I mean, night vision is kind of augmented reality

itself, right? You had this this notion, I'm just gonna piggyback on that for a second. But this notion of driving glasses of AR glasses that have extra benefits when driving, I think is a really interesting consumer oriented use case, whether it's helping you see better at night, or even helping you see better during the daytime. But help me with that navigation. Going back to the original kind of topic, the original thread of our conversation here, providing navigation and a heads up way while in a car. Rather than having to look down at the screen that's embedded in the car even even in a specialized heads up display. What if your glasses that you carry with you had that sort of information in it already? Or that's how it was being projected? I think I think that set of use cases around being in a car with specialized AR glasses is a really interesting one. I like night vision. That's cool. What book Have you read recently that you found to be deeply insightful or profound?

Well, I'm reading currently the new book by Kathy hackl. And john Zelda, the augmented workforce. And I think they did a phenomenal job of just making it so easy, you know, not for for people like us that are in the industry, but for executives, you know, different companies, can they can just pick up this book. And it's, I have heard it's easy for them to digest as well. What's put so many good examples. So I think, you know, there's many books on this topic, but they did a great time and very timely to publish that book. Yeah,

great one. You could sit down and have coffee with your 25 year old self. What advice would you share with 25 year old Chris?

I would say, take risks. Don't be afraid. But again, you're not 25 you mean that's how you learn. Successful people don't become successful overnight or successful companies don't become what they are today without taking risks and learning from mistakes.

Very true. Even the happenings of the world that go from six people to 600 people over the course of 15 months.

That's right. Yes and but luck is a big luck and timing is a big portion of

I'm sure it's any closing thoughts you want to share,

I would just end at something to really think about as user behavior. You know, within this industry, I think we're, we're pressuring ourselves, you know, we want everybody to, or we used to want everybody to have a VR headset, then we realize, you know, VR headsets might be like a household shared item, like the xboxes are, and, you know, that's becoming more common, you know, one VR headset per household, maybe. But I think, you know, it's gonna take a while in terms of the user behavior, user adoption, to make VR especially mainstream, I mean, ar is definitely mainstream these days with, with smartphones, and Snapchat, claims that AR is like part of their daily usage now, but for VR, ar might take a generation, if you will, for it really to become mainstream. So I don't want to really scare anybody, but you know, we are definitely used in enterprises and, and the business but on the consumer level, you know, slowly it will get there.

What's your take the one more generation so another 18 to 36 months? or longer? Yeah,

I mean, you know, we're seeing record numbers with the with the VR headsets units being sold. You know, I'll be I'll be very satisfied if you know, 50% of households have on one VR headset for per household. Right. And, you know, we're getting there. We're getting there.

How many households are in the US? You know, it's like 100 million. I think it's about that number. Yeah. Yeah. Where can people go to learn more about you and the upcoming global summit and all the other opportunities? They're at the VR AR Association?

Yes, please go to the Ferrara calm TGV, ra ra calm or Google VR AR Association, or the VR AR, global summit. So again, the summit is happening online in September, using European time zones.

This is the European summit, right? The North American Way, right. If you notice in between, or have you programmed between the various European versus North American summits, different types of content based on the interests of those markets? Yes. So

isour European chapter presidents are very involved. Thank you to you. They are you know, they know the market better than than myself being in North America. So they're actually helping us. They're working with Emory, our executive producer for the summit. They're bringing in speakers, they know what's happening in Europe. And they will, they're helping us program the sessions and speakers.

Awesome. Kris, thanks very much for this conversation.

Thank you, Jason.

Before you go, I'm gonna tell you about the next episode. in it. I speak with Susan Cummings, the managing director of Tiny Rebel Games and the founder of Fictioneers. Susan and her team were awarded a major grant in the United Kingdom for augmented reality storytelling, which led to Wallace and Gromit the big fix up, followed by the release, the summer of Wallace and Gromit fix up the city, an ambitious city scale AR game that takes place in San Francisco, Bristol and Cardiff. In this conversation, we chat about the early days of the game industry and our experiences crafting compelling experiences for augmented reality. I think you'll really enjoy the conversation. Please follow or subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss this or other great episodes. Until next time....