Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast

Hessie Jones

Hi everyone. How is everyone doing today? I actually met Julie Smithson at decoding tech in Toronto last week and I'm pleased to have her with me today. Julie is the Co-founder of Metaverse and XR women. And she hosts. The Pollies Award and working and building immersive technologies since 2010, so my name is Jesse Jones. Welcome to tech uncensored. When we talk about the future of the Internet, everybody talks about this promise of Web 3. It's all about a decentralized Internet. It talks about bringing. More power to creators and monetizing that in a way that dispels like the the old ways of using AD models and where people actually become the owners and purveyors of their own identity, and and many of the things that they create. So let's dive in. Thank you so much, Julie, for joining me today.

Julie Smithson

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Hessie Jones

Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you started and how you came to. Grow into this amazing space that's still really.

Julie Smithson

Sure, sure. So I went to school not for anything tech related. I actually went to school for hospitality management and that's where my background started. But in 2010, my partner and husband. We started a company and we created the tech. Analogy. I'm with our partner that brought immersive touchscreen technology to the music industry, and that was the gateway into learning as much as we know. Now as I know today about immersive technology and building out touch screen devices. And then in 2016. We we started a company that focused it more on virtual and augmented reality and learning everything that we could about them. Today we're sitting at over 200 different projects of learning everything about it and building studio. Projects and in 2016, we started the company Metaverse. Back then it was and we are today a 3D game engine that solves immersive creation for everyone that publishes directly to the web. So that's kind of my journey, a little bit in a nutshell. But in learning all about this technology. We realized that the education. Around what we're learning in schools today was not at the pace of technology and where it is now, so that is now my personal mission to inspire and educate people about this immersive technology, how it applies, the great use cases about it. And you know what people need to be prepared for. Or as we. Are we're already through, you know, going through this transformation and application of these technologies in our day-to-day lives.

Hessie Jones

OK, so let's dive in a little bit because education is a huge component of this. And as we know, not many people still understand this idea of web three or the metaverse, and how it's evolved from web. One point O, which was really more text based. It was a. What 1 dimensional view? You couldn't even. There was no read write web at that time. It was more like sharing information, reading information and then Web 2.0. It actually changed the game and there was a lot more interactivity, people were more creators than anything else on social networks, started to evolve, relationships started to be a little bit more dynamic on the web. So even in the last five years, I guess. Since what three has evolved has been in. Closed it's it's made significant strides. So can you please explain what that has been like? For you and. What were those things that hadn't that have kind of propelled it to what it is today?

Julie Smithson

Yeah, sure. Well, until COVID until the pandemic. No one really knew the term virtual, you know, it wasn't even part of our the conversations we were having. We didn't do anything remote. We've started to do. A few odd meetings here and there, but you know, when we were all. Locked down. That catapulted the term virtual it literally did, and everybody had to learn how to be on teams and zoom and Google meets and that sort of thing in my space because we were already building virtual experiences. And, you know, all different. Learning about all the different things about 3D assets and and all the elements that it takes to build a metaverse. And you know, when we were on lockdown, that catapulted our industry into further spatial computing. And that, to me, was the catapult of of where we are in this time of exponential growth. So we were in this 2D world with signs and computers and books and. You know, and then all of a sudden we're starting to take, we're starting to move into our technology. We're doing boomerangs and panoramic photos and exploring more of the 360 space, which would, you know, would connect into this immersive design. Nine that's required for these experiences. Mark Zuckerberg in 2021 at Facebook Connect announced the the term metaverse VE RSE. Ours is spelled a little bit differently with the metaerse. But when he stated that term everybody connected with that term because. A lot of people had connect accounts on Facebook and that term then became a household name. It became an industry name of, of defining what it would be if you started to step into these worlds. Along with that came, you know, further developments of collaboration platforms where creating avatars and entering into 360 spatial worlds and interacting with them became explore, you know, were explored and deployed social XR platforms, the depth of of volumetric capture and 3D assets. And their capabilities and how to how to design them with an experience? Because started to happen in enterprise, the POC's start were started to you know be developed and Innovation Department started to streamline their POC's into operational strategies for companies. So you know along with that coming back to. Your question about. Indication is that the job skills changed and new tools and and ways. Of doing things that as well as. You know how B2C and B2? B processes were were going to be deployed. So, a lot has changed in the last five years and you know it's not going to stop here.

Hessie Jones

OK, so I'm I'm going to throw something at you in terms of you know where the technology is today, what kind of audience do do you think are more receptive to adopting the metaverse? Like which ones will fall in line versus those that are remain skeptical because as you know. Like we have. Exponential technologies that are happening all the time. It seems like every week something new is happening that that disrupts. Our own experiences, but processes and the way we see things and it seems like within a span of like a day, we are now doing something totally new, and we did not plan for.

Julie Smithson

That's right. And AI was born. Its birthday is coming up at the end of this month and of November. So you know, that hasn't even been around for a year. And already businesses are changing and building strategies around this new technology. So that just, you know, lends itself to what you were saying about how quickly things are changing. From our perspective, we're seeing growth in training from an enterprise level and taking virtual labs into current LMS curriculum, learning management systems and trying to hybrid a model of being able to interact with. Objects of discussion or development piece pieces and parts and that sort of thing. So training is a big is a big piece and you know healthcare alongside of that also accelerated due to the fact that we were in the pandemic, and we had a lot more demand of these medical you know medical issues and people being sick and demands on you know blood testing and things like that. The creation around the machines that we're testing.

We're scaling out to be trained in an immersive way to get have that retention of knowledge speed up so that people could learn things and deploy things faster, build things faster? So, from a B2B perspective, the training is one of the biggest savings that we're starting to see. And it's funny because normally training is an expense center, right. It's an expense center. But when you start to dive deep into the expenses of training on employees and what that transcribes. In time and value. There is huge cost savings. There on being able. To put parts of even starting with parts. Of your training in an immersive way. To catch up to the time that you know that it takes to meet in person, there's a huge piece of cost savings there. The other piece is retail and that would be direct to consumer model, right and you know the next generation Gen. Alpha is. All gamified their you know, their thoughts and minds are all gamified. So the generations of even millennials, you know, they like to shop. And what better way to take them into the technology to showcase what they're looking to buy, whether it be clothing or furniture or jewelry or, you know, just even purchasing a service and. Being able to be immersed in that shopping and retail experience is going to translate. To further products. Also, the collaboration piece, what we're doing here, we're meeting on stream yard, but if we were to meet in a meeting, maybe it's soon, it's going to be time to take a step into our technology and create an avatar and say. Hey, let's go. Run over here to this space and take a look at this resource together. Let's go take a look at this part. That we need to fix, or let's look at these designs and take a look at the different fabrics and apply them and see which one we like the. Just it's time to take a step into technology, and that's what this technology is going to do. So training, retail and collaboration are the three, three major business use cases that I see moving forward with this technology very quickly.

Hessie Jones

It actually it like from this perspective, retail probably has the most to win because it's already losing in the brick and mortar space. Right. So do you think retailers are are more open to an immersive experience because of the limitations of what they've seen during COVID?

Julie Smithson

Yeah, I think I think retailers are probably challenged with how to connect with consumers. You know, before we had TV commercials and we had Flyers that were delivered to our House and. You know, we don't have that anymore. What we do have is a device that everybody has in their hand and is 3D enabled. So imagine being able to go on to a web. Browser and being able to open an immersive experience and interacting with something that you're considering to purchase. You know, I've talked a lot about in my past. You know, place in your space or try before you buy. This is where augmented realities will come to play in how we make those purchase decisions and connecting with that product and creating brand. Awareness would be the biggest challenge of how to tell a story about the brands that I see retailers having at this time, because before they always had to, you know, throw out, there's 2D pieces of media and just hope that it catches them flies. Now you really have to prey on the emotions of the buyer and. And you'll do that with spatial environments that allow them to interact with the brand to learn as much as they want to know before before closing in on.

Hessie Jones

Purchased. Yeah, I'm not surprised if any of the influencers that help on the retail side will actually start to develop their own influencer avatars within these spaces, right?

Julie Smithson

That's right. Yeah, it's now. It's almost all about who tells the best. Story, right? And if you're. Building a metaverse. It's, you know what's going to keep people in the metaverse, first of all, with your brands and you know what's going to make them. Come there first. Of all, what's going to make them stay there? What's going to make them come back again and even bigger piece and that dives deep into gamification of your experiences and and the possibility of introducing Web 3. Using blockchain to start to tokenize and reward the user for coming back to your brand over and over again. That's how you get. It it's, you know, it's the same thing when we were kids, of course we love playing games. When we won, maybe. We won a prize. Adults are the same thing, and you know we've been gamifying things for a long time now. I mentioned last week in my talk at decoding Tech, you know, that we've been we go to the coffee shop and, you know, we count every time we've gone to the coffee shop, we get them to counter points and we love that because at the end of it, there's a free coffee after you buy so many. And so we have to take that experience now and and put that into an immersive experience where they start to learn about your brand and connect with the brand in the way that they want. It a part of their.

Hessie Jones

OK, so let, let's go back a little bit because there is one question that I I did fail to ask is this new term about the spatial web. So first of all, to find that and then you you mentioned you mentioned about the gamification aspect and and the integration of blockchain. I I'm very interested in understanding that. From the from from this perspective, and how that actually gets built into the experience of a user within this space.

Julie Smithson

Yeah, sure. So let's define the spatial web first, and one of the the biggest misconceptions about this technology is everybody thinks that it's about VR and it's not. It's only just the beginning. It's only one way to deploy experiences. So when you're designing for VR or for an immersive experience. You have to start. With 3D and you need to build spatially and this is where the spatial environment comes into play. If I land in your letter verse, what does it look like in front of me? And behind me and beside me and around me, and in the entire 360 degree environment. And then what can I do in that environment? And retailers, marketers haven't had to, haven't been able to think this way before before it's been come to a web page. Well, what if you go inside your web page? What does that look? So this is the the concept of spatial design and awareness, and that's something as humans were, we're really lacking in that because even though we. Live it every. Day. You know, we live in a 3D World, but we communicate. We've been communicating in. A 2D world. So this is the big game changer. Gaming gamification, as I mentioned, you know when you think about gaming, my first thought would be a video game with, you know, combat and guns and you got to go around and kill people. OK, well, let's take that term out of our brains for a moment, and let's start with. OK. I go into an environment and I. I actually complete three tasks. That allow me to get an award. Award and that reward could be a badge and depending on the the application that you're applying it to. So let's let's use training or let's use all three in training. If I go into a training experience and I'm learning about a blood machine and I go through the process of previewing it and just trying it out. Myself and then being tested on it. The result is a badge well in a company or enterprise you could honor an immutable record of their knowledge by giving them an NFT. Maybe it's for the company, maybe it's the, you know, a tech uncensored NFT, just because you learned. That moving that same concept now into retail, if I go and I do three steps in an immersive branded world to buy a pair of shoes and I go back several times, maybe I can also collect an NFT that's applied from that company or brand itself. And you know that's that's special. We always like to be rewarded. What I could do with that badge. Maybe I can trance, you know, transfer that into a coupon for a next purchase. Maybe you can send out more information about new brands and products because you've connected with that person. So those types of things would be. Connected through the blockchain because you're validating their presence and even when you get into collaboration spaces, I foresee, you know, token gated rooms where you and I can only go into a certain room and only we're allowed in there because I've issued, you know, a poll app or an NFT. And when I say Coop, it's proof of attendance protocol and we issued that token to you and only we are allowed in that space because we're the only ones with the tokens. So I see that as an advancement for secure collaborations moving. That provides security and privacy needed in in future collaborations, as well as to avoid any deep fakes and this is something that we have to be careful of because AI's coming right and it you know how I know it's you, Hesse. Well guess what, you have an NFT attached to. You know token attached to your profile that I've given you. That's how you're going to get into that. So we'll start to see. Blockchain and the web 3 components start to play a huge piece in the the security as well as the validation of knowledge and and you know purchasing amount of time so that you can continue to reward continue to connect.

Hessie Jones

So let's say let's dive a little bit into that. Because everything that you said, there are things that are very important to me. So even from an AI ethics perspective, the things that that haven't been able to be solved today, things about fake news, you know, manipulate. Hacking, being able to identify who's the real person online like those are the things that we've yet to solve in a in a web two environment, but within let's say Web 3. There's this concept of decentralization and you've talked about blockchain. That you talked about validation and that digital ownership, all the but the important thing, I think that's going to upend a lot of things is this less reliance on central authority and systems and systems to control distribution. And communicate things and being able as an individual to own the things that you are and the things that you create. So where are we right now? Obviously, it's probably we're not there yet, but in your in, in your perspective. How much have we progressed from this promise?

Julie Smithson

Sure, I would say we're probably at a pretty. I don't want to. Say I don't want to use the. Term messy, but it's the It's a year of the unknown, right? Everybody's trying to figure things out. So I I don't want to say that it's all clean and things are valid because that's pretty far from the truth. I think there's a lot of people trying to figure out things. I think it takes every one. Of us to. Individually become more self aware about our digital presence. Online, you know, working at Metaverse, we're developing and designing experiences made for the web browser. And when we're dealing with the web browser and not apps, you start to take more inventory about what's on your web browser right now. What do you have running on your device? So I think owning your hardware. Is, is and you're, you know, all the systems that are running will start to deal with a lot more real time communications models of being able to communicate in these different browser links that will open up that. Privacy level that you have to be conscious about the data governance around what we all own personally. Taking inventory of that trying to maintain and learn about different ways of you know of scam, you know of the scamming that's taking place. Those systems that are being put into place, there's people that are working on it. There's groups like the Metaverse standards form trying. To build it. Those protocols you know globally will be called and how we're going to deal with them. I suggest anybody who is that interested join a community of conversation because we're only going to be able to build this with everybody's involvement. You know, I I personally do maintenance on my systems and just make sure that. You know that your hardware is taken care of, but you're. Also a lot more cautious on messages that come into your system and. Yeah, it's a. Personal governance that everybody has to implement into their workflows and. I don't want to say don't trust anything but become more, you know, heightened awareness on on things that are coming at you and what you open and what are you loading on your computer. And you know which links you are opening up and when you send that e-mail you know is it going to the right person andif it ist being copied to other people just the other day, I would receive an e-mail. That I thought was. Valid. And then I looked, and you know, even though it was from somebody. On my team, the E-mail was not, you know in my secure hole, so you know we reported it, but it's getting sneaky, so you just have, you know, you have to be really, you know, look into those. Details and. That's a skill I. Think especially women have is looking into those fine-tuned details.

Hessie Jones

Exactly. But it's getting harder as you say, and people, people who are not used to this, the, you know, the more vulnerable are the ones that end up. You know, losing.

Julie Smithson

I have a. Personal, you know, conversation with my kids and my family that we have actually come up with a private and secure word, a safe word. And if I can share that with every family, I do believe you need to go into the middle of the field without your data. The device for listening and confirm as a family. What is your safe word? You know, we've already heard nightmare stories where parents are being called by an AI of their kid calling for help. And you know, that leads to obviously worry. And figuring out that it's not them. But what if they had a safe word that AI doesn't know. So try and figure that out. Exactly.

Hessie Jones

And any and all unknowing AI or an AI that we create specifically to not know

Julie Smithson

No, that's right, that's. I said they can't hear. Because your technology Is listening and I think that's, you know, that's a big piece. You think it's not, it is we already know it's starting to curate based on her preferences and and you know what? Even right down to our Netflix selections. So assume that your technology is always listening to you at all times.

Hessie Jones

OK, so let's talk about your organization, metaverse, and you're you're evolving and developing a lot of stuff in, in the enterprise space. And your mission is creation for everybody. So can you explain some of the current challenges with metaVrse, how you help to alleviate some of these concerns.

Julie Smithson

Sure. So, our 3D game. Engine has an editor that. Uses low code or JavaScript behind the scenes and it publishes directly to the web. Anybody can jump in and create an account at editor.metaverse.com and meta versus M ETA. ERSE. Dot com and this this editor allows you to collaborate in workspaces with your team, building out spatial environments, and it can be for a training experience on a blood machine. It could be a retail experience selling, you know, clothing design. Or store. Or it could be a. Collaboration space. So we have a couple of products that we've produced out.

Our engine itself and one of them is the mall. It's 100,000,000 square foot virtual mall that's set up ready to go Web 3 experiences and our partner is hedera. So we connected with them. They're an enterprise. Octane. They trade as H bar and. The spaces are set. Up so we can take marketplace transactions from Fiat or regular cash currency as well as HR credits as well. Tokens and we also have newtopia which is our brand new platform. We're launching it this month and it's a collaboration platform. You enter as a just as I was saying before you enter as an avatar and you meet in the space, there's share screen, video, audio, chat, all the things that you have in zoom and now it's inside an immersive experience so. It's really taking meetings to that next level, so that's that's the metaverse. Ecosystem is are. And the mall and and mytopia and it's all powered by the game engine that features Web 3 interoperability.

Hessie Jones

OK, that's awesome. So do you see the metaverse as actually developing or instigating some kind of cultural or societal shift and even from an accessibility standpoint, you know how the way technology is progressing. We do have to account for that. Is this going to be? More of the catalyst to enable a greater adoption or do you think it could be the technology that could risk dividing society even further?

Julie Smithson

No, I actually believe in it as a collaborative solution. I think that it solves a lot. You know, technology solves a lot of problems right now and you know, yeah, there's always going to be a dystopian side. You know, I'm not going to deny that there's there's going to be people who are doing whatever they're doing or craving whatever they're craving. But on the positive note, you know, we can bring people from. Around the world into a collaborative space and you know, you know equivocally, and you know, in a diverse fashion and you. Know the save. On travel, safety, you know, safety. Sometimes in some space. Because there's a lot of upset in the world right now where travel may just not be possible and teams need to get together and it's going to, you know, obviously gravitate right to the the traditional models of zoom and teams and Google meets. But pretty soon they need to interact and they need to, you know, have fun. I had somebody reach out to me the other. Day and said how can we make our meetings? More fun and you know, jumping into your technology, playing a game with your team, this is now possible. And this is, you know, that's the start of a a great collaboration in the community or organization or business of being able to work together and then working towards your purpose. There's a lot of technology that are solving problems and creating conversations of collaboration, and that is that's really powerful and I'm looking forward to, I have a presentation on Thursday. It's called Exo, women unleashed. And I'm going to share the stories of a lot of women who are doing amazing things in. In the world. Using this technology.

Hessie Jones

That's right. OK. So one last question, what's your view on how this space is going to evolve in? The next five years.

Julie Smithson

Yeah, more immersive events. I think more hybrid events. I I foresee. The hybrid model coming into play as companies are starting to order the, you know, back to work and. Three days on, three days, two days off, and that sort of thing. So I think immersive events and collaboration will start to pick up because that's that's shifting us from something we already do with technology and meet in a, you know, a digital space and we're just going. To take that step. You know, I think that more girls, more women, need to be added to the ecosystem, and there's such an amazing place for them as we're going through this, you know, development and transition, women hold some really unique skill sets that lend themselves to fine tune details and producing and. Organizing things and with this massive change of technology. Energy skill sets of women really need to, you know, will lend themselves to Better Business for everyone. I also think compliance, you know, in governance, it's a big discovery time. You know, as AI becomes more involved corporate, you know, businesses need to decide what their data. Lake is like and make sure that it's a clean data lake before you start entering it into an AI process. Yes. So if there's a lot of discovery, I believe that's taking place. The legacy systems of enterprise and business are being disrupted all over the place. There's new jobs, there's new teams, there's new ways of of working together and it's exciting, but it's also. A little unnerving for a lot of different places, but part of this time of growth and transition that we just we need to work together. And I think that's the final message I'll say on that is the collaboration piece is really important. And we're building the plane as we're flying. It we're learning every day there's new technologies every. Week and there's shifts of who. Owns what and how things are done. So it's it. Really does take a collaboration of people to to understand this and lift everybody up at the same time. That's going to be really important that we try not to leave. Anybody behind?

Hessie Jones

Thank you. Well said, well said. That's all we have time for today. Thank you, Julie, so much for joining us. Where could people find you?

Julie Smithson

Sure, you can find me on LinkedIn. XR women, a great group of women. We invite anybody who's women or ally to come learn with us every Wednesday at 11:45 AM Eastern. And we're always in an immersive world. We're celebrating 146 events this week in a row. Three years and. So you can find us there. That's XR Dot com and I look forward to connecting. Thank you so much for having me.

Hessie Jones

No problem. So thank you everyone for joining us today. If you have topics that you want us to cover like the Metaverse, and I think you and I will actually catch up in a year or so to see how how much further this space has evolved. If you have topics like this that you want to cover or anything else, please e-mail us at. Communications@altitudeaccelerator.ca you can also find us at tech uncensored wherever you get your podcast. So until next time everyone have fun and stay safe. And today is Halloween, by the way. So happy Halloween.

Julie Smithson

Happy Halloween everyone.