A few months back, I had coffee with Mari Kim Novak, who was about to start as president of Advertising Week, the annual celebration of the advertising indstry that happens in NYC. She wanted to create a new experience for Advertising Week, something that focused on the emerging technologies everyone's talking about, like VR, AR, AI, voice and others. Having taken my tours at CES several times, she also wanted something that would be curated and, just as importantly, contextualized so that attendees would understand why we were talking about these technologies, not just what they are. As Mari Kim explained in an interview with AdWeek:
To showcase what some startups around the U.S. are doing, Novak said the conference has created a “playground,” called TechX, “for our industry partners and attendees to come and be introduced to these technologies, to feel them and try them—not to be in a trade show environment where they get pitched and sold to.”Included in this year’s selection is Vntana, which creates interactive holograms for brands like Lexus. There’s also Envrmnt, an AR/VR/360 video startup that’s that’s working to compress files to make it easier to stream and download data-heavy experiences. On the AI front, there’s IV.AI, a startup that’s working on everything from chatbots to other uses of AI.
Lance Pillersdorf, co-founder and COO of Advertising Week, had this to say about TechX:
There is a knowledge gap within our industry between those creating the next generation of technology and the executives challenged to utilize it for their clients. We wanted to address this by carefully curating an experience that allows us to provide attendees an unbiased evaluation and contextual understanding of the power of these innovations. Technology is continuing to shape our industry and TechX is our way of giving Advertising Week Delegates a one-of-a-kind experience within an already packed thought leadership program.
I worked with my network of friends and creative technologists, including my Elias Constantopedos, to begin finding the best companies out there. I also enlisted Fred Schonenberg, Allie Feinstein and the team at VentureFuel to help source additional interesting companies from their network as well. And out of all of that effort, AW TechX 2017 was born!
We received a great deal of positive feedback, including:
Chris Pfaff, who helped bring both envrmnt and Valossa to the event, also gave us a great review, saying:
The Advertising Week New York 2017 TechX experience in Times Square, in a pop-up space between H&M and the NASDAQ MarketSite, curated some of the hippest tech for the ad world, from September 25-28. From digital art projects to AR apps to VR tools and holographic displays, the TechX arena offered a wide palette of commercially available experiences for attendees – creatives and media buyers – to play with and understand.The value of TechX cannot be understated: TechX was groundbreaking in its depth, bringing start-up companies in the immersive and AI worlds into a forum for major brand conversations on the state of the ad industry...TechX was a rare opportunity to glimpse some of the more inventive ways to deliver and measure ads – and no PowerPoint involved.
If you didn't get a chance to visit the TechX space or if you did and are looking for additional information about what happened during the week, there are several ways to learn more about the companies involved:
I also love what Baaria Chaudhary and Marjorie Wang did with Pawn VR at #AWTechX #AWNewYork. They 3D scanned attendees to turn them into chess pieces in a new, immersive chess game experience. What makes it even cooler is that the entire experience was created live during Advertising Week. Thrilled to have them participate!
In addition, I also used TechX to launch my new consultancy, the Experiential Advertising Group. EAG is a consortium of companies that builds strategic immersive experiences from innovation labs to Experiential Advertising programs using the latest in emerging tech including AR, VR, Robotics and Sonic Haptics, and others. We're already working on a number of projects and ready to help companies create a wide variety of experiences. Please reach out if we can help in any way.
Some pictures from TechX 2017
But I've had many conversations about why VR in particular isn't where we thought it would be and why there still isn't great content for the most part. Many friends are asking me what's holding up creating better VR experiences. We hear content makers talk about the technology not being up to par and the tech people complain they don't have great content to show. As I wrote about here, I do feel that we focus too often on the limitations and not on the possibilities of the technology and that's not helping us to move forward at all.
I also hear and read about the need to create the killer app for VR/AR and I think that's also hurting us as we try to build a new industry. The truth is that there will be many killer apps, not a single one. I think we should focus on creating killer content instead, to help drive the change and show people the real capabilities of the technology. How do we make these killer experiences?
Jacki Morie RemniSCENT™
Do more with spatial sound. Lots of really great work being done in 3D spatial sound and more needs to be done. Charlie Morrow has been doing awesome spatial sound for years and knows how to create soundscapes that are truly amazing. I was just introduced to DearVR, another company bring spatial sound to VR environments. Of course, we're waiting for a head mount with excellent built in headphones...
ExtremeTech has a good overview of tactile feedback suits that are being developed and while I think they will be used a great deal for commercial applications (training, etc.) and some gaming, I don't think people will be using them for every day VR use for quite some time. But it's still important for developers to play with haptics and see what they can do. But, there are simple ways to bring that sense of touch into the experiences as well. I love that The Walk experience had you actually walk on a wire. Have people stand in a sandbox if you're doing an experience by the beach. If I'm walking through a forest, have branches brush against me. As I say below, set the environment!
Tesla Suit
For example, I love what Diesel did in their Only the Brave experience for heights. The more you engage the whole body, the more you increase the reality of the experience. When we did the Cutty Sark Virtual Voyage, you actually stood on the deck of a ship and that floor was on springs. That little motion enhanced the experience of being on a boat.
So often we walk into a brightly lit room, with no cues at all to enhance the experience. There's nothing there to set the mood of the experience or at least break us from the reality of being in a plain space. Make it a set and see the difference in the experience.
VR Scout
Think cycle time. This point is specifically for location based entertainment and promotional efforts. After doing tens of thousands of events and watching many, many people waiting in line, I can tell you that you need to complete a story arc in no more than about 7 minutes total. It's very hard for guests not familiar with either video games or VR to step into an experience and then wander around trying to figure out what to do. They need to have a story that's easy to understand and navigate. The need to feel like they completed something or they will walk away frustrated with the technology. Back at the CyberEvent Group, we looked at a 5 minute cycle time to get the throughput at about 12 people per HMD per hour. This was done for two reasons:
I'll be at the Tribeca Film Festival Virtual Arcade later this week and I'm hoping that I'll see some experiences that go beyond what I've been seeing so far. I've heard great feedback already, so I am looking forward to it.
And as I get some of the old VR band together, I'm planning on exploring all of these as well and hopefully I'll be part of a new team building some killer experiences.
Like this post, check out all my my VR/AR posts here.
Have to say that I had lots of fun playing with them and judging by the number of people I ran into also playing the game, it seemed to be very popular. It was a great way to introduce people to both AR and some new artwork, so I thought it worked on both fronts. Lastly, it was also a great way to get people to walk around Ridgewood and maybe find some stores that they didn't know beforehand.
The WallaMe app was easy to download and was pretty easy to understand. I had some confusion with the WallaMe app and still don't know where pictures that I favorited went, but that could just be me. All in all, a fun experience that really helped people understand what AR is and how it can be used.
If you had a chance to attend our session during SXSW 17, you got to hear us talk about what VR was like back in the 90's, as well as some of the lessons learned from those days that we can be using today. We'll actually have a video of the full presentation available in a few weeks and I'll post it here when it's ready.
You also got see to Jacki Morie give a great overview of some of the artist work that was being done back then. She's put them together in the Powerpoint that you can download below, complete with links and additional information.
We had many great conversations after the session, further exploring how that early work in VR can impact where the industry is going today. We talked about the need to create experiences that engage all of our senses; that there should be fun and playfulness and that we should stop looking at the limitations. And, we all agreed that if your VR experience is giving people motion sickness, it's probably your fault.
All four of us will be continuing this exploration and discussion, so check back here and connect with all of us as we continue to use the lessons learned from the first VR boom to make this one as successful as it can be.
Panelists:
Download VR Learning from the Past
