The Pain of Empty Space, with SpatialFirst Co-Founder Emily Olman

Thanks to the power of computer technology, you can browse the contents of a book you might like to buy online, without ever touching a physical copy of it until it’s already been bought and delivered. Wouldn’t it be neat if you could do that, but with real estate that doesn’t even exist yet? Recent Auggie winner Emily Olman thinks so, and she drops by to tell Alan all about how volumetric capture and photogrammetry will make that possible.

Alan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today’s guest is a great friend of mine, Emily Olman, CEO and co-founder of SpatialFirst, a prop tech startup and creators of PlaceTime, a mobile immersive property visualization application bringing spatial computing to real estate. Prior to this, Emily founded Hopscotch Interactive, a 3D VR marketing service company, to accelerate the adoption of new media and technology for property marketing using reality capture. She spent her career monetizing new media and developing new business models for Frontier Technologies. With a background in media sales, business, and property marketing, she believes that spatial interfaces will unlock properties’ full potential. Emily is a regular speaker on immersive real estate technology, both in the US and abroad. She’s just finished serving as the VR/AR Association’s San Francisco chapter co-president from 2016 to 2019. Yes, she’s got mad skills.

Emily, welcome to the show!

Emily: Hi! Thank you, Alan.

Alan: Thanks so much for joining me. It’s been a long time since we saw each other, I think was at AWE.

Emily: Yeah, it’s been a little bit, but it’s great to be chatting with you.

Alan: Amazing. How’s everything going?

Emily: Well, it’s great. And it’s been busy. And I feel like we are just heading into the most exciting time of the year. Things sometimes have their natural ebb and flow, in the summer months, for instance. But I think as we get towards the end of 2019, I think there’s some really exciting things that are gonna be happening.

Alan: So tell us, tell us what’s been going on with you. You were the co-president of the San Francisco chapter, which is one of the big chapters of the VR/AR Association. And you’ve seen this industry come from nothing to where it is today, and it’s really starting to take off. So maybe just give us kind of a brief history of how you got into this industry, and where you’ve seen it come from?

Emily: That’s a great segue into my perspective on the industry. I was fortunate to be running the San Francisco chapter of the VR/AR Association for a few years with Mike Boland. And we really got to see the industry start to go through many different shifts. But I would definitely also say that we got to where we are today because we really are standing on the shoulders of giants. And so the work that folks have been doing for decades in immersive technologies and virtual reality has really led to what’s enabled me to move from my passion for reality capture into creating a new interface and to be involved with very emerging technologies such as spatial computing. What’s kept me busy is having a startup. We started this company, SpatialFirst, about two years ago and have been working hard ever since to really make something unique that addresses the future of spatial computing for real estate.

Alan: So when you say spatial computing for real estate. Walk us through what that means and why it’s important.

Emily: As we know, when we are looking at spatial computing, this notion of we know exactly where a digital piece of content or a digital element is in the real world. There’s this notion of being able to connect the physical and the digital space. Whether that means that the whole world is mapped to it as X, Y, Z coordinates. And we agree upon what that map will look like. And therefore, we can access and engage with content in a new way, with either a wearable device or with a mobile device initially. That’s sort of the premise for what we’re building, which is that, OK, content is going to be organized in a different way. It’s going to be organized spatially. And one of the best ways that we can engage with content spatially is when we are thinking about it in relationship to the place that we are. So whether that’s your home, whether it’s your office, whether it’s you at an airport, wherever you are, organizing content spatially really means that you’re going to be able to access that based on where you are. So we have come at it from this approach of what– we have the tools — with augmented reality — to view the information and to get content onto a mobile device, or onto a wearable. But what is the interface for that? What does that look like? How does it actually come together so that we can use it and it can be part of our everyday experience?

Alan: Have you read the book The Age of Smart Information?

Emily: No, I haven’t. Is that a knowledge gap? [laughs]

Alan: Oh my god.

Emily: Sorry.

Alan: So in the book– I was very lucky to have the author on the show earlier today. And the book’s called The Age of Smart Information: How Artificial Intelligence and Spatial Computing Will Transform the Way We Communicate Forever.

Emily: Uh-huh.

Alan: And I mean, it’s a must read for anybody in this industry. It’s by Mike Pell and he works with the Microsoft Garage. They’re constantly inventing new stuff. And to listen to you talk about how we’re going to have spatial computing for real estate, and be able to see properties that don’t exist, and to also be able to work within those parameters. It’s simply amazing.

Emily: I’ll definitely check out that book. What brought me to this early on was my interest in reality capture because I started doing 3D scanning, using the Matterport technology, which is– for those of you who don’t know, it’s a camera that uses lenses, but then also has infrared scanning, which enables it to sort of create — with a point cloud — a 3D model of a space. But then we can use that actually as sort of this initial, if you will, like a digital twin of a property, of a place that’s already been built. That potential for 3D scanning, for creating new maps and new understanding of spaces, and to be able to use that for virtual reality going in and out of spaces where you would otherwise not be able to travel to really became a passion of mine. And then I began to explore all of the other ways that people are doing this, whether they use photogrammetry, other types of laser scanning. I was very, very fascinated by what we could do once we had a digital twin.

Alan: So what *can* we do with it?

Emily: So one of the things that frustrated me in the beginning about using this technology just to sort of scan one place — like a house, for instance — was that “OK, well, I’ve got this home and that’s awesome. And I love my 3D model.” And you can go on to anything from Sketchfab to millions of Matterport models or other types of photogrammetry. And you can see like they’re these amazing 3D objects. But what was so challenging for me was like, wait, but I want to understand it in the context of its location. I want to know what does this have to do with the property in the surroundings? It’s almost like when you’re a VR enthusiast, you know, you kind of think of the possibilities of like, “Well, what if this were part of a bigger world, or what if I could add content to this, or I could interact with it?” And those are the things that really began to take shape for me as the real opportunity, because obviously as like one of the largest asset classes, real estate has a tremendous amount of value. But it also has been slow to adopt new technology. And so when I came at this from the perspective of digital twin creating a 3D experience, and that’s where I came in touch with my co-founders of SpatialFirst, because we all really saw this as an opportunity for enterprise, to not only create storytelling, but also to index and to understand content within the context of where it’s located. I hope that makes sense. [laughs]

Alan: Yeah. I mean, if you’re going to build a building in downtown Berlin, it’s going to be a little different than downtown San Francisco.

Emily: Yes, that’s exactly right.

Alan: The interactions between people and those buildings are gonna be different as well.

Emily: Yeah. And think about the thing that we want to always be able to do is to enable decision making. And I love this sort of going back to more like a sales metaphor. It’s like enabling distance selling. And that’s one of those things that was always sort of the thing we always wanted to be able to do, it’s like the promise of Amazon is like we’ll sell something that nobody has to touch. Like, they don’t have to touch a book to know that they want to buy the book, right? And so how do we learn from some of these other types of experiences and purchases and decision making? Can we do that with property? Can we do that with the real world? Can we apply those kinds of things to property marketing and then — eventually — to property management? Those are some of the things that really have gotten us excited as we’ve gone on this journey.

Alan: So who’s your typical customer? If you’re out there promoting SpatialFirst, who is the first customer for SpatialFirst?

Emily: So SpatialFirst has an app that we have in private beta now on iOS and it’s called PlaceTime. Our first customer is a large global asset manager. They have about 40 billion in assets under management and they’re testing this out with one of their marquee properties in Oakland, California. The use case that we’re going after is class A commercial office space to support a broker, also to support a landlord and to support a tenant in the leasing process. It’s very niche and it’s very specific to commercial real estate. But again, it’s sort of like the tip of the spear for us. We’re trying to really deeply understand the things that we can do to enable and to shorten the time that it takes for properties to be leased.

Alan: All right. So walk me through what that looks like from the standpoint of the customer and then the end user.

Emily: From the standpoint of the customer: if the customer is a broke, the broker is inevitably going to be trying to lease some commercial office space. And commercial office space is interesting because most of the time, if it’s brand new and it’s very slick and it’s been redone and it’s like perfect, then there’s not much necessarily that we can add to it, except for the virtual staging and then the content describing everything about the place. That’s great. But we’ve really seen that the user that is getting a lot of value out of this is somebody who has a space that maybe isn’t finished yet, is what they call shell and core. So it hasn’t had a full fit-out yet, a full tenant fit-out. And so people have a very difficult time visualizing things. And so we say this all the time. We say, well, “empty space is painful.” We use this metaphor of pain because it’s like for the broker, they just want to transact and close that space as quickly as possible and to get a tenant in there and to lease it up. But the tenant is having a hard time visualizing what it’s going to look like. With the PlaceTime application we can take a hypothetical 3D model, put that into our app, put that into a 3D map of the world, and then we can both remotely and in situ tour them of what the space will become and what it will look like.

Alan: So is this using tablets, or headsets, or VR, or…?

Emily: This is tablet. So this is best experienced right now on an iPad and then eventually also iPhone. But we’re initially supporting the iPad use case. It’s a bigger screen. It’s still something that most brokers already have and are able to tour with and are able to show. And and it’s really just sort of puts all of that property information into your pocket and gives you access, as the broker, to all of those different apps and all the information that you need to get while you’re on tour. We talked to and interviewed dozens of brokers as we were building this. And one of the things that they all complained about was like, OK, number one, it’s fiercely competitive. So they always want to have an advantage over their competition. Number two, there’s just so much information that they have to stay on top of about each property. And remember, they’re touring like three to five properties a day. That means that they’re just always on the go and they’re always reaching for like, where’s the floor plan? Where’s all the information? And it’s just spread out across a Dropbox and email and you name it. And time is money. We’re trying to make that communication much, much better.

Alan: So are you overlaying the architectural renderings of a proposed finished — let’s say it’s a lobby, for example — here’s a proposed finished lobby. You hold up your iPad and I’m able to wave it around and see what the finished reception area would look like.

Emily: Yes, absolutely. So–

Alan: Is it locked to the real world?

Emily: It’s not locked to the real world. It can be calibrated. So we have created– currently in the app, we have a sort of a in between phase on the tech roadmap where we’re able to do a calibration that lines it up to the real world. But we don’t have the re-localization — which you’re talking about — just yet. But we’re definitely researching that and we want to get that in there. And we think that it’s going to take probably a few different integrations for different use cases to get that re-localization piece in there. But a lot of that tech we talk about, it is still coming out of the lab, so we will be among the first to use it, but we don’t have it in there yet.

Alan: I mean, we’re still early days for this technology. So you’re rolling this out. How are you importing the design files? Is it from CAD? Is it from BIM? Do you have a converter? How are people getting their renderings into it, so that they can use this?

Emily: We are basically agnostic to whatever types of files people have. And so they send it to us and then we are able to convert it into the 3D model, from whether it’s a 2D schematic, or if they have the 3D they can send it to us as well. Ultimately, it has to get into a glTF file, which is a file format that most architects and most folks aren’t so used to. But it’s really optimized for us and what we’re building in. But yeah, we’re getting those files ultimately into glTF.

Alan: But you’re able to take that in from CAD or BIM or anything?

Emily: Uh-huh. Exactly.

Alan: Amazing. Amazing. So did you guys have to build that infrastructure to do that?

Emily: No, we didn’t build the infrastructure to do that. We’re working with partners to do that. But it’s certainly something that we think that these processes are going to just get infinitely easier as we progress. As the number of assets that we’ve worked with increases, we’re going to be able to solve for all of those things. And then again, it’s not just that’s for the hypothetical stuff and for stuff that has not been built yet. When you’re talking about reality capture, when you’re talking about showing something that already exists, that’s another area that I’ve spent a lot of time working on, 3D scanning and capture. We mostly use the Matterport scans for that, but again, I’m very excited by photogrammetry. So for instance, doing very large outdoor modelling of large spaces outdoors. It’s certainly not limited to interiors, and that’s really the idea. I mean, when I met my co-founder Bart Denny, he’d been working at a company called World3D and that was literally the genesis of our building SpatialFirst and then meeting our third co-founder, Joe Boyle was like, “OK, we want to put the interior maps in the exterior maps together.” So in whatever way we can do that to be agnostic, yes, we’d like to be able to accept everything, but certainly we do have preferred workflow.

Alan: So you’ve built this platform. Who is your ideal customer? You’ve talked about class A commercial office space is your first. What’s the five year roadmap and the ideal customers? Because at the end of the day, this podcast is literally about driving value for those customers. And so how can we get this tool, this PlaceTime into the hands of as many brokers and dealers as possible so that they can leverage this? Because it sounds like it gives them a distinctive advantage.

Emily: Yeah, I mean, five years out, we hope that it’ll be used far beyond the real estate use case. But I think initially anybody who has a portfolio of properties and needs to communicate better between other stakeholders. So one of the things that we have used as a way to describe this to people, it’s sort of a military term is to say, well, you need to have your common operating picture. Which is something you can pull up, like you would if you were a military general, you pull up your common operating picture. And you have this sort of overview of everything that you need to think about in a certain physical location. We have built that with the PlaceTime application. So if you have multiple properties in your portfolio, it could be everything from industrial properties, at some point it could be residential. Although I have opinions about why that would be easy and also hard. It could be used for retail or malls or a lot of other use cases. But for the thing that is unique about commercial real estate is that there’s this thing about these buildings right now, right? So we have IoT that is coming into a lot of discussions and people are saying, “Well, we’re going to have smart buildings.”

And I think the counter argument to that is like, “Well, you have connected buildings, you have buildings that have a lot of connectivity in them.” But the potential of what you can do if you had an actual interface to get at, for instance, if you wanted to share with somebody, a new employee. Well, here’s where everything is on your floor, here’s your special guide to working in this space. Or for the delivery person, here’s how you enter into the space, here’s the loading dock, here’s the map, here’s the information. We really want to enable landlords to be able to have this best map of their property. That’s where we really are putting a lot of our focus right now is thinking of these use cases because we know that leasing is just sort of the beginning or even development, then followed by leasing and sales. But then the people that work and live in those properties can also benefit from having this spatial map — or what we like to call spatial utility — of the property. Basically meaning anybody who comes in and is engaging with that property or visits that property will have the best map, depending on who they are and what they need to do while they’re there.

Alan: Personalized information.

Emily: Personalized information and secure information. I think that’s another thing that’s really important for us. You know, we really feel like we’ve seen a lot of this dark side to data and privacy and we feel like that the landlord really should have this ability to control who gets information within their property. It’s their property. So I would say that that’s my personal philosophy as well as in terms of like the residential sphere and wanting to be able to give those tools to people so that they feel like they have control.

Alan: When you look at these technologies as a whole, what is your long term vision for how these technologies are going to impact us? I’m looking at your video here of of SpatialFirst, and it’s really mind-blowing, the amount of information that you can provide to somebody just looking at a property. But it’s early days. People haven’t adopted it. Now, do you think this technology is going to be adopted quickly or what do you think is gonna be the driver of adoption? What we’ve seen in other industries is that once one company does it, sees amazing results, then everybody starts to jump on board. Is that what you’re expecting from your side of things?

Emily: I think that as an early stage startup, the best thing that could happen for us is to have highly visible use cases where we’re able to show things in a market where we have high vacancy rates. So anytime you get vacancy in any kind of downtown or city above, let’s say 7 percent, up to 12 percent, even higher. That’s where it’s very difficult for these brokers to differentiate and for properties to differentiate themselves. Now, if in five years time, you know and you can trust a building that has been enabled by SpatialFirst, that allows you to have some sense of expectation of, “well, this property will– this property does this, which all these other properties don’t do.” I think that as a brand, I think that as an experience, the long term vision is to say, “this is a better way to organize our information. This is a better way to communicate with people.” We would like to see that become something that is used widely. The speed at which it will be taken up, it just sort of depends on how quickly we can get from the pilot phase into greater deployment. So deploying deeper into somebody’s portfolio and the benefit of working with commercial real estate is like, well, there’s a lot of consolidation. There’s thousands of landlords, but there’s quite a few that own the majority of commercial properties. And so being able to have partnerships with those companies will enable us to do that faster.

Alan: Interesting that you say that, because I was just listening– or watching a video by Mike Boland from ARtillery, he’s one of the mentors for XR Ignite. And the whole interview was about escaping pilot purgatory.

Emily: It is purgatory. It really is. But it’s great. I think as a early stage company, to have the trust and the access to a property, these are hundreds of thousands of square feet, they’re millions of dollars in revenue every year, they’re worth millions. I just think that we don’t want to take that for granted. But we also need to move quickly out of the pilot stage into the next phase. That’s when we get to do the exciting stuff, like really get the deep learning on KPIs and ROI and all the things that’ll help people make those buying decisions, right?

Alan: That “Roy” guy. He always gets in the way.

Emily: [laughs] “That Roy guy.” I know. What’s his deal?

Alan: He’s everywhere. Everybody keeps asking about this Roy guy. I’m like, “I don’t know any Roy.”

Emily: Yeah, I know, I know.

Alan: We have to focus on the ROI, because it really– when we started in this technology — and you know it as well as I do — you’d pitch a company and they’d say, “Who’s done it, how much does it cost, and what was the results?” And you’re like, “Nobody, a lot, and we have no idea.”

Emily: Yeah, I think actually it’s funny, because my– it’s not– for me, it’s like not getting out of the not just the pilot phase, but also the studio mentality. I think that’s important. Studios are incredible places, there’re very talented people that work at studios. But if we ever want to see XR scale, we have to build scalable businesses around XR. So that means products that are scalable, that means services that feed into platforms that are scalable, that means a business ecosystem that will enable others to benefit from it. So we have to elevate the game, you know what I mean? And that’s where enterprise has always been the thing for me, where I’ve said, “Look, there’s a lot at stake because they have the most to gain, but they have the most to lose if they don’t get started.” I mean, I so value all these companies that — and we saw a lot of them over the last few years — jump into the game and we need more of that. We need those leaps of faith by companies to try this and to work with us, because I think that the industry needs to move away from the one-offs and to move into real scalability.

Alan: I couldn’t agree more. Building something once for a company, not only is it prohibitive in the long run, but it just becomes ridiculously expensive because every time you build something, you’re building from scratch. And it’s part of the reason why we started XR Ignite, was to leverage these platforms and products. But also the content developers and content studios and individual developers who’re making great technology, maybe they’re making great content, but they don’t have a way to leverage it and sell it to more than one customer.

Emily: Yeah.

Alan: Let’s say, for example, you make training and– in your example, you make a real estate training simulator, where here’s a bunch of different buildings, you got to look at the different features or identify the different features, something like that. Well, just because you made it for one company, it’s probably valuable to all of the companies in that field. And by making it available to everybody, it decreases the costs for everybody, first of all, the first person up front has to pay for it, and really accelerates the technology for the whole industry. And one of the things that we thought of with XR Ignite was, how do we then make a marketplace for not only the platforms and products, but also the content? Because once the content’s made, once you make a warehouse, for example, in a warehouse for training, a warehouse is a warehouse. How big do you want the warehouse, whatever you want, you can just scale it. But once it’s designed, you can scale it infinitely for multiple customers. And if you look at a lot of the XR studios out there, they’ve got a real estate thing, and then they’ve got a retail thing, and then they’ve got a training thing. And it’s like– and we’re guilty of it as well. We’ve done a bit of everything in the market to kind of understand it. And I think that’s where the industry was. And I think where we’re going now is, “OK, I built this one thing. Let’s try to sell it 100 times.”

Emily: That’s right. And go with your winners. That’s the thing is, like all of those learnings are crucial. And we were at a moment in time over the last few years, continuously at a moment in time. [laughs] Which is ironic as we discuss reality. You know, it’s like the thing is that those experiences that were created, maybe they weren’t something that we could resell, but we learned a ton from them. And the studios, I think that what I heard from clients over the last several months is sort of this notion of like, “Well, it’s really expensive.” And if you get into building things for folks that cost the order of magnitude of like hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, you know, that’s like early days VR, right? Where it’s millions of dollars to do VR. And now we’ve seen the prices come down on the hardware. And so since we know that software is scalable, I think we’re at the right time to build those scalable experiences. And so I get very excited about creating something that a lot of people can plug into and that they can use. And so the marketplace, I think, is the right way to frame it, because there’s infinite business out there. But folks just don’t know how to engage. And I don’t think that the creators are, for instance, able to get those inroads because they’re all trying to do it independently. They’re all trying to sell in independently. So you need to kind of also like get a bit of a movement going from these creators to be able to sell what they’ve got.

Alan: So I’m going to insert a commercial here for XR Ignite. [music] If you’re a creator, developer, or a studio, or product developer in AR, VR, or AI, go to XRignite.com, sign up for the community hub, and that’s exactly what we’re doing, is bringing everybody together so that we can all work as a unified front to help push this technology forward.

End commercial. [music ends abruptly]

Emily: [laughs]

Alan: I mean, it just kind of lends itself so perfectly. You’re like, “We need this.” I’m like, “Yes, we do.”

Emily: It’s true, we do need that. And it’s hard, because I see things that I think are really going to help people. And I want them to do that. I think that we’ve gotten a little bit– we had this feeling of like an XR/VR winter couple years ago. And I feel like we’re really out of that. And it– was it you? I feel like– I don’t know if it was you, but somebody said the other day, it’s like, “Well, the tourists are gone.” You know, that was the good thing about having a little bit of contraction in VR. And I liked that. I was like, “Oh, good! That’s great!” That means that the folks that are in it now, they’ve gone through these learnings. And it’s not their first rodeo. And we’re really going to get some great stuff happening. And it’s been two years now since ARKit and ARCore came out. And I think it takes about 18 to 24 months to see these amazing applications really come to market. So that’s why when I at started at the beginning of this talk, I said, “Well, gosh, I really think that 2019 still has a lot in store.” And so I’m bullish on what we’re going to see over the next few months, not just entry– not entry level. I don’t want to diminish the efforts. I just want to see– and I think we’re going to see some more sophisticated things coming to market.

Alan: I agree. I think it’s– we’ve gotten past the phase of kitschy stuff and now we’re into real ROI driven solutions. And I think that’s exciting. That’s not to say that there aren’t more kitschy and cool things coming because with Facebook, SparkAR and Snapchat’s Lens Studio, I think there’s going to be a lot more individuals that are going to be creating awesome stuff.

Emily: Yeah.

Alan: YouTube just introduced, this week, their lipstick try-on and or their virtual try-on within the YouTube app. This is coming, and by opening it up to creators of all shapes and sizes, it’s democratizing the creation of the content, which is really exciting. A year ago, if somebody had said, “Hey, we want a face filter for trying on sunglasses,” it would have been $50,000, minimum. And now you could do it on SparkAR for nothing.

Emily: Yeah.

Alan: That’s really pushing things forward. It’s exciting.

Emily: Yeah. And along those same lines, I think that the cost of capturing reality is going to also start to come down significantly, because we’re going to have these amazing depth sensing technologies in our– we have them already, but have these depth sensing technologies on our mobile devices. So I think about.

Alan: Like Tango? We had it five years ago.

Emily: We had that five years ago. And I still love my Phab 2. I mean, there’s things that, it’s like– [laughs]

Alan: I’ll buy it off you, I’ve been looking for one.

Emily: Oh my gosh! OK, alright, we’ll make a deal.

Alan: It’s either by the Phab 2 or just by the new Samsung S10.

Emily: Uh, no– oh, yeah!

Alan: Samsung Note has infrared camera on it.

Emily: I think you were posting about that. I have to check that out. I haven’t seen it yet, but that– but wasn’t it like– you’re not– you were like, “I’m not sponsored by them! But I love this!”

Alan: It looked so good. Oh, man. Yeah, I would buy that phone. Honestly, it’s a thousand dollar phone. I think being able to do depth sensing and then capturing like you talked about capturing reality. Well, imagine you’re a small retailer on Amazon and Amazon moves to 3D. How do you get all your products into 3D? Well, the new Samsung phone, you literally just kind of walk around the product and it turns it into a 3D model for you.

Emily: That’s right. And again, I feel like it’s a lot like, people say, “Well, photography is totally commoditized and all these things are commoditized.” But I don’t think so. I think that there’s so many infinite numbers of new skills, and just having the understanding of how those things work, that this is going to open up a lot of opportunity for people to be part of the creation and to be part of — like you said — democratizing how things are made. And when we talk about how do we get people to understand the value or have for them to see what is the value of 3D, what is the value of spatial computing? It’s a little bit like virtual reality. It’s like you can tell them about it as much as you want, but until they’ve experienced it, I just don’t think that they get it. So that’s why I’ve spent a lot more time recently going out into my vertical, going out and meeting with people that are not the regular XR folks, although I love that community deeply and and I’m very committed to it. I feel like it’s almost like it’s really my job to educate people and to share with them what this is, because when they see it, they get. And that’s really, truly the magic.

Alan: It’s so true. It’s one of those “you have to see it to believe it.”

Emily: Absolutely.

Alan: Well, on that note, I’m going to ask you one last question here. What problem in the world do you want to see solved using XR technologies?

Emily: So there’s so many problems that we can solve using XR technologies. I hope that when we look at our lives in five years, that we feel like we have a better relationship with technology, rather than one that is perhaps a little bit more skeptical these days due to security and due to privacy concerns. And I hope that XR and all of these XR technologies can be the thing that actually makes us feel like we’re more in control and that we’re more able to have the relationship to technology that we want. I’m hoping that we become a positive influence in the world.

Alan: Well, thank you, Emily, for your positive outlook in this beautiful technology. And thank you for pushing forward.

Emily: Yeah. And also XR Ignite, really excited about that. And so excited for what you’re doing, Alan. Thank you for all the hard work that you do.

Alan: I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So if you want to learn more about Emily and SpatialFirst, you can visit spatialfirst.com. And yeah. Thank you so much, Emily. I’m looking forward to seeing you in person again.

Sound effects sourced from here and here.