Jennifer Quinn: Hello, everybody, welcome to the JennyQ Show. I am so excited to be here. I am in the studios of 360 Immersive. I am with David Cleverdon, he is a partner and owner of 360 Immersive, and we’re going to geek out today.
David Cleverdon: Yes, we are.
Jennifer Quinn: We are totally going to geek out, and I’m so excited that you’re here to join us and to watch, and I want your questions, I want to know what is interesting to you. So, go ahead and leave a comment so that I can see that you’re watching. Dave, is this your first time being live on Facebook?
David Cleverdon: No, actually we have a tendency to livestream a lot, we believe in livestream, it’s something that is, for our organization and actually clients we serve, it’s a huge value.
Jennifer Quinn: Yes, well, yes, yes, I mean, we’re talking the same language there. I can’t wait to dig into your specialty like I love to geek out about all things technology, and I especially love doing it with people who know a lot more than I do, which would be you. So, I’m excited to have you here. So, those of you who are watching, leave a comment. I can see you’re here, but I can’t give you a shout-out until you leave a comment, so I do want to say hello to Rob. He said, what happened to the green screen. He watched the preview where we actually saw the green screen.
David Cleverdon: Yes.
Jennifer Quinn: But now what happened to the green screen?
David Cleverdon: Well, the reason you have a green screen is we can put in the JennyQ logo behind, it’s called branding.
Jennifer Quinn: Yes, so there it is. I think he knew, I think he was teasing us, and so Leanne Simmons is here, thank you. Leanne says we’re cutting out, and so we’ll just let Tom know that, and see what he can do about that, and Paige is here, welcome. So, let’s go ahead and jump in, David. You and I met several months ago at Idaho Virtual Reality Council, the kickoff, the founders –
David Cleverdon: That’s right –
Jennifer Quinn: – kickoff. It was a very intimate group, very cool, and I remember our first conversation, and I can’t wait to hear more about what you do at 360 Immersive. In fact, what is the name, how did you get the name?
David Cleverdon: Well, we’re actually a 16-year-old marketing company, and about two and a half years ago, we had been kind of tracking virtual reality, and when Oculus Rift was purchased by Facebook for $2.1 billion –
Jennifer Quinn: Yeah –
David Cleverdon: –when Sony, when IBM, when Google, when all of the big players started to invest in this thing called virtual reality. Now, virtual reality has been around for a long time, it’s been used in aviation, in medical, in the military, but it’s been hugely expensive. It’s something that they recognize the value of training, but you couldn’t go out, and buy maybe a $35.00 goggle, and pair it with your smartphone and suddenly you have a way of experiencing virtual reality, but today in 2017, and two and a half years in the past, we do. So, what is virtual reality? Most people –
Jennifer Quinn: Yeah, what it is because we hear it thrown around a lot, VR, virtual reality, and then there’s AR, augmented reality, and then just before we started you told me there’s mixed reality –
David Cleverdon: Mixed reality –
Jennifer Quinn: – alright, so give us the breakdown on those.
David Cleverdon: So, if you think about it, when we watch any type of media, we watch a YouTube feed or Facebook feed on our phone, we’re at home in the evening and we’re watching reruns of Friends or we’re watching any other television show, it’s a passive experience. It’s an experience where we’re literally just watching. Well, virtual reality or augmented reality is an immersive technology. It connects you. You’re in the middle of that experience, you’re interacting with that experience, and that’s a whole new way of, for instance, marketing, training, entertainment, and gaming. All of that is not only in the existence for today, but it holds huge promise for the future.
So, if you think about it, wouldn’t you rather be in the middle of a wonderful romantic comedy –
Jennifer Quinn: Yes –
David Cleverdon: – or maybe it’s a game or in our world, it’s first responder training, so we’re training law enforcement, we’re training medical, we’re training EMS, and we can put them in the middle of a simulation, where in the past the only way they could take that kind of training is running a simulation that’s fairly expensive to do. They’ll drive a tanker truck out on the freeway and they’ll do hazmat training. Now, we can flip that tanker truck over. We can have it leaking noxious fluids and fumes and vapors, and potentially –
Jennifer Quinn: Wow –
David Cleverdon: – hazardous, and they can train on that simulation over and over and over again.
Jennifer Quinn: Phenomenal.
David Cleverdon: And feel like they’re in the middle of it.
Jennifer Quinn: Phenomenal, so that when the real emergency happens, they’ve been trained –
David Cleverdon: That’s right –
Jennifer Quinn: – from anywhere literally in the world.
David Cleverdon: That’s right, so the fundamental question is: What is the difference between virtual reality, and what virtual reality does is it replaces your sense of your own reality. I’m looking at this studio and suddenly I put the goggle on, and I can be teleported, for a better word, into that world where we have that tanker truck that’s flipped over, or in the case of augmented reality, I can layer over 3D graphics into my world here and I can interface, and the biggest thing with augmented reality is it will replace the paradigm that we’ve been working with for the last 30 years of a display on our business computer, a keyboard and a mouse.
Well, imagine just having a little device, and suddenly I can put my calendar up over here. I can put my word doc over here. I can put maybe a YouTube video down here, and I can have some of my email clients sitting over here, and as I move around the room, they’re tied or pegged to those places I put them, and if I want to move it, I move it up on the wall over here, I put it over here. Augmented reality holds the promise of revolutionizing the business paradigm that we’ve all worked with.
Jennifer Quinn: Wow.
David Cleverdon: How we’ve interfaced with our computers.
Jennifer Quinn: Wow, that’s amazing, I definitely want to come back to that. Let me give a few more shout-outs here to people who are watching.
David Cleverdon: Yeah.
Jennifer Quinn: Mitch Jackson is here, he is watching from Southern California. Welcome, Mitch. David Beasley is here and hi David. I think David’s watching from Boise. Rob Goalie just said Oculus just lowered their price to 399.
David Cleverdon: That’s right.
Jennifer Quinn: Yeah.
David Cleverdon: That is right.
Jennifer Quinn: So –
David Cleverdon: Short time only, so if you want a Rift, go for it.
Jennifer Quinn: Okay, perfect, and I’m over here going, what does that mean, what is Oculus, what did they lower the price on?
David Cleverdon: Well, the Rift when it first came out was approximately a $800.00 buy, and we have a couple of them. We have the initial developer’s unit and then we, of course, have a consumer version, but they’ve steadily brought the price point down, which you expect with consumer electronics because if you can build something for the masses, you can sell a bunch of them. How many Lamborghinis do people sell versus how many Chevrolets?
Jennifer Quinn: Sure, makes sense, makes perfect sense. So, you’ve worked with lots of different industries in the realm of virtual reality and augmented reality. Just give us a list of some of the industries that you’ve either provided training for or done creation for because when we met at the kickoff for Idaho Virtual Reality, I remember – I wish I could remember who said it, it might have been you, but I don’t know who said it. Somebody said that every time they talked to somebody about virtual reality, whichever industry they’re in, once they experience it, not talk about, but once they experience it, put the goggles on, completely be immersed in the experience of it, whichever industry they’re in, they can think of uses immediately to improve their industry, and that was compelling, and so tell us which industries that you’ve experienced, that you’ve worked with, that you’ve developed training for?
David Cleverdon: So, there are really two aspects of the VR market we approach. No. 1 is training. That is our passion when it comes to giving back to folks that take care of us, and that’s fire, EMS, medical, security, law enforcement, workplace safety, you know workplace is, of course, OSHA related, and so when you’re really talking about putting somebody in the middle of a simulation and allowing them to do a better job with training, that’s the value and professional trainers, and we have demoed to literally thousands of people, universally when they put the goggle on – when they haven’t put it on, they kind of look at me, hear virtual reality and they think it’s like science fiction.
Jennifer Quinn: Right, right, for sure.
David Cleverdon: But once they put the goggle on, they understand the power of it almost immediately. You don’t have to explain it to the them, you don’t have to do anything more than letting them experience being in the middle of a simulation where typically all they can do is watch it, and then on the marketing side, you have the potential of connecting demographics and people with brands unlike any other time in the world. I can give you a Harley-Davidson app that will let you ride a Harley-Davidson virtually. You’re almost expecting to feel the wind in your face, the bugs in your teeth.
Jennifer Quinn: Wow, we can skip that part.
David Cleverdon: We can let you test drive vehicles prior to going down to the dealership. Instead of wanting to test drive ten new cars, you’ll know because you have tried those ten new cars virtually. You’ll know that you actually want to experience those two cars, so you’re saving your time, you’re saving the dealership’s energy and the salesperson’s resources, and you get a much better experience. If you want to plan a vacation, what better way to plan a vacation than to literally go to that resort and feel like you’re in the middle of the hotel room or you’re on the beach, you’re doing all the things that you ultimately will do, and you can do it ahead of time rather than looking at pictures or open a brochure. That’s the way it’s done now, but imagine being there, utilizing virtual reality. It’s a new technology. It is a game-changer.
Jennifer Quinn: It’s totally a game-changer, and so what have you seen in the medical field with using – I know I read an article how they’re using it in rehab, like teaching people how to walk again, like what have you seen there?
David Cleverdon: So, we’ve done a pediatric trauma app where we’ve actually taken various teams from the inception of an accident involving a ten-year-old boy, and going all the way through the dispatch, the ability for EMS to come in, law enforcement comes in and they transport him to a rural hospital. The hospital, after going through a number of different processes and bringing in several teams into their ED or their emergency department, they determine, in this simulation, that the child is injured to the point that they can’t take care of him. So, they then have to transport to a major medical facility so that they can take care of the child, and if you think of all the interactions, not only on various teams, but various personnel, and we’ve documented that whole process.
When you’re talking about medical, you can talk about, for instance, something that’s near to our heart, is how EMS and law enforcement react to folks with mental illness, and we’ve actually developed an initial project dealing with schizophrenia and the ability for law enforcement to understand what somebody suffering from that disorder, they hear voices from all over and the voices can be disparaging, they can be really horrible –
Jennifer Quinn: Yes, disturbing –
David Cleverdon: – if you want to use that word, and then their vision shifts and their color shifts, and so if law enforcement or EMS or health and welfare, if they’re doing assessment, could understand what these people are going through, and to be able to deescalate the situation rather than maybe take a more assertive role.
Jennifer Quinn: Right, that’s profound, that’s phenomenal, instead of hoping that there can be empathy, you’re in it, so it’s empathy, it’s compassion, it’s –
David Cleverdon: All of that –
Jennifer Quinn: – completely connecting, that’s phenomenal. I want to just give a few more shout-outs here; we’ve got more people watching. Shelly Gartmen is here, hello Shelly, and Barb Tomlin, welcome. Kerri Motley, hello. Claudia Santiago, hello. Kurt Kuntz, Lauri Winford. Hi Kurt. Kurt just had surgery, I wonder how he’s doing, he’s a friend of mine. Feel better Kurt.
David Cleverdon: Kurt, get well man.
Jennifer Quinn: And then Greg Greyson is here, hello Greg, and Charity Majors, welcome. If I missed you, please leave a comment so that I can see you’re watching. I can only see how many viewers, and I can only see when you’ve left a comment. So, alright, so wow, this is why I want to know which industries are being helped. I would have never connected the dots that mental illness, combining law enforcement, creating this amazing situation.
David Cleverdon: Well, I’ll give you a situation most people don’t realize. When you walk into a Walmart store, they just initiated a whole training program based on virtual reality.
Jennifer Quinn: Wow.
David Cleverdon: Because we think of Walmart as being kind of low cost, certainly affordable when it comes to goods and services and products.
Jennifer Quinn: Sure.
David Cleverdon: But sometimes I don’t think of Walmart as being really forward thinking and yet they are because if you think of it, they’re the largest retailer in the world and they must be, and you can look at – I mean, if you’re talking about that step into marketing, which along with first responder training, you can literally – anything that takes you into a world, virtual reality can apply to. For instance, you can demo a product and you can actually put somebody right in with that product as that product is performing, and they can understand why because you can look around. For instance, let’s say that I’m Nike, and I’m running and I’ve got a new set of jogging clothes, I’ve got new shoes, I mean, I am Nike or I’m Under Armour, and not only am I watching these folks, but I’m with them.
Jennifer Quinn: Amazing.
David Cleverdon: I’m running.
Jennifer Quinn: You can run the marathon with them.
David Cleverdon: You could. I don’t know that I would ever want to, but you could.
Jennifer Quinn: No, but yeah. So, are there any industries that you can think of or segments that you haven’t seen VR in that segment, and you’re like, oh, I can’t wait until it hits there.
David Cleverdon: VR works really well when it comes to situationally based environments, so if I wanted to show somebody how to use this phone, that’s a very detailed circumstance, but what I can do is I can show, from a marketing or instructional standpoint, I can show somebody having a wonderful time with this. This happens to be a Note 5, and no it doesn’t blow up. I can show somebody how to use it and circumstances, where it’s a great phone and Samsung, is a great product, and then I can weave into that experience what we call a 2D or traditional video that actually shows how I’m going to use that phone. So, it’s a hybrid or marriage of a virtual experience and that detail that takes me down so I can see some specific things.
I’ll give you an example. Some of the new cameras coming out, they actually have GPS and accelerometers just like our phones, and so that these new VR cameras allow us to track not only what’s going around in a circumstance, but they have overlays where I can weave in GPS data, elevation and speed and pitch and roll, and especially for people that are trying to do training or, for instance, motorcycle training. I want to show how much somebody should lean into a curve. Well, all that data is built into that stream, so –
Jennifer Quinn: Wow –
David Cleverdon: – it’s a brand-new thing.
Jennifer Quinn: Well, okay, so one more – well, since we’re on equipment and gear, what’s available for the average consumer, just like a hobbyist. What’s available for them to either experience VR or maybe even create some VR on their own?
David Cleverdon: Well, there’s a number of cameras that – it used to be that the first VR cameras coming out were approximate $60,000.00, and a lot of the cameras were built. There wasn’t anything you could buy off the shelf. You would build what’s called a rig, and you’d take commonly a bunch of GoPro cameras, and then you’d have to stitch the footage, you’d have to put it together, so it was hugely labor intensive. Nowadays, the average consumer that wants to create their own VR experience, can literally take their phone and a module that plugs into it, it looks like a little ball or a couple lenses, and whether it’s an iPhone or Android, for a hundred and some dollars, you have the ability to create your own virtual experiences. You can get into it. Is the quality as good from a production standpoint? No, but it’s only a hundred-dollar camera.
Jennifer Quinn: Right.
David Cleverdon: Is it wonderful for people wanting to share experiences, and all the things that they normally share with their friends and post it to Facebook live, post it to YouTube live. I mean, literally just step into the world of virtual reality. A hundred bucks will buy you that.
Jennifer Quinn: That’s very cool, that’s very cool, so I like how we just did that segue into not just virtual reality and augmented reality, but how we can combine that with livestreaming because that’s kind of my deal, and so, what have you seen, how have you seen people do that in a really innovative way?
David Cleverdon: So, livestreaming is new, I mean, it’s –
Jennifer Quinn: Sure, relatively –
David Cleverdon: – a wonderful concept because we can sit and we essentially created own little mini television stations. It used to be to be able to broadcast out a show, you had to have a huge organization, a lot of equipment, but now with the power of a phone, you’ve got that in your hand via Facebook live, YouTube live, and some of the other, Periscope and so forth, but imagine being able to stream live in a surrounding. So, maybe you’re at a coffee shop, and you’re having a wonderful conversation with a group of people around you, and people can look around, and they can see the expressions on everybody’s face, they can interact just as if they were seated there. I’ll give you another extension. If you want to think about sports, and I’m going to use the Seahawks, and people have their own sports teams certainly, but think about a Seahawks game. If you buy a good ticket, you’re going to pay a couple hundred dollars. No. 1, you have to be up there, you’ve got to be in Seattle, you’ve got to then fight the crowds and then you’re at the game and you’re paying $15.00 beer, and it’s a process, but you’re at the game, you feel like you’re at the game, you’re part of the team. Now, let’s drop in virtual reality. So, instead of maybe two, three, $400.00 for a family or maybe an individual, I can buy a seat to be at the 50-yard line, and I’m going to feel like I’m there –
Jennifer Quinn: Right, right, and to get a 50-yard line seat in person is not going to be a few hundred dollars.
David Cleverdon: No, it is absolutely not, and not only that, so I feel like I’m there because I can look and I can see this guy sitting next to me, and I can see this gal sitting over here, and the beer is a lot less expensive because I can walk into the fridge.
Jennifer Quinn: And you’re warm. Like when you were describing that, I was thinking back in the day when we lived at the air force academy, and we went to a home game, and it was snowing. We had a foot of snow, and I remember sitting there with the blankets, and I was just shivering, and I was thinking, why am I doing this, but it was the experience, it was the team, and that would have been so much nicer.
David Cleverdon: Well, not only that, but if you think about that one seat at a Seahawks game, and let’s use $200.00 as the number.
Jennifer Quinn: Okay.
David Cleverdon: And when somebody purchased that seat, they purchased a ticket, that’s all they’re going to get.
Jennifer Quinn: Right.
David Cleverdon: But if I take that same seat and I put in a VR camera, professional grade, of course, where I feel all of the experiences, suddenly I can sell that via the miracle of the internet, I can sell that 10,000 times over, and I can give people the ability to experience being on the 50-yard line at a Seahawks game even when they’re in Dallas or they’re in Afghanistan perhaps if they have the connections.
Jennifer Quinn: Right.
David Cleverdon: So, you can extend the impact of that team and also the revenue stream, of course, but more so the fan base of the team can feel far more connected to that team.
Jennifer Quinn: Yes, yes.
David Cleverdon: And it will come, the day that – and perhaps even if you buy a premium seat, I can go from 50 yards over here to the end zone over here to this –
Jennifer Quinn: And the day is not far away.
David Cleverdon: Absolutely not.
Jennifer Quinn: And so, when you said Afghanistan, I immediately thought military.
David Cleverdon: Yes.
Jennifer Quinn: And so how have you seen the military using VR and AR?
David Cleverdon: Well, the military has been using VR for decades.
Jennifer Quinn: Sure.
David Cleverdon: But they have the budgets, I mean, for instance in our location, we have the Idaho National Lab and they have a room, what they call a cave, and essentially, it’s one gigantic VR experience. Now, the problem with the cave, and they have cave setups in many different installations that are governmental or military based, is that they’re expensive. You’re probably looking in order of magnitude of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, and then the content is difficult to create and implement into those types of systems. In a situation like this, we can go out and we can shoot a live experience, and within the next day, we can have that in an app on the phone and being experienced in a classroom the next day.
So, the value and the power of virtual reality has been experienced by the military for a long time. They’ve got the budgets to do that, but finally the average consumer, the average organization, the folks in corporate, like Walmart and some of the other corporate entities that are pushing out into this arena, can experience it, and it’s affordable, it’s cost effective, and that’s the important thing.
Jennifer Quinn: Absolutely, and here’s another industry that I’m thinking of. Have you seen it used in the courtroom, have you seen legal counsel using –
David Cleverdon: We have talked to folks about that.
Jennifer Quinn: Yeah?
David Cleverdon: We haven’t actually done a proof of concept on that, but absolutely, you can experience – it’s an experience of wherever you want to go, whether it be in the courtroom or on the beach in Maui, it’s still an experience.
Jennifer Quinn: I mean, can you imagine, as an attorney, taking the jury to the crime scene.
David Cleverdon: We have talked from – we did a counter terrorism conference about two, almost three months ago now, and one of the things that we brought away, which we had never considered, is from a forensic or CSI standpoint is to be able to document a crime scene, and you’re shooting every little bit. If I were to take a camera and I’m trying to shoot the blood splatter –
Jennifer Quinn: Right.
David Cleverdon: I mean, we don’t want to talk about blood too much here, but the things that have happened within the crime scene, I may miss that little bit over there, but let’s say that I go through with a VR camera, and I can capture everything that can be seen just as with a real human –
Jennifer Quinn: Amazing, without touching it and tampering with it and moving it.
David Cleverdon: Absolutely.
Jennifer Quinn: Nice, I love it, I love it.
David Cleverdon: So, interactivity is kind of a big thing in VR, and we all think of gaming, you move through and you shoot, but think of the ability to move through and we’re working on several projects now that you can move through a scene and you can assess it from a hazmat circumstance, and that you can then make some decisions, like a decision tree. Think of an alternative end as a movie. You can choose the end.
Jennifer Quinn: Oh, nice, yeah.
David Cleverdon: And maybe, especially in hazmat where you have hazardous materials, maybe one of those alternative endings to your movie, you become part of the problem. So, you want to learn the decisions that allow you to make the correct decisions versus perhaps making an incorrect decision, and then there’s testing, heat mapping. We can actually look around and we can tell where people are looking in a VR circumstance. So, if, for instance, what we’re really trying to focus on is over here, and everybody – maybe there’s a pretty gal over there or they’re distracted by over there, we then need to change our content or make them aware that even if you have distractions in an environment, you need to really focus all around because you’ll miss something, and in law enforcement or security, that can be the difference between life and death.
Jennifer Quinn: Yeah, that’s amazing, that’s amazing. I just checked the time. I can’t even believe it, but we’re out of time. I feel like that flew by, I feel like we just got started.
David Cleverdon: We did.
Jennifer Quinn: So, we’re going to have to do this again.
David Cleverdon: Absolutely.
Jennifer Quinn: If anybody has a question for you and wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way for them to contact you?
David Cleverdon: 360immersive.com, that’s the easiest way. I mean, I would have to remember our phone number by heart, which I don’t.
Jennifer Quinn: No, you’re good, we can look it up, we can look it up, yeah, that’s good.
David Cleverdon: But the bottom line is this is an amazing technology. It allows you to do some things that we’ve only dreamed about in that relationship to science fiction, and yet it is here today, and I would urge you all to embrace it, to experiment with it, and to just be aware because it will affect you in your daily lives.
Jennifer Quinn: So, what you’re saying is it’s not a fad.
David Cleverdon: It is absolutely not a fad.
Jennifer Quinn: It’s not a fad, alright. Well, David, thank you for letting me come into your studio and do this. This was a great experience. You guys are clearly pros. I big shout-out to Tom, who’s behind the scenes running everything, making it look amazing, and thank you to all the viewers who watched live, and those of you who are watching the replay, and we are out, but before we go, remember to live well, have fun, and love others. Bye you all.
David Cleverdon: Thank you.
