Unknown Speaker As I mentioned, if you have any questions, please pop them in the chat we will be leaving some time at the end to to go through them to get pop your questions in as we go or save them to the end. That's fine as well. But of course, I know some of you have one particular question you'd love to ask before we jump in and meet our panellists.
What is the metaverse and up until a few months ago, I admit I had no idea Unknown Speaker for my role here at COVID Like about it's about communicating and connecting with people. And I've got such little technical experience that I've broken zoom many times, much to the hysterics of my colleagues. So for this suburban mom, I figured the metaverse was something that my kids would teach in one day about rolling their eyes and my lack of understanding just like I used to do to my parents until this happened Unknown Speaker the red button on the floor Unknown Speaker is that red button on the floor Unknown Speaker which quickly led to this Unknown Speaker some fun backwards.
Unknown Speaker So yes, that is me beating up a virtual cancer cell in a meeting room full of peers and tech professionals from around the APAC region. Unknown Speaker Things you do Hey, well, the things I do at least. Unknown Speaker I'm but what is the metaverse? I still haven't answered that question. I don't think except to show you in an audition for me to appear in the next creed movie. I'm not getting that part. Obviously.
The Metaverse is simply put the next generation of the internet. Over time, there's a clear trend that technology enables people to share richer content. 50 years ago, we had site specific computing in the form of mainframes, then dial up connectivity to now mobile access which provides the ability for people to text, send photos and view videos and obviously live calls as well. In this progression, the metaverse is the next logical step.
It will be a set of digital spaces that bring presents to life through immersive 3d experiences. This isn't about replacing in person experiences. It's about making what we do online better and more meaningful. Unknown Speaker And it's gonna create a lot of change in a lot of industries, particularly those in education, gaming, virtual offices, health and fitness, medical procedures, and entertainment. Entertainment, like Unknown Speaker Did anyone see the Travis Scott concert in fortnight? My YouTube isn't working like so. But I do encourage you I will send out a link to a clip afterwards because it is pretty cool to see.
And it reportedly made $20 million, that particular event. Unknown Speaker Yeah, but the metaverse won't be realised for another 10 to 15 years and it won't be played Unknown Speaker by something. It won't be built by one company like just like the Internet. The Metaverse exists where the matter is there or not.
Some of the organisations that are driving the diving in early include Google, Microsoft, Sony HTC, Les Mills, and metta. If you saw my punching efforts, that's probably an example of what you can do with your tennis kneels down. Unknown Speaker So I would love to talk a little bit I don't want to need to talk anymore but because we have got this exceptional panel of guests that are coming in today to talk to you about the metaverse and what they do in the metaverse as well. And at the end we'll also be talking about some really exciting curriculum and learning opportunities that meta is has created with with Kodak ago. So if you stay with me moment, Mads, can you bring me up, just Unknown Speaker Mia, oops, I'm having all sorts of fun today.
Man manages me Golic manages policy for meta in Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, among other policy areas male leads engagement Unknown Speaker Government and stakeholders on safety, privacy, misinformation and security. Prior to joining Mehta Nia was the Assistant Secretary for digital economy and convergent strategy at the Department of broadband communications and the digital economy. may have joined the department after working in Silicon Valley as product counsel for YouTube.
She has a Bachelor of Arts and law from the University of New South Wales and a Master's of law from Stanford at Stanford University. Welcome Today we're Unknown Speaker going Thank you. Unknown Speaker And now for something a little bit different. While I introduce the next panellist, I'm going to share with you some of their work that they've done. This is Hellena Dawn, she's a designer and creative technologist based in New York City. Her work into his conceptual undercurrents, from fashion performance and XR, with a focus on speculating future possibilities and distilling curiosity through customised interactions.
Elena's multidisciplinary practice has led her to design develop and direct experiences for diverse a diverse array of distinguished brands such as a 24, Coachella Dior, Fendi, Naik, product and Vogue quite the client list. Currently Lana is an art director of Buck where she collaborates with global teams to explore the expressive potential of immersive technologies. Unknown Speaker Jess Harrington Unknown Speaker Jess is a multidisciplinary artist and designer focusing on interaction innovation and human behaviour. She is an AI and immersive tech spelled specialist as well as a neuroscience PhD researcher specialising in visual perception. She uses technology and psychology research to bring alive a multi sensorial experience through augmented and virtual reality. Her work anticipates and prepares for the future of creativity, work and society.
She collaborates with leading global brands using new technology to drive cutting edge experiences for scientific, educational and creative purposes. She's also a writer with a special focus on art technology, AI and ethics. She's interested in making digital experiences better for everyone just I feel like you are a bit of a superhuman person is exceptional list of activities. Raymond welcome. Raymond is a Creative Director and Partner at Tada as a creative technologist and VFX artists that has always had an eye for technology and the way it blends with creativity, to create something that stands out.
Ray knew from an early age that to succeed, he'd have to combine his passions of technology and art together. And he does that just just just that when he developed immersive AR creations on the meta spark platform. Unknown Speaker So I'm going to just share a screen quickly where we spotlight each of those speakers. We've also included some of those our creators work for you today. So if you were to to grab your phone quickly and select one of these, we will be sharing this link afterwards as well. But if you wanted to have a look at some of the work that these creators have, have made, you can use those QR codes down and along.
While we do some intros in a minute. give you just a little 30 seconds I'll stop sharing my screen. We will be sharing these again, as I mentioned, so don't worry if you don't make it this time. Unknown Speaker Right. Unknown Speaker So sorry.
Unknown Speaker To me mess frame. Unknown Speaker me out. It's wonderful to see you today.
Thanks for joining us on the product to go back to the stage. Thanks for bringing this amazing group of people together. I feel like the least qualified person because I don't have some beautiful artwork and creativity to share as my part of my introduction. All right, meow, you are more qualified than me.
So you can still an expert in my books. Unknown Speaker May I wanted to jump in straight away and talk about sort of why this is important. Why the metaverse why what we're launching today here is so important for creators and developers. What are the biggest opportunities you see to build the metaverse? Unknown Speaker Yeah, I think the thing that sort of really interesting and I think some of that beautiful creativity that we saw, to kick us off today sort of shows that is that you know, the metaverse and the vision for the metaverse. It's going to be built by creators and developers who will be building these new and immersive experiences that we will be using to express ourselves and connect with people and build community. And so it could be you know, building a game designing clothings or accessories for avatars or making a you know, an effect that brings together augmented reality and makes it sort of feel very real.
But I guess you know, what we need is we need to make sure that we're bringing along you know, the developer community so that you know people who are used to building and developing in the existing Unknown Speaker environments have the confidence and skills to engage in these new ways of connecting. And so at Meadow, we've sort of adopted a two prong approach to do that. One is to have some really bespoke showcase examples of this. So, for example, we've partnered with TAFE, New South Wales to develop five courses across plumbing, electrical safety, veterinary science and, and allow students to sort of have virtual experience to learn these things. Then the other approach we're taking is to invest in skill development.
And that's why we're so excited to be partnering with you and code like a girl and tada to offer an Australian specific meta Immersive Learning Academy to help invest in the ecosystem so that so many more developers can participate. Unknown Speaker Sounds really exciting. And I know our community would be very interested to understand as well.
What are the business opportunities for creators and developers? Unknown Speaker Well, I think it's I mean, there's different aspects of it. Obviously, there's, you know, being able to commercialise a lot of your work in terms of being asked to create these types of things, these types of new experiences. I mean, certainly, we've had some great engagement with Tada in building a walk with pride, historical AR effects that let people connect in with the queer history of Sydney. But then there's also I think, going to be commercialization opportunities connected into avatars and how people are engaging and, and undertaking commerce in the Murdoch verse as well. So you know, the the bulk of the metaverse is sort of eight to 10 years away.
So it's sort of hard to give precise contours. But you know, what we have seen over time is just the increase in all of our online experiences becoming more immersive. You know, back in the very early days, you know, Instagram was just a photo sharing app if you can remember that.
And now here we are with AR effects and stories and short form video being the dominant way that people are engaging. So this is all along the trajectory and people will be commercialising different opportunities along that path. Unknown Speaker It's funny, you know, 10 years feels so far ahead. But while I was working on this presentation, Mayor, I reflected that it was 20 years ago that I was sitting on ICQ talking to my friends have a weekend. Unknown Speaker So and if none of you know what that means, I am for you to go and have a Google actor what US oldies used to do with our, in our chat time. Unknown Speaker Like, this is the thing, right? Like you don't like it, technology change, you change with technology, and technology changes with you.
And until you sit back and go hang on what happened 10 years ago, you don't actually like reflect on all the things that have changed. But I think it's really important for companies like ours to make sure that we are paying attention to what is the new set of skills that people are going to need and what we can we be doing to do our part to help the ecosystem and the developer community move along that pathway together with where the technology is changing? Yeah. Beautiful. So why did Mater choose to partner with code like a girl and encourage our community through this curriculum? First? Great question. Well, look, I mean, first of all, as I mentioned, you know, we really want to make sure we're investing in the capacity of the Australian developer community. So they can be, you know, upskilling themselves ready to, you know, explore creativity and open selves to the new commercial opportunities that this new immersive online experiences going to enable for us.
And, you know, just taking a step back, I think there's more than 700 million people globally using meta spark across our apps and devices each month. So there's a great opportunity right there to connect with new audiences. And, you know, we've also seen across APAC, that 49% of Spark creators are female, so strong interest there for from women to be, you know, upskilling and, and levelling up their careers, to these new opportunities, which is fantastic. And, you know, we've heard so many stories, and I'm sure we're about to hear them from our panellists as well, and people, you know, women upskilling in meta spark, and then being able to start their own contracting business in AR starts out as a side hustle then becomes a full time job, or stories of AR filters that were started as a passion project and then are picked up by major brands and used around the world. And, you know, I'm looking forward to hearing Jesse's story shortly. But I think these are sort of some of the proof points that indicated to us why code like a girl was such a great partner.
Obviously, you know, you've been building Australia's female tech community, not just by designing courses specifically for women, but also giving women the support and community and to give people that confidence to continue to pursue their careers in these in these spaces. So you guys know in your community, and also giving us great insights to help us shape the curriculum, have really, you know, led us to be very excited about this partnership and all that we can achieve together. Unknown Speaker Thanks, Mia. I think that's a really good segue to hear from our creators. And Lena, I would love to welcome you to the stage. Thank you for being here.
Elaine is coming to us from New York as mentioned, what time is it there? Unknown Speaker I know we haven't got you too early or late or hurt. Oh, it's 1050 is fine. Unknown Speaker Okay, all right. Well, we will not keep you too long, I promise. Thank you. Unknown Speaker Um, we met recently Halina, but I would love you to share with our community, your story.
You've got such a wonderful. Yeah, you've had such a wonderful journey, I guess from where you thought your career was going to go to where it is now. And I'd love you to share that with our community. Unknown Speaker Yeah, absolutely, it definitely took somewhat of an unexpected turn.
So before I before working Creative Technology, I was actually formally trained in fashion design, I went to RMIT. And I studied design and garment construction, essentially. But while I was doing that, I've always had an affinity for interactive elements, and really drawn to the notion of experience. But I didn't really think on how that could be brought into the fashion industry at the time. So after I graduated in 2019, and then I moved to New York to work for Dion Lee in design and product development, I had about seven months before COVID arrived.
But in that seven months, it really, it really helped me realise a lot of things. One was that I became very disillusioned with the fashion industry. Some of it has to do with the ways that things operate in an industry, but then also just some of it stems from my own dissatisfaction with not being able to actually explore experiential design in this space. Unknown Speaker And so, you know, with the arrival of COVID, it was also around the same time that when I started noticing a surge in Instagram, AR effects that were published by independent creators and not published by Instagram.
And that was when I discovered that spark was a thing. It's a software that you could download. Or you could learn how to use it, and that you could create these AR experiences and publish them onto your profile.
And so I kind of thought to myself, if other people can do this, it really can't be that hard to learn. So that was the mindset I went into it with. Unknown Speaker And yeah, so I started with prototyping different kinds of eyewear and hardware designs. Now, I honestly didn't have any 3d skills at the time. So I would just use Photoshop, export 2d, PNG layers, and just arrange them in front of users face.
So that's what got me into the space. And then this was like a few months before COVID. So when COVID happened, I honestly had nothing to do at the time. And I was staying at home in my New York apartment during the lockdown. And I thought to myself, I really needed to take some time to reevaluate what I was doing at the time.
Unknown Speaker And it made me realise that I should probably just dive into AR development, learn 3d Because I was fascinated by this space. And if I wasn't gonna do anything else with my time, I might as well dive into this space. And so I did that. And because of my network, in the fashion industry, and a lot of my peers are designers and makeup artists and stylists, I started collaborating with them to you know, bring some of their designs into virtual space, or to realise some of their makeup looks as AR filters that we shared around the world. And so through those collaborations, I was connected with someone at work.
And that was when I actually got to work with Vogue on the first AI enhanced editorial foot September issue in 2020. And from that point on, more collaborations emerged, and this is what I do for a living now I work Unknown Speaker in the experiential design space with AR and VR across design, development and art direction. So that is my story.
That's awesome. Lena and I think that a lot of our community could really resonate there with, you know, ended up getting into tech through, you know, different different channels and through different motivations. So, yeah, thank you for sharing. I'd love to explore a little bit like you've worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. Do you think there's there's even more opportunity for businesses to tap into this into the metaverse and what AR and VR Unknown Speaker skills could do for an organisation? Unknown Speaker That is a loaded question because there's so many facets to consider. I think AR is such a powerful tool.
For a lot of brands. It's a way of enhancing the relationship with your audience. Whether that is facilitating a more advanced form of dialogue in the digital space or affording a Unknown Speaker opportunities to the audience in ways that were previously rendered impossible.
So, you know, some of the more practical cases can include virtual trials. And this is particularly useful for beauty brands for access to brands for fashion brands, where, Unknown Speaker you know, you don't have to go to a physical store to try on something. But also, it's just really fun trying things at home, like seeing how this accessory could potentially pair with your look, even though it might be completely out of your budget, at least you can still try it and have fun with it. So that's one aspect of it. And another aspect is immersion and storytelling, because oftentimes, when we look at fashion brands, and they, they have seasonal campaigns, and it's not always just about the product, a lot of the times they're trying to tell a narrative through the collection, through the ethos of the designs, and so utilising AR, they can really bring to light some of those thinking behind it. And a really great example would be a project that my team at Bach recently collaborated with Dr. On so for the 2022 holiday campaign, they had this whole vision about your being
the Attilio of dreams. And so this is an this was an omni channel campaign, they had, you know, a lot of beautiful digital assets. They had site specific activations in Singapore, in Paris. And so so we collaborate with the team to create a series of immersive experiences, some of them you could experience at home, others were available to those that went to those on site activations.
So, for example, at the Paris and the Sao Paulo pubs, you could scan signage inside one of these beautifully constructed rooms. And then you would point your phone at the ceiling, and this entire ceiling will be overtaken by an infinite light sky. And it's filled with gorgeous, intricate constellations, and celestial figures that very much inspired the campaign. And so things like that, taking elements from things that are typically static, and doormen and bring them into virtual space and immersive.
So I will say those two are the most powerful words to try out and storytelling. Awesome. Hello, I think I could listen to you talk about your work all day. You just have such a wonderful approach. And I can see the inspiration sort of in your eyes as you talk about it. So thank you so much for that.
I Unknown Speaker might include Jess in the conversation now as well. Just you have a very big resume. I'd love to learn more about your journey into the metaverse and becoming an AR VR creator. Yeah. So my story, I guess, goes back about 10 years or so.
Unknown Speaker So like Helena, I moved overseas for a little while I was living in London. And I was trained as a traditional artist in drawing and sculpture. Unknown Speaker And I found the art world over there sort of really super inspiring and interesting, but it's, you know, super competitive. And I ended up working for a Web Design Studio, which created like high end websites for brands like Chanel and added gas and for films like Donnie Darko. Unknown Speaker So, from that was sort of my first taste into a digital realm and what was possible and seeing people working with these quite new technologies at the time. Unknown Speaker And Unknown Speaker because I felt so sort of stifled with the traditional art world, I actually ended up studying so I studied online, through Open Universities, Australia, and I did a degree in psychology, and a degree in philosophy focusing on like logic and philosophy of mind.
Unknown Speaker So I'd always been really interested in visual experience, but not just from an artistic perspective, but actually understanding what we like how we sense and perceive things and why we like certain things or are drawn to certain experiences. Unknown Speaker So from that experience, studying online, I decided to move back to Australia and pursue a masters and a PhD in neuroscience. Unknown Speaker And it was while I was doing my masters that I actually got a grant from the Australian network for arts and technology to do an augmented reality experience at the time.
So by then I had been developing mobile apps with AR experiences and exhibiting them Unknown Speaker at galleries and exhibitions and festivals, and also different sorts of vision conferences, because they're doing visual neuroscience and Unknown Speaker Um, and they were really fun to make. But the audience size that I had was always quite small, you'd sort of get like 30 people downloading the app, you go, Oh, wow, 30 people you. But then once met, a spark came out, I felt like that was just a really incredible way of expanding what I did, and making it just so much more accessible, because you could have hundreds of 1000s of people using your filters.
There were so easy for people to share, and access, you didn't have to use them in a certain space. Unknown Speaker Yeah, so I really bonded with that new technology. Unknown Speaker That's awesome, Jess. Unknown Speaker Yeah, I love your story as well, you come from it. I love that sort of black background. And I think a lot of our community would, yeah, it would resonate with having that creative first feel for that for their work as well and how it ties so well into tech.
I'm just so I'd love you to dive a little bit more into the opportunities for for our community that are on the call today. What was it that, you know, motivated? What was it that stood out to you? Um, in terms of creating things? And what advice would you give to I guess, someone who was curious about getting into this curriculum a little bit more on learning more skills in the metaverse? Um, I think, look, it's it's a very sort of intuitive software to learn how to use, I think that you don't need, you know, big coding background or anything. There's, you know, Unknown Speaker the academy that's coming up, and there's lots of YouTube tutorials as well.
Unknown Speaker I found though, that in terms of like developing opportunities, the best way was to actually sort of develop like a little prototype or test case, which I didn't really know, that's what I was doing at the time, I was kind of just doing things for fun and going, Oh, I liked this idea. I'll put this out there. And then the brand actually contacts you and says, Hey, can you actually do that for us? And we'll pay you? And I was like, oh, yeah, good. Unknown Speaker So you can be quite strategic with that. Unknown Speaker So like one particular example that I did, actually using that method was called fresh, hot, delicious, where I created like a little augmented reality restaurant. And the idea was that there were all food related filters, and there were desserts that would sell out after certain amount of users.
And from that, I actually got contacted by Mehta and Sephora France, to create sensory digital perfumes that you could wear. So we were using, like research into sensory science to inform the design of the filters, so that it felt like people could try on a perfume when it was when COVID was on and people couldn't actually go into a store. I'm not sure if that answers your question, but I kind of hope it did. That's really cool. I love and I love the fact that, um, you know, if you're looking to get more work in this area, or you're looking to be a freelancer in this area, simply creating content is a way of putting yourself out there.
That is really exciting. Unknown Speaker Yeah, so thank you. Is it hard to learn? Is it hard? Could I could could I learn? I'm such a novice? Yeah, I think anyone can. Yeah. Beautiful. Oh, that's good to know.
Um, right. I would love to introduce you to our community. As mentioned, Ray, has been the creator of the curriculum that that we're delivering with meta here to our community. He worked for an organisation called Tada, he's a creative himself.
That will be the guide through the, through the learning process. Unknown Speaker I think I might touch on just quickly here that the meta spark curriculum is available to learn for free at anytime, through the Miller account through the Miller academy or through Facebook. But what we're working with meta is creating this tutor led experience so that we can really build that community. And that sense of belonging. You know, we've spoken about it here at Kodak ago, so many times before, women don't feel there's a space for them in tech, because there's simply just so many men, and they don't have that sense of belonging. So knowing that code like a girl community is here can be a great way to overcome some of that competence and impostor syndrome.
So that's why we've worked with meta and tada to create this tutor led experience to deliver this software to deliver this learning experience. And Ray will be leading it. So Ray, Unknown Speaker can you tell us a little bit more about what the curriculum is? I feel like I've said curriculum 30,000 times in this.
Can we explain what it is without using the word curriculum? Unknown Speaker Yeah, sure. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Unknown Speaker So yeah, the curriculum is basically I think it's a seven, Lesson Seven or eight lesson Transcribed by https://otter.ai
2023-04-11