Makers of The Metaverse: Rob Stone Of Zen Group On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Curiosity is essential. To be in such a fast paced and constantly evolving industry you must ask a lot of questions and be prepared to deep dive to really understand not just the technology, but the human behavior that underpins an experience, people’s motivations for undertaking certain actions, how easy or hard it may be to help someone understand something. While uptake and understanding has improved, people are still skeptical about the space and it’s important that you have answered as many questions as you can before someone else asks you.
The Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality & Mixed Reality Industries are so exciting. What is coming around the corner? How will these improve our lives? What are the concerns we should keep an eye out for? Aside from entertainment, how can VR or AR help work or other parts of life? To address this, we had the pleasure of interviewing Rob Stone.
Rob Stone is Director of Digital and Innovation at 3 Monkeys Zeno in London. He heads up the U.K. digital practice and leads innovation projects across Zeno Group for clients in a wide range of industries. His recent focus has been Web3, developing client strategies for the metaverse, activating marketing campaigns that use VR and AR, helping to launch cryptocurrencies and building NFT projects.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?
I was obsessed with technology and the early web from a young age, and I have always loved being part of communities. The early web was the perfect playground for me, I got involved in the early hacker communities, IRC chats about any niche topic I could find, including software development, programming, game development and website development. It always seemed like the people that were most active in these spaces were in the U.S., so I was always up late into the night chatting to anonymous friends from around the world. I always tried to be an active contributor, building on the work of others and adding my own perspectives. Even before university I started to get involved in website and community development and SEO, building my own sites and gaming the algorithms of early search engines to send huge amounts of traffic to my sites. During my degree I started to explore other areas including 3D design and game development. I was never super creative, so I always looked to partner with people who were, a way of working that has lasted throughout my professional career.
Is there a particular book, film, or podcast that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I read a lot of popular science books, I think it’s amazing that we get to absorb the deep knowledge on offer from genuine subject matter experts, people that have often spent decades immersed in their particular field. That makes it hard to pick just one though, so I’m going to go with a seemingly random film reference instead, The Big Short.
It’s a film about a small number of financial experts who observe the growing financial crisis and look to capitalize on it before it happens. What is interesting to me is the way the major players in the story go about researching their theories. Some use data, analysis and trends, but a small group travel to South Florida and do detailed field research. They go right to the end customers, the mortgage brokers making the deals, the real estate agent who tells them about the state of the market, the ratings agencies and even the exotic dancers taking out mortgages on multiple houses without a steady income. That human perspective backs up the data and convinces them to make a big bet. It’s a good example of how valuable curiosity can be. You can learn a lot by going direct to the source on something, and you’ll be surprised how happy people are to share their experiences in detail and offer perspectives and motivations you hadn’t thought of.
Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry? We’d love to hear it.
The tech always comes first. Early computers spawned the early web. Better processors brought us the gaming industry we have today. Mobile tech and then 4G and 5G took us from text messages to video calling and video-focused social media platforms. X-Reality has come a long way in recent years, it’s clear that the innovation in the hardware in this space will drive the next iteration of our online lives and not only combine and enhance the elements that we already enjoy but take us to new experiences. There are things we’ll be doing with this tech in 5–10 years that we haven’t even thought of yet. That’s the most exciting part. For my part, I knew I had a choice between watching it happen or getting involved and chose the latter.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I think that’s the spirit of this space and you need to move quickly and innovate to stay ahead. One funny story sticks out though. We once had a very senior client visit our agency office when I was still relatively junior but responsible for the VR hardware. We were working on a big VR activation for this client and he was very skeptical of the tech. We had an area in the office mapped out for the experience that we’d often use for demos. We had one experience that was you being in a room that, once you were immersed, essentially “collapsed” and revealed a different environment. We showed him this one and after a few minutes the room collapsed to reveal a snowy wasteland. The client freaked out and fell to the floor while still attached to the device, which was wired to a tower on a desk. He sent everything flying in a mess of wires and expletives while we all tried hard not to laugh. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and it became a good way to demonstrate how powerful immersive tech can be.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I have been fortunate enough to have had a number of great mentors throughout my career. Some have given me hard and fast lessons in tech, but perhaps the most valuable have been those that showed me how to have difficult conversations, deal with tough situations, manage expectations and ensure good communication. We have a lot of very talented creatives and technical minds in this industry, but you must add those soft skills that allow us all to work effectively.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
At Zeno we’re actively working with several clients on metaverse strategies and activations. We did our first campaigns earlier this year, but even since then the levels of interest and commitment from clients have increased significantly. A lot of our brand clients are naturally focused on entertainment and engagement, but I think there are some great potential applications in health, especially in things like patient education, as devices improve and more people have access to these types of experiences.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. The VR, AR and MR industries seem so exciting right now. What are the 3 things in particular that most excite you about the industry? Can you explain or give an example?
I think the first thing for anyone that has been doing this for a while is that it’s actually all happening. The technology has huge untapped potential that many in the industry have been able to see for a long time, but it’s taken a while for the tech to catch up and for us to be able to reach a broader audience. It’s exciting to be the thing people are talking about again. We did an AR activation for a Zeno client a few months ago and despite seeing hundreds of people go through the experience over a couple of days, not one struggled to get it live on their own devices or understand what was happening. That was a big moment for me, that we really have reached mass adoption and understanding.
I’m excited about the ways in which technology can enhance everyday life. While the use cases for XR in things like gaming and entertainment are clear, I think the everyday impact of the tech has the biggest potential. I think the way a lot of this tech emerges will be in specialist use cases. The 60s vision of the future was all-purpose humanoid robots, instead we got algorithms that help us pick TV shows, small robots that diffuse bombs and cars that see obstructions and put the brakes on before you do. In a similar way, I think rather than AR glasses that are always on, we’ll see kit that is used for, and does a very good job of, a specific purpose. Imagine running in sunglasses that have a display showing your heart rate, route and a virtual version of your personal best time running in front of you. A step further and you could be running in a virtual world instead, running away from zombies or trying to make it to checkpoints in time, racing against a friend who is in a different country.
The other big thing for me is community. Technology has always driven communities of likeminded people together. We saw that in Web1 with things like forums and blogs and early chatrooms that centered around mostly technical pursuits and hobbies as a reflection of who was using the internet at that time. Web2 was all about social and connecting friends and family, but with a much bigger audience. We started to see really big groups come together in nice interests from all around the world, making genuine connections around common interests. The metaverse is going to supercharge all of this. The power of immersive technology is going to bring people together in new and exciting ways, opening opportunities for people regardless of their location or background.
What are the 3 things that concern you about the VR, AR and MR industries? Can you explain? What can be done to address those concerns?
My big concern is that the outputs of this industry, the future of the internet and whatever the metaverse becomes, simply replicate and repeat the issues, challenges and mistakes of the world we live in today. We have a great opportunity to develop something bold and new and I hope we can take it. As an optimist I have seen some very positive indications that our future will be brighter and I really want to believe that it will be, but this must be carefully managed alongside other technical innovation like AI to ensure safety and fairness where possible. That doesn’t mean I am pro regulation, as governments have shown with social media legislation that it is hard to keep up, but I do think there are some principles of decentralisation being practiced in Web3 that have a lot of potential to help address some of the major challenges.
Safety is also a real concern. When we speak to clients at Zeno it’s something that always comes up. Safety of users and customers is key for most clients, but so is safety around their brand. That’s why approaches to Web3, the metaverse and the use of immersive tech need to be fully rounded. The risks in the space can be mitigated, but you need agile teams on board who can respond quickly to a wide range of potential technical, brand and customer challenges.
While some of the movement towards centralization was inevitable, I really hope that we see the trend of high quality and well-funded decentralized movements continue to offer viable alternatives. I am a big fan of collaboration and I think that works best when everyone has skin in the game. If the platforms, creators, builders and the users are all getting fair equity for their participation I think the potential for innovation in the space is limitless.
I think the entertainment aspects of VR, AR and MR are apparent. Can you share with our readers how these industries can help us at work?
When we speak to clients or run in-person activations for clients at Zeno Group, training is the big use case that always comes up. People learn in lots of different ways and many of them require visual aids, realistic scenarios and real-life inputs and outputs. I think we’ll see a trend over the next few years of larger companies, especially those with global footprints, developing training programs that they can deliver at-scale, much in the same way the aerospace industry has for years with flight simulators. There’s no reason you couldn’t fully learn to drive, practice a potentially dangerous laboratory experiment or even try a backflip on a BMX in a virtual world while almost completely removing the physical risk.
Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?
We’re close to a tipping point with most XR technology and as more devices get into hands, I think we’ll see every industry be disrupted. Everything you have an app on your phone for now is a potential virtual experience; order a Deliveroo at the same time as a friend halfway around the world and eat together in a virtual space, practice yoga and mindfulness in the Sacred Valley in Peru, wake up in your flat in London and a few minutes later you can be walking in to your real/virtual hybrid office in Dubai. Some of that tech is closer than others, but all of them are technically possible and a potential part of our future.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?
One thing I see a lot of is people trying to ‘time’ their involvement in immersive technology. There’s a lot of news about one type of tech or another being 5 years away, or one version of the metaverse that will be with us in 10 years. Some of the things I have talked about here might seem like pure fantasy to some, but for those of us in the industry we can see how the next few years might play out and what direction we are heading in. My advice to everyone here is not to worry about when things might happen, but to strap in and enjoy the journey instead.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The VR, AR or MR Industries?”
Curiosity is essential. To be in such a fast paced and constantly evolving industry you must ask a lot of questions and be prepared to deep dive to really understand not just the technology, but the human behavior that underpins an experience, people’s motivations for undertaking certain actions, how easy or hard it may be to help someone understand something. While uptake and understanding has improved, people are still skeptical about the space and it’s important that you have answered as many questions as you can before someone else asks you.
Developing a broad understanding is also key to success in the space. I have fortunate in that I have worked a cross a broad spectrum of technology, software and digital marketing, which makes it easier for me to spot trends, evaluate anything new that comes along and quickly dive in and understand as much as possible. A great example of this is those in the physical tech space in VR now having to look seriously at the applications of metaverse platforms, new use cases or even the role that NFTs might play. You should always be learning and acquiring knowledge, you never know when it might prove useful or provide a shortcut to understanding something else.
As an extension of that broad understanding, it’s important to collaborate as much as possible. There is only so much you can do and your own, and the industry is vast and full of great specialists and many of them will be happy to help. There’s always a place for individual work, but you’ll make faster and greater progress as a team.
Networking ties much of this together. There are helpful and active communities online and there’s always meetups around the world, as well as seminars and events. I have a window in to several other industries and there is a lot that is held back by competition and a fear of sharing too much. We don’t seem to be as concerned by that, making networking much more valuable.
If you aren’t creative, find people who are. Creativity is essential in this industry, it helps you stand out, educate people, get and retain attention. The people who win in this space in the next 10 years will be the ones who layer creative approaches on top of the tech, platforms and ecosystems we have all been building.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I have talked about this a bit already, but decentralization holds a lot of potential for the way things are done in the future. Instead of huge amounts of traffic, money and attention flowing through a small number of what became very large, centralized social media and entertainment companies in Web2, we have the opportunity for the future of the internet to be run and governed by distributed ownership. We have seen some promising developments in the space over the last couple of years and while they are not perfect, I hope that they form a foundation on which we can build.
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why?
I know he can polarize opinion at times, but I think someone who has blended business and tech very well is Gary Vaynerchuk. He has done so much to promote and advance principles like decentralization that I am passionate about, as well as playing a big part in bringing NFTs to a mainstream audience.
Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!
Makers of The Metaverse: Rob Stone Of Zen Group On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
