Makers of The Metaverse: Sam Speaight Of VRJam On The Future Of The VR, AR & Mixed Reality Industries
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
You need to be a dreamer. This is a space that’s just beginning to come of age, it’s really in such a nascent embryonic stage right now, and if you’re unable to dream big and imagine a future where this technology is going to transform the possibilities to humanity, then it’s the wrong place for 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 Sam Speaight.
As a leader within the technology and creative industry sectors over the last 20 years, Sam Speaight is the Founder and CEO of the immersive, virtual entertainment platform VRJam, that’s taking live performances to a new reality as it gains momentum across the music and tech industries. Following a recent $2 million round of funding, VRJam announced their Closed Beta Platform Launch, which unveiled a line up of live dance music events and innovative experiences, along with educational sessions with leaders and visionaries from the worlds of business and crypto to further engage the platform into new areas of technology. With core specializations including new business development for creative sector companies and executive management of SAAS and enterprise solutions providers, Sam also brings his extensive international experience in music touring to solidify his strong track record of entering new markets and developing projects in a range of territories including USA, Asia Pacific and the UK, as he takes the global music community into the next realms of the metaverse.
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?
Sure. I grew up as a child of the 80s, immersed in computer games and also I guess more traditional names. I was a huge fantasy nerd and went right into playing Dungeons and Dragons, and this kind of gave me my first understanding of storytelling and narratives and just dreaming, I suppose. As I grew up I became more and more engaged in entertainment culture and as a young guy I was doing things like releasing records and putting on little DJ parties and gigs in weird wonderful places. All these things kind of all coalesced together into my career as it exists today.
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?
The Fight Club novel by Chuck Palahniuk was really impactful for me. Always been a bit of a revolutionary thinker, and the revolutionary spirit of Fight Club really sort of polarized my thinking around sort of individual action. It had a really radical impact on the way that I view the world. I read that book at a time when my world view was really crystalizing in terms of understanding how important it was to take individual action, to try to change the world around you.
The other book that was really impacting for me was Otherland by Tad Williams, which is a series, a trilogy actually, of novels all about a future time in which virtual reality was a dominant force in society. This book had a huge impact on me and expanded my understanding of a possible future in it; even possibly considering what I do today.
Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in the X Reality industry?
I think science fiction broadly inspired my desire to get involved in the immersive content or virtual reality technology space. I’ve always been a futurist, loved to imagine the future, loved to dream about what’s possible in the space of future time and future tense, and bringing to bear solutions for manifesting that vision, a possible vision of future that was defined in some way shape or form by my own understanding of life. That’s what really led me to really want to get involved in developing technologies that can redefine the concept of reality, that allow people to in some way shape or form create their own realities.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began this fascinating career?
In 2020, we created a virtual reality experience for Europe’s biggest music festival, Glastonbury Festival. We pulled out all the stops to create a hyper real simulation of the festival and it turned out to be the most highly attended digital music festival of all time. The experience was so realistic that you could actually hear your feet squelching in the mud as you walked around the festival. Over 4.3 million people tuned into the live stream or attended in VR and we had over 100 music and visual artists perform part of the event. Moderation was a challenge and we had to arrange teams of moderators to roam around the virtual world monitoring what was happening to police hate speech and that sort of thing. One of the people we had to ‘moderate’ was a guy in VR attempting to sell drugs by mail to other attendees in VRl! It was a bizarre moment because this is the exact same kind of antisocial behavior that a security guard might have to deal with at a real festival, only we were having to manage it in a virtual world!
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?
So many funny stories, which one to choose? Hahaha. The first time we took the VRJam platform, the core technology, it was a much much earlier iteration of the tech; much earlier than what exists today. There was a big technology conference in Amsterdam called IBC, the International Broadcast Conference. I had set up a solution whereby we had our technical director, who was present inside our virtual world, and this was a demo. It was basically like a live demo that was made available on the trades store. There’s a booth of one of our partners who paid for us to be there, a partner called Agora, who is still great friends with us today and still works very closely with us to this day, stemming back to 2018. I had a solution set up where we were basically giving interviews to random passers by who wanted to experience our tech, which of course had Agora solution running inside it, and making it available to everybody and anybody who wanted to understand the possibilities for the integration of video streaming into a virtual world which was what the demo was meant to show and prove. Unfortunately, I had relied on the conference wifi in order to run that solution, and it caused total chaos. I wasn’t able to communicate with my technical director, and was kinda a bit of a disaster. We managed to hobble through it, but there were some really crazy moments where I was just sprinting around the venue desperately trying to use the conference wifi to communicate with our technical director who was in an off site location, and was a horrible harrowing start to taking our technology to a public space. That’s the morale of that story, don’t ever rely on conference wifi for a tech demo.
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?
Definitely my co-founder Ivo Slivkov. Ivo is co-founder of VRJam. While I was launching the business, I met Ivo about 6 months after I’d rendered the very very first iteration of our technology which was nothing more than a half working mvp. Ivo had vastly greater experience in the tech space, as I was a bit of a newcomer to software development, and through Ivo’s tutelage, I guess you might say, in many ways through collaborating and cooperating with him I was really able to understand what it took to run a successful software company. Ivo’s had some incredible successes in his past career in the tech space, and I’ve just learned so much from him, and I continue to learn from him as a partner, as a friend to this very day.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Well, we’re about to launch our platform! Launching the consumer facing iteration of VRJam platform in November ’23, which is an incredible milestone for us. It represents the culmination of four years of development and a heck of a lot of blood sweat and tears from our incredible developer team. That solution is going to be a best in class product, and it’s going to enable content creators and brands to exist inside virtual worlds in ways that just haven’t been possible up until now. It’s going to redefine the way that fan experience takes place inside virtual reality and inside the metaverse, more broadly. This is something that I’m extremely personally proud of, something that is really going to set the bar in terms of a new standard for the sorts of solutions in the consumer space.
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?
HTC Vive has a headset coming to market which integrates a computer brain interface, CBI. This is going to be a virtual reality headset that allows you to control what goes on inside VR using nothing but your mind. I believe the intersection between computer brain interfaces, that is, a computer hardware solution that allows the brain to control software, and virtual reality is probably the most exciting technological development in the history of consumer tech. I think these two things coming together, that is where human beings begin to be more fully integrated with software systems, and the incredible power of virtual reality, when those two things combine, it’s going to redefine so many different things in terms of human communication, and just a broad definition of consciousness in digital space. To me it is just an incredibly exciting thing. I’m a huge fan of computer brain interface technology, and I really believe the combination of these two things can define a completely new vision of how human beings create value using software in computers.
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?
I guess the biggest concern is the influence of very large corporations in the space. While we’ve worked very very closely with all sorts of bluetooth tech revs, we’ve been very lucky to have the support of some of the biggest players of the global tech industry. We’re very grateful for that. I think that the traditional extractive business model can pose some very real problems inside the virtual space where you really do have people’s captive attention. I think this is something that our industry needs to be very, very, cautious about, that is, giving access to things like consumer data, and breaching privacy in the virtual reality space has a much deeper implication than the sorts of implications that you might find for instance when that same phenomena arrives in a web browser. The web browser application for those kinds of ills, those negative forces, are already terrible, but they can be magnified greatly in the virtual world, and I think we need to be careful with how we, as an industry develop this technology going forward to safeguard its awesome potential and stop it from being misused by extractive capitalism to harvest data and invade privacy. I believe that the virtual world can be a space wherein those problems are likely mitigated or reduced, and that’s the pathway we need to travel as we go forward in this industry and develop new solutions in this space.
The other problem is a big problem for a lot of folks, and it’s the potential for a sort of addiction to virtual reality experiences. Right now, the hardware isn’t really at a point where the solution or the experiences that are available in these spaces is addictive enough for it to be a serious problem, but that’s just around the corner. I believe in the next five or ten years, the realism and the depth of that realism is going to become extremely compelling and is going to really take a huge spike upward. We need to be very very careful with these solutions, not creating the same kinds we’ve seen online today with things like social media where people become so entrapped in the virtual experiences that take place inside the metaverse that they become negative. This is, again, something else that we in the industry really needs to address from the beginning. That needs to be hardwired in our software and hardware developed to ensure that we walk the path of light, not the path of darkness.
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?
Apart from the entertainment space? There are so many incredible applications for immersive technology outside the entertainment world. One of the most important ones for me personally is distance learning. There’s a fascinating thing that takes place inside an immersive experience and that is that memory retention increases by between 10–12%. Immersive experiences and immersive content create a far greater degree of memory retention then, say, book learning does. Now, this is incredibly exciting when you’re talking about distributing education solutions, particularly to less advantaged amongst us in society. I’m talking about the developing world, receiving access to education in their less advantaged communities, particularly in the global south.
Are there other ways that VR, AR and MR can improve our lives? Can you explain?
Utilizing this type of tech to create more visceral connectivity, such as in education is a fantastic example of one of the many different places and spaces in which immersive technology can create huge benefits for society. Connective-ness, in terms of being able to have a more authentic relationship with other human beings online is another incredible opportunity for the technology space. I believe that there are a whole host of ways that the connectedness of human beings could be greatly magnified through the use of immersive tech that provides value across a whole range of different verticals, whether you’re talking about pure simple human connectedness and friendship or something as mundane as a business meeting or conference. Wherever you find a need for humans to be more connected and for there to be more authentic interaction between them, this is a space within which immersive technology can really create amazing value.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about working in your industry? Can you explain what you mean?
There’s a myth that really pervades the consumer space in virtual reality right now that says it’s the preserve of the wealthy and the elite. If you look at most of the entertainment content creators that have engaged in this space whether your talking about Marshmallow on Fortnite, or Travis Scott also on Fortnite, or perhaps some of you have had Roblox experiences with Lil Nas X, these are all really massive, minted content creators, elite-class creators and entertainment brands. What we as an industry need to get grips with is that this technology can be accessible for everyone and anyone, and this is a huge part of what VRJam is trying to do. We’re trying to provide a solution that gives access to the same kinds of tools and solutions that have been made available to these top tier content creators to anybody and everyone, to democratize access to this technology and create a way for any content creator in the world, be it game streamer or a DJ to get access to the same kind of tools that your Marshmallows and Travis Scotts and Lil Nas Xs have had access to over the last several years. We are aiming to create a way for this technology to bring value to anyone and everyone, not just the elite class.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In The VR, AR or MR Industries?”
A small degree of insanity, haha. Hallucinogenic optimism. When people first started talking to me about the combination of block chain technology and virtual reality being the singular solution with the potential for increasing human connectedness, everyone thought I was mad. You really need to have an incredible degree of optimism to get around the doubters and haters because there are a lot of them. You need to have the capability to really be incredibly flexible, because the industry and the technology are so fast moving. The targets for where the technology is going and where it can create value change every quarter, and you need to be incredibly agile and have the ability to rethink your business model on a whim once every couple of months. Finally, you need to be a dreamer. This is a space that’s just beginning to come of age, it’s really in such a nascent embryonic stage right now, and if you’re unable to dream big and imagine a future where this technology is going to transform the possibilities to humanity, then it’s the wrong place for you.
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.
That would be a movement that is built upon the ideology that we need to understand that a collective good is a prerequisite to the individual good. Right now, society is hardwired to put the individual good first and for that to be the enabler for a collective good to manifest. We’re very lucky to live where we live. I live in a developed nation in one of the most livable cities in the world. In order for this situation, the situation that I am in to continue, there needs to be a widened understanding, a much greater understanding of the fact that there needs to be a collective approach to creating positivity and happiness for everybody in the world. The days of self indulgence, whereby the rights and needs of the individual are all that matter are very rapidly coming to an end. I believe that if we as a species don’t transform our understanding of this, and realize that for me to be good, so must everyone else, that unless that change manifests very rapidly and effectively in the near term, we’re going to face problems the like of which we have never seen before on this planet as a species, and that is a movement in part we’re trying to, we hope to, instill via what we’re doing here at VRJam. There’s a part of our corporate ideology which we call “VR Life’’, which is our charitable fund which is devoted to committing a significant part of the wealth we create through this business and project to creating solutions just like the ones I’ve mentioned, that is solutions that support the wellbeing, the happiness and the piece and positivity of the least wealthy and the least fortunate people in the world today, and if that ideology were hardwired in every major corporation in the world today, the world would be a very different place, a much happier, more beautiful more awesome place for everybody in it. That is a fundamentally important part of what I personally want to do with this business and this project, to really inspire a movement around doing good for everyone and everything on the planet, not just us.
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? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
That person would be Ghandi, but he’s no longer here. Dead or alive? Yea, it would definitely be Ghandi. Going back to what I said a moment ago about inspiring a movement of positive change that embraces a collectivist ideology, Gandhi managed to create the single greatest manifestation of this vision in modern times. He managed to move India into a state of indepence and free India from the control of the British colonialist using a platform and movement based entirely on peace and passivity. He managed to liberate his country without firing a bullet and without any act of violence or anything like the revolution that one might usually think is needed to cause that kind of massive system change. He is, in my personal opinion, the greatest system changer of modern times, and I would love to sit him down and really understand how he achieved what he did with nothing more than peace and positivity to create that change.
Also, Satoshi Nakamoto is definitely at the top of the list. Understanding how and why he or she created cryptocurrency and the expectations that he or she had for social impact as a result of the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper is a kernel of knowledge I would truly prize!
Thank you so much for these excellent stories and insights. We wish you continued success on your great work!
Makers of The Metaverse: Sam Speaight Of VRJam 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.
