AR Show with Jason McDowall Jason McDowall: Investor | Advocate | Entrepreneur

Alex Westner is the CEO and co-founder of Xander, a company at the forefront of using augmented reality (AR) technology to create innovative solutions for individuals with hearing loss. Xander's product, live captioning AR smart glasses, allows users to engage in conversations with real-time transcriptions displayed directly in their field of vision. This approach positions Xander to directly address the challenges faced by those with hearing impairments in everyday communication.

Before embarking on his journey with Xander, Alex's career was deeply rooted in the audio industry, where he developed a keen interest in the intersection of sound and technology. His background includes a rich tapestry of experiences, from working on audio plugins and contributing to the development of cutting-edge audio technology to running a band, which he describes as a blend of music and business.

These diverse experiences have equipped Alex with a unique perspective on the power of sound and the potential of technology to transform lives. At Xander, he leverages this expertise to drive innovation and deliver solutions that enhance communication accessibility for people affected by hearing loss.

In this episode, Alex shares his journey from a background in audio to developing the captioning solution that Xander builds today. We explore the challenges of deploying AR glasses to real users, the balance of designing a new type of UI, and the profound impact these glasses are having on their users' lives.

Alex also discusses the future of transcription and translation in AR, sharing insights into how this technology could evolve from speech-to-text transcription to speech-to-text translation. Join us as we uncover the potential of AR to change lives and the passion driving Xander to push the boundaries of what's possible in augmented reality communication.

Links From The Episode

- Company: Vuzix - https://www.vuzix.com/
- App: Otter.ai - https://otter.ai/
- Company: Sierra Entertainment
- Space Quest, King's Quest , Leisure Suit Larry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Entertainment
- Company: Orcam - https://www.orcam.com/
- Product: Transcribe Glass - https://www.transcribeglass.com/
- Company: XRAI Glass - https://xrai.glass/
- Company: heARsight - https://hearsight.net/
- Book: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin - https://amzn.to/3Puy9aJ
- Product: Ray-Ban Meta Stories (smart glasses) - https://www.meta.com/smart-glasses/wayfarer-shiny- black-plano-g15-green/
- Product: EssilorLuxottica Nuance (hearing smart glasses) - https://www.essilorluxottica.com/en/2023highlights/nuance-audio/
- Book: Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday - https://amzn.to/4cpITRy
- Podcast: Joel Osteen Podcast - https://www.joelosteen.com/how-to-watch/podcasts

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Zac Duff is the co-founder and CEO of JigSpace, a company focused on making it simple to create and share 3D instructions for anything, or, as their tag line suggests, making the hard to explain hard to forget.

If you’ve watched the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, or seen the demos or device itself, then you’ve had a glimpse of JigSpace when you saw the beautifully rendered Formula F1 car with the animation of the airflow around the wings and body.

Zac’s story starts in Tasmania, where he developed an early passion for 3D and game design. He studied game design in Australia before working in the games industry and beginning to teach digital art and game design. It was in early efforts to use 3D to teach a concept that Zac found the first seeds of inspiration for what became JigSpace.

In this conversation, we go onto discuss:
- Zac’s path from game design to 3D to the discovery and pursuit of "embodied cognition",
- the origin story for the company,
- raising early funding,
- highlights and lessons learned at Boost VC's accelerator,
- explanation of a "jig" and the axioms for building a product and company around them,
- example early customers and use cases,
- the relationship with Apple and being part of the Apple Vision Pro launch,
- the cultural shift in expectations around 3D and communication, and more.

Links From The Episode
- App: [Vermillion](https://vermillion-vr.com/) - VR painting app
- Book: [Dune](https://amzn.to/4bL3ijT) by Frank Herbert. There are 6 books in this series.
- Game: [Gorilla Tag](https://www.gorillatagvr.com/) - VR game
- Game: [Frog Fractions](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1194840/Frog_Fractions_Game_of_the_Decade_Edition/) - Classic Flash game, now available on Steam.
- Blog Post: [JigSpace is in the driver’s seat](https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=mjvi0bc2) from the Apple Developer Blog.
- Product Page: [JigSpace on the Apple Vision Pro](https://www.jig.space/apple-vision-pro)


You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Nils Pihl returns as our guest for a second time on the podcast. He is the CEO and founder of Auki Labs, a company dedicated to revolutionizing augmented reality positioning.

Auki’s technology uses peer-to-peer communication to establish a distributed spatial computing protocol. In this episode, we revisit some of the themes from the first episode, such as the concept of language as the oldest form of augmented reality and Auki's role in enhancing communication through augmented reality positioning.

Nils background as a behavioral engineer specializing in Meme Theory and Memetic Engineering adds a unique depth to his approach in the AR space. A serial entrepreneur, Nils brings invaluable insights and experiences from his previous ventures to his current projects.

During his first time on the podcast, Jason and Nils discussed the unique challenges of positioning for AR and looked at AR from the perspective of memetics.

Today, we first dive into how growing up online influenced Nils' work in memetic engineering and AR. We look at look at AR use cases like retail, gaming, people-finding etc. from the perspective of meme theory.

Nils brings a unique perspective, viewing AR and meme theory as integral to evolving human communication, human ways of being, and our relationship with future AI. We also discuss neural interfaces, living and working in Asia, and more.

Links From The Episode
- Book Summary: [Ender's Game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game)
- Book: [Software Agents (story of Nicholas Negreponte translator)](https://amzn.to/3weTwWF)by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw
- Article: [The Egregore Passes You By](https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-planetary-egregore-passes-you) by Erik Hoel
- Video: [If You're Not The Hero In Your Novel What Kind Of Novel Is It](https://youtu.be/puHHjl77uKM?si=Joe77oPxBmg0Y6xU&t=450) by Terence McKenna
- Video: [The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVOF2PiHnc) by Jenny Nicholson

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Michael Hoffman, or “Hoff” as most know him, is the co-founder and CEO at IQXR, a company solving the hardest problems facing global-scale, enterprise XR deployments, and doing so with an open source approach.

Previously Michael spent nearly a decade working with the Microsoft Hololens team. He was a Principal Engineering Lead at Microsoft for a couple of years, left to be the founding partner of Object theTheory, where he and his team worked with enterprises to leverage AR and VR technologies, often in combination with IoT and AI/Machine Learning. And then he went back to Microsoft for a couple of years to lead the development of the Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) project.

Earlier in his career, Michael worked in software engineering roles at Google, Nike, and several startups.

In this conversation, Hoff describes how 3D visualization, with AR and VR technologies, changes our comprehension of digital information, contributes to the value of having your hands free to interact with the world, and enables better efficiency and better insights.

Within the enterprise setting, Hoff notes it’s relatively easy to get to a pilot and prove value, but it’s really difficult to deliver that value at scale.

We go on to talk about making AR/VR solutions viable within an enterprise setting at scale, including challenges around visual and audio haptics, working both online and offline, and other key bits of plumbing, as well as the misconceptions that many enterprises have about the technology.

We also discuss:- the rationale and corporate strategy for building open source solutions, - the role of AI in accelerating software and content development,- the art of the AI prompt, and- how Apple Vision Pro accelerates the market.

Hoff wraps up by discussing neurodivergence and his own growing awareness and acceptance of the challenges and benefits of neurodivergence for both his children and himself.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.

Links From The Episode
- Press Release: [Microsoft Talent Joins The Mesmerise Group to Drive Growth of Immersive Technology Solutions for the Enterprise](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/microsoft-talent-joins-the-mesmerise-group-to-drive-growth-of-immersive-technology-solutions-for-the-enterprise-301856247.html)
- Article: [What is ikigai and how can it change my life?](https://www.betterup.com/blog/what-is-ikigai) by Elizabeth Perry for BetterUp
- Book: [Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life](https://amzn.to/48pf15s) by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
- Book: [The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers](https://amzn.to/2ZpiQ8m) by Ben Horowitz
- Book: [Ready Player One](https://amzn.to/2X9Eu2t) by Ernest Cline

Yi Xu is the director of XR Technology at OPPO, a leading Android smartphone company that's innovating in AR with their Air Glass product line.

Prior to OPPO, Yi received a PhD in computer science, specializing in computer vision. He utilized these skills as computer scientist and engineer at GE Global Research and CapsoVision, working on a number of projects revolving around 3D computer vision. He then worked as a technical leader at JD. com, shaping the roadmap for their mobile augmented reality research.

Yi then joined OPPO in 2019 as the lab manager of Mixed Reality Lab, and quickly rose to be the company wide director of XR Technology. In this role, Yi remains close to the product and technology as he leads the development of Oppo's AR and MR product lines.

In this conversation, Yi describes his early interest in 3D and computer vision, and how this led to a passion for XR. Yi goes on to describe why OPPO, a major Android OEM, is so interested in developing smart glasses and similar technology as well as the use cases that he sees as killer apps for consumer smart glasses.

Yi stresses OPPO’s focus on design, so we go in depth on comfort, aesthetics, and requirements for smart glasses that consumers will actually wear. We also take a tangent to discuss how generative AI, both textual and visual, might help form the future of AR interfaces. Yi also discusses the massive technical challenges in the way of achieving this vision, and how OPPO is tackling those challenges.

Links From The Episode
- Review: [The Oppo Air Glass 2 are the first AR glasses I could see myself using](https://www.trustedreviews.com/opinion/the-oppo-air-glass-2-are-the-first-ar-glasses-i-could-see-myself-using-4305360) by Lewis Painter for Trusted Reviews
- Article: [The OPPO Air Glass 2 Is Easily the Most Fashionable Sleek AR Wearable on Display at MWC 2023](https://www.yankodesign.com/2023/02/28/the-oppo-air-glass-2-is-easily-the-most-fashionably-sleek-ar-wearable-on-display-at-mwc-2023/) by Sarang Sheth for Yanko Design
- Article: [OPPO pursues tech-augmented reality via MR & Health Science](https://www.ungeek.ph/2023/12/oppos-pursues-tech-augmented-reality-via-mr-health-science/) by Colin Chan for UnGeek
- Press Release: [OPPO Empowers Collaborative XR Innovation with the Launch of OPPO MR Glass Developer Edition for Snapdragon Spaces™ XR Developers Platform at AWE 2023](https://www.oppo.com/en/newsroom/press/oppo-mr-glass-developer-edition-launch-at-awe-2023/)
- Blog Post: [Introducing Smart Glass | AIR GLASS 2](https://communityin.oppo.com/thread/1222179266759491585)
- Press Release: [OPPO Introduces Air Glass, Featuring Creative Cicada Wing Design and Self-designed Spark Micro Projector](https://www.oppo.com/en/newsroom/press/oppo-air-glass/) - about the original Air Glass

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com.

Bobak Tavangar is the co-founder and CEO of Brilliant Labs, a company creating an open-source AR glasses hardware platform and pairing that with powerful generative AI models to help you engage with the real world.

Bobak studied at George Washington and Georgetown universities before completing a graduate degree at Cambridge University.

Bobak is a serial entrepreneur with a core theme running through his entrepreneurial experiences: how to create better ways for people to find and utilize information based on the context of where they are and what’s around them.

Bobak also worked for a while as a program lead at Apple.

In this conversation, Bobak covers a number of topics, including:
- dating advice for physicists,
- finding the essential essence of a product,
- his rationale for developing open source AR hardware,
- the powerful combination of generative AI and AR,
- the lure of pursuing a broad set of use cases vs being laser focused,
- recent fundraising success and advice,
- where the company is going,
- and more.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.