Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:10 Good morning, LinkedIn community. Welcome to the best episode of coffee with Jim and James all this week. All right. Virtual reality. In my mind, delirium, diem, crystals, Holidecks transport beam me up. Scotty. Think of those things I think are those in the future are ready? Wait, James wait. Or is it from the future? If I don't get James to roll his eyes at me, at least once I haven't done my job, James, how are you this fine morning.
Speaker 2 00:00:43 Yeah, I'm just waiting for the first time when one guest hears that intro and just bells. They're like, mom, I'm good. I'm good. I'll just make my own podcast or whatever. Uh, I'm good, Jim, uh, excited for today. Um, we, we have Mr. Mike Christian joining us today from, from the future. That's hard to say from, from the future. And, uh, Mike, Mike and I have got to do a lot of things together. We spoke together on a panel before we, um, we have worked closely together on a partnership that, uh, EWN in front of a future had in the past, but, uh, super pumped to have Mike here today. Mike, how you doing brother? I'm doing great. Great. Thank you. And I love the intro, Jim. You know, what you have in your head is perfect. That's exactly how things are some candy.
Speaker 1 00:01:36 Yeah. It's sometimes scary Mike, but that's a whole nother story, but you know, that's great to have you on today. We really appreciate it. Let's dive in Mike. We've known each other for a while and I know you guys encompassed so much and done so many things. Can you share with our viewers, just some of the highlights where you guys began, some of the history, um, bring it, bring us into your world if you would.
Speaker 2 00:01:59 Absolutely. I'm going to I'll even go back further probably further than you want, but I'll bring it up, bring it up quickly from the past. That's all right. We're going to go, go from the future to the past. Anyway, I was, uh, I was born on a dairy farm in Oklahoma. I mean, out in the middle of nowhere and a farm life's boring. So I lived in my head a lot and I created these virtual worlds in my head and I read a lot. I read the Hobbit Lord of the rings, everything I could get my hands on. And I think that's kind of where all this stuff started. So, um, as I got older, the way to create virtual worlds was, uh, video games. So I got into, I got into video gaming and tare and yeah, worked for Tara and THQ and learned how to program these, uh, these virtual worlds.
Speaker 2 00:02:51 You know, how to do the 3d in real time, starting on Nintendo all the way up to, you know, PlayStation, Xbox, you know, big games, franchises, Terminator, mission, impossible stunt man, even Daffy duck. So, um, I did a lot of the artificial intelligence and eventually I was a tech lead. Uh, one of my, uh, one of the founders is also a tech lead and, uh, we had some art leads, so there's four of us, two artists, two programmers. And we all started, uh, from the future after we got tired of doing games for other people. So we did games for ourselves. And then, uh, we also had paid bills because gaming is a very, uh, you know, a winner take all kind of endeavor. So we're competing with some big companies. So while we lived out our passion, we worked on, uh, worked on mobile apps and became known as, you know, heavy hitters, uh, in, in the, in the area for, for technology.
Speaker 2 00:03:48 And so that's where our name came from. Uh, from the future, we felt like we were just the ones on the bleeding edge of technology and, and, you know, we did, we did bleed a lot, but that paid off because we were one of the early adapters for virtual reality. And we started talking to, uh, energy world net was one of our very first, you know, real customers when it came to, uh, virtual reality training and it's virtual reality training, um, where I realized that along with some of the, uh, some of the other stuff we're going to talk about later in the medical field, these are the things that I feel like are the most impactful things that we can do. So, you know, we went from, from believing, you know, gaming was word out when we realized these virtual worlds could be used to, uh, change people's lives, um, building on, you know, energy.
Speaker 2 00:04:38 Roadnet's been doing this for for many years now. Um, I feel like this is just the next evolutionary step in to what you guys have already been done and just building on top of that and being able to, um, just really reach people in a, uh, in learning at a level that's never been done before with this immersive technology where you're learning by doing and, and, you know, exits and existential learning that call it learning 3.0, we call it. Um, so that's, that's where we're at. And we've been, we've been just exploring virtual reality and then honing in on the training and, and some of the, some of the medical applications, because we really want to do, uh, make lives better. And I think it's, it's a very similar ago, gold what energy world net has. And that's why we have always valued the partnership that we've had with you guys and some of the work that we've done with you. So hopefully that that's kind of it. I brought it, brought it back to the present
Speaker 3 00:05:36 From a small child at a dairy farm. That's right. Well, Mike, you mentioned that, you know, we at UWN, we have a passion for training obviously, and, and innovation that's really of our big focal points. And, uh, that was how from the future and, uh, energy world that really aligned. So, uh, you know, I could, I could tell you to talk about this training and how it's going to change the world and how great it is and how immersive it is. But I don't, I don't know that it really does VR justice. When you start talking about VR and AR and you try to get people there, but honestly until someone puts on a headset or is able to really look at it for the first time and see the impact, I don't think it does it, the justice that it deserves. So, um, you know, I'm pregame of this, Mike said, no, I could just show people. So you've probably noticed we have another guest, um, Mike's PC, wherever, whichever corner of the box. It's not a, it's not some creepy uncle. Um, it's actually Mike's computer. So Mike's going to share a screen and Mike will give you the floor and you can show off some of the awesome stuff you guys are doing over there.
Speaker 2 00:07:01 Absolutely. And you're so you're so right, James, you know, until you actually get inside a headset, you just, you just don't know, it's only once you're there and your brain is, is tricking you and believe you could even be in the, you could be in, like I mentioned, Daffy duck earlier, you could be in a Daffy duck cartoon. If you're in VR, you're going to believe that you're really there. So, um, that's one of the lessons we learned. You don't have to have these perfect photo, realistic worlds to actually engage with them. Um, that being said, so what you're going to see is a filtered version of that. So it's going to be lower frame rate because we are on a, we are on a zoom virtual call. So this is still not going to be the same as actually having your head in a headset, but I'm going to do my best to bridge the gap by describing. So I'm going to let you see my VR hair here sculpted by quest.
Speaker 2 00:07:58 So a lot of our stuff is on the Oculus quest and some of the mobile headsets, but since I'm, uh, broadcasting, I'm using an Oculus rift, which is connected to my PC. So the software that we created supports all the popular VR platforms. And so I'm going to first show you what we do to get VR content in the AR quickly, we can take traditional learning material, whether it's a PowerPoint slides or computer-based training and display it on a large screen, right in front of you. And then down below, we have what we call the VR work workbench. So what we do is once we get the traditional material in, in the form of slides and audio, which a lot of us are familiar with in the training world, we start adding activities on the work bench desk. And I'll show you an example of that. Here's where we're learning, uh, PPE as well as you know, how to, how to operate the VR. And we have these slides over here. You can pick up one of the past slides and it shows you what that is, where you're looking at it. You can throw that back and go back to where we are.
Speaker 2 00:09:16 And let me take you to one of the, uh, one of my more favorite parts it's going to skip ahead,
Speaker 1 00:09:22 Mike, while you're doing that, this just rings a bell to me that, you know, I'm so used to the idea of training safety training at the gas grids, electric grids, whatever the case may be, but you can actually do a lot of soft skills training potentially in something like that.
Speaker 2 00:09:37 Oh, absolutely. We support like three 60 videos. So, you know, sometimes where you need a complex environment or you need to film live people, interaction, you know, the soft trails, the soft skills training is, uh, is, is invaluable. I mean, Walmart does it. Um, and they actually credits some saving some lives. I believe it was, uh, where they had an active shooter situation. I think it was San Antonio, um, somewhere around that area. But, um, but yeah, they'd had soft skills training through VR and it was a much simpler setup. And so this will support that kind of interaction as well as you can see my hands here, you know, I've got, I've got hand grip interactions. I can pick up objects here. We're teaching people just how to interact and grab. And you know, we're showing them the basics at this point, you know, you can progress to the next slide or the previous slide here. I'll show how to use a, you know, PPE. I've got a mirror here right now. I'm just, uh, I guess a half naked, bald blue guy,
Speaker 1 00:10:46 The most racing episode we've had.
Speaker 2 00:10:51 I'll try to get quickly dressed here. Now I'm just a blue ball guy with a safety vest on and gloves. And then we talk about hard hats. There's bricks falling from the sky right now. So this shows you a little bit of what you can start to do. You know, now I'm learning about iron head protection. I've got bricks falling on my head. Obviously I need a hard hat. Let's put that on show, the hard hat, gloves, safety glasses on, and I'm looking now, I'm looking really good, so I can move on. So a lot of that, when, let me say this, this, this tobacco, this is a construction training module that teaches about, uh, mobile elevated work platforms, mutes specifically a boom lift train, and there's five modules. So after we show them how to, you know, talk a little bit about PPE and a little bit about how to do VR, we take them to modules where they learn some familiarization.
Speaker 2 00:11:52 And, and here's a good example. We show all the different types of youths on top of the work work bench while we're, you know, listed up on the slide. So they can, they can pick these up like an, a, like inspect them these right now, these are genie and JLG branded type stuff, and they can pick them up and look at them. So, you know, we teach about familiarization and, you know, and then a lot, most of the rest of the training's going to take place on a straight arm, boom lift. So it's just this guy right here, kind of a generic, you know, a lot of what you learned in this ma in these modules applies to this guy or applies to a lot of them. I'm going to skip ahead real quick. Uh, we do safety training. I'm going to give you another good example of what you can do with the desktop.
Speaker 2 00:12:44 So now I've got VR training superpowers, or I've got a God's eye view of a work site, and it shows, you know, the different hazards, you know, with overhead construction, we've gotta be worried about crushed by course, you know, fallen or ditch that's, you know, that's not good. Didn't take much intuition for God out curbs slopes and other things. And I can actually operate the boom lift, the little boom left from desk. And so we use that mechanism a lot just to do different safety scenarios. And then, you know, there's all the different kinds and you can, you can actually drive and see the results of your actions. So that here's a, here's a high wind condition because these things actually can blow over. Um, you know, if the wind, if they're up high in the winds vol and strong enough. So as we know in Texas, and you know, a lot of States, you know, uh, Oklahoma, Texas, the winds, the winds get pretty strong.
Speaker 2 00:13:40 So let me skip ahead. Um, this is the boom lift inspection module, and I'm going to show you how you can then go to a full blown, a boom lift inspection. So what we have, what you see out here is what we call the infinity room. And the focus is on the inspection, not on any, you know, we don't worry about rocks and bushes and trying to make it too realistic. The fact that we're here and looking at a life-size boom lift is all we really need. So this is all functional. You can see my hands interacting with switches and you know, different parts of it. I could start it. I can move the platform up and down, but the most important thing is I'm looking for inspection problems right now. I see that there is a, a problem with the stickers. I've got an actual construction form for doing inspections, and I can, I can interact with it.
Speaker 2 00:14:35 We've got a, uh, an AI assisted virtual reality forms process to pull forms into the second form directly in. And I can say, okay, safety decals are in place and readable file. So we know that's not correct. At any point in time, I can drop this. It goes back to the platform. I can pop over here. I can look at this. Okay. I can see that's not cool. Somebody is a real litter book. There's probably something about that on here are manuals in place. I can check that work. Okay. Clear debris. That's a fail. So when I'm done, I can hit finished, finished inspection, go back to the desk. And now I've got my inspection results. I've got three screens, every item on the form here, it shows what action I took, whether I answered it or not, or if I answered it failed or correct.
Speaker 2 00:15:31 And then the result incorrect, correct? In some cases not applicable. And so I can see all the results. There's a report button right here. That's more for me right now in development. But when we hook up to our, uh, our, our classroom app, it will pull the reports and I can see how it did. So there's one more thing I want to show you guys before jumping out. So we'll skip ahead. We also, in addition to inspection, we teach you how to operate. And so what we do is every slide we'll go through every single control, as well as, uh, controls. Even though I don't have feet, we still teach you how to do feet by hitting the engaged button and you, your virtual foot goes in because one of the things in operating a boom lift is you have to have your foot on the switch in time, your foot's off that switch, then all operations cease.
Speaker 2 00:16:21 So we train people on that and then we'll put them on a construction site. So now we're getting into a little bit more bigger simulation. So this is an actual construction site in the Dallas Fort worth area. At least the exterior, the rest of it we made up. And what I mean by made up is you see these buildings here, there's three of them randomize the Heights, and then we randomize flags so that you can then operate the boom lift and go. It's basically a capture the flag exercise. So you've got to avoid the hitting your construction dummies. You got to avoid hitting your truck. You've got to avoid hitting these other obstacles. Um, and I have to actually start it and I'm not going to do this right now, but I have to actually start it, get on it, clip in my safety harness, which I shouldn't be wearing, but don't see it at the moment.
Speaker 2 00:17:14 Um, and then, uh, I can drive if I wreck that's an instant fail, but at the end it scores me on how well I looked around, you know, how well I operated the controls and you know, how fast, you know, not, not how fast, how efficient I was grabbing flags. So one quick thing also, as we use construction dummies, instead of real people, because as you know, I mean, you got to take safety serious, right? You can't, you got to realize that this was not a video game in the sense that you can just, uh, you know, three treat life, uh, Cavaliers. So you don't want realistic people getting run over by a boom last, you know, so we use these crash domains to, to get the point across, but not traumatized. Cause they're, you know, you never know who's, who's taking the training. They may have had, uh, someone that they know that was, was injured or killed, um, at a construction site. So you want to be respectful of that thing at the same point. At the same time, you want to communicate the seriousness of it for maybe the people that are new to it. Right. So the, the, the, the crash dummy was our, was our, uh, middle of the road trying to hit those schools.
Speaker 3 00:18:36 Yeah, there you go. There you go, man. That's awesome. Uh, it's been a, it's been a minute since I've seen behind the curtain on this project, you know, on this project and many others, but, uh, it looks awesome. I remember when this was kind of a sketch on, um, on a notepad kind of idea. So seeing it come to life, it's amazing. So kudos on that.
Speaker 1 00:19:00 Yeah. Just sort of feedback from the industry. And I think Mike, you and I might've talked about it before COVID, but, um, I've had many high ranking members of natural gas utilities across the United States say that this is a great environment because it gives newer people or people, um, re going through training or certification, the freedom to fail. And if you fail in that setting, it's a lot better than failing out in the real world. And, you know, the more that they can become accustomed to it, the better, so freedom to fail. It's that, that was a kind of an interesting and very, very, uh, important, uh, phrase.
Speaker 2 00:19:40 Yeah, absolutely. It's, um, it's a card. It falls under the umbrella of learning by doing, which is something we're very fond of saying, you know, in the VR world, especially when it comes to training and education. And I believe in that so strongly, I actually spent a good part of my summer writing in my spare time, writing a book about the subject. Yes. I felt, I felt so strongly about it, that I made a bold statement, which was, you know, how VR will revolutionize training and education. And I don't believe it's a matter of, of if it will happen. It's really more a matter of when. And I think companies like DWTN and companies like mine and, uh, various innovative forward-thinking, uh, thought leaders and clients, you know, it's going to take everybody. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a complicated process, but in the end it's well worth it because it's going to have a tremendous impact. And it's where things are going. And if we want it to happen sooner, rather than later, it's going to take all hands on deck, you know, from educators to, you know, subject matter experts, et cetera.
Speaker 1 00:20:51 Yup. Got it. Two things were, uh, can we find your book in the marketplace? Where can we find that?
Speaker 2 00:20:57 Well, um, I, it's super easy and it's fun. So all you get, if you're on Facebook and you generally join the, uh, from the future Facebook group, you will get a free copy. Okay. If you're on, if you don't, if you don't want to be on Facebook, which, you know, that's very understanding these days. Um, if you want to be on, if you're on LinkedIn, you can join the front of the future group there. If you just hate the internet, but still have email, just, just email me or, you know, we'll, I'll send you a copy of the book. It's more, it's more important that I get the, get the hands. I want to connect with people, which is why I asked you about joining our groups. But it's important to get the message out.
Speaker 3 00:21:43 Is that a real dog or virtual dog?
Speaker 2 00:21:47 That is the Chihuahua. I think it was before we went live, but this is the Chihuahua that rules my life now. And, uh, she is both inspiration and perspiration. The, uh, she's, uh, she's completely deaf and mostly blind. So she's disabled. And she's a young dog. It's not from age. She was born that way, but she is just, she she's like a little Napoleon, you know, she's definitely got that little, little dog syndrome
Speaker 1 00:22:18 If she comes in by make sure you hold her up, come on, you got to get a little,
Speaker 2 00:22:22 Well, she must have, despite being deaf, I think she
Speaker 1 00:22:29 We're getting close to time, but that hits on a subject. I definitely wanted to touch base with. Cause I know you do a lot in the medical field and not for animals, I would say, but for,
Speaker 3 00:22:40 Yeah, it's coming,
Speaker 1 00:22:44 Especially autism with children. I've, I've, you know, I've, I just want to touch base on that. Cause I think that's, uh, very interesting. Can you, can you give us a glimpse of that please?
Speaker 2 00:22:53 I would love to, you know, we, a lot of our businesses is built around, you know, serving, um, industrial markets and, you know, energy and construction and so forth. But our give back is, um, autism therapy. And so we've been actually in the background working off and on for a couple of years on, uh, virtual reality treatment, uh, for kids that exhibit autism. And in fact, we recently won a contest with the Dallas business journal and they awarded a $10,000 as the prize. And I was, I was kind of blown away. I didn't expect to win and there's too many awesome, awesome people in the contest, but, but we won. So I'm going to use that money to go towards, you know, development it's when it comes to VR development on sad to say $10,000 is not a lot of money, but it is enough to really push what we have forward when you combine that with our enthusiasm.
Speaker 2 00:23:52 And so what it is is, um, people are not, I don't want to say kids, but people thought autism have trouble making sense of the real world it's it's complex or sensory overload, you know, facial expression, you know, the whole thing. There's the whole gamut. The whole spectrum. What you can do in VR is create a simpler world, even a cartoon world, because a lot of these kids they'll watch Disney over and over and over a little bit in the anime. And the reason they do that is because it helps them make sense in the real world. So why not take them and put them in these worlds and then we'll watch while they're in these worlds, give them the ability to interact with each other, to learn social skills and cooperate and give them the ability to shop for groceries, give them the ability to do applied behavior analysis therapies, you know, and be able to, um, you know, everything from just identifying objects at one level to actually, you know, performing a job function at another level. And so these are all things that we, we have a lot of fun doing it really. And it really goes back to our gaming roots too, because, you know, we can, we can turn these into games for these kids is kids can, Hey, you're passionate about dinosaurs and within your avatar can be a T-Rex, you know, are you passionate about lobsters? Well, you can be a lobster, you know, and then you guys can talk to each other. So, uh, yeah, that's, that's it in a nutshell.
Speaker 3 00:25:18 So. Cool. Cool. And congratulations. I saw that y'all won that. So that's a fantastic to see Mike, I already know this answer, but it's kind of a bit at this point, so I'm gonna do it anyway, but, um, we're, we're proud to have you here today. One thing I've been asking a lot of our guests is a one question is very simple. You won't even have to train for, we'll have to do VR not, and that's a, do you love what you do?
Speaker 2 00:25:51 Oh, absolutely. And yeah, I think you guys can tell just from the way I'm talking to that, I do, I'm very, I'm almost too passionate about it. I have to tone it down a little bit when I'm talking to people, otherwise I'll just seem like a crazy person, but yeah,
Speaker 3 00:26:08 Not, you know, I, uh, I've got to spend some time with, with your, your crew over there. And I don't even know if you know, you know, my background before I got, or before I was at EWM was actually in technology. So I was a developer for 15 years before didn't do video games or anything cool like that. But, uh, so being around your folks was always fun for me just to kind of feel back in that space again. And you've got a great team over there and now they're doing awesome stuff.
Speaker 2 00:26:39 Thank you. I'm, I'm very lucky there. They're all very dedicated to what they're doing. You know, everybody from, from, you know, business development down to production, to QA, to, to programming art, everybody loves what they do. And they're very, you know, I never have to, you know, yell at anybody to work harder. You know, it's like most times said, Hey, take some time off, you know, or relax, relax a second. Sharpen. The saw sharpen the saw,
Speaker 1 00:27:09 Well, I, I, on behalf of James and I, we can't thank you enough for spending the time with us today. It's been absolutely fun. It's been invigorating, uh, learn something even more and more each and every time that I get a glimpse into your world, I will encourage our viewers to please connect with Mike, uh, follow from the future. Maybe get, maybe get a book by doing so, so, um, learn something. Um, uh, I can't, again, thank enough for all the effort you put into today, Mike. And it really means a lot to us. And thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 2 00:27:42 Um, thanks for, thanks for letting them see behind the curtain too. Oh, absolutely. That was my pleasure. And thank you guys. Any excuse to hang with Jim and James, you know, I mean, I would just, if you guys do that reality TV show where you're locked in a mansion in Florida, I want to be a guest. That's going to be 2020. Well, we'll see how the rest of 20, 20, 21, there might be nice week.
Speaker 1 00:28:11 All right, I'm going to wrap it up again. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you got a, a little bit of a new information out of this. Please connect with Mike follow from the future until next time we wish everybody to stay safe. Have a great day. God bless you. And God bless her industry take care. And we will see in the future
Speaker 4 00:28:31 <inaudible>.
