My reality
???????? Scott Shillum
Strategic Communications Consultant and Partner at Emperor, Co-founder of The Photography Movement. Mental health campaigner.
I turned 50 last year and can now officially call myself an ‘old git’. But age is just a number as they say and being in the industry I’m in certainly keeps me young. Having just scraped into the Gen X category (born between 1965 and 1980) I now find myself surrounded by Millennial colleagues and in one case a Gen Zedder! This is a good thing as it’s the digital natives and innates who are revolutionising the world we live in.
Gen Z (those born from 1998) now comprise almost 1/3rd of the global population and are already key consumers in the worlds of gaming and music streaming. Soon they'll be key employees and one or two will become the next Mark Zuckerberg. I pay a lot of attention to Mark Zuckerberg because my line of business is video production and he recently said; “I think immersive 3-D content is the obvious next thing after video”.
Now, when Zuckerberg says “I think” he actually means "we’re going to spend untold billions of dollars on the platform for this technology." It started with the acquisition of Oculus VR for $2billion in Spring 2014. Invented by Palmer Luckey in 2010, this technology became a complete game changer when in late 2015 Facebook partnered with Samsung to create the Gear VR portable headset. Utilising the incredible computing power of a modern smartphone along with retina display optics, a hyper-realistic immersive experience became available to anybody with $100 to spare (plus phone). If you haven’t tried one, make sure you do so very soon.
However, Facebook are by no means the only company betting big on this brave new world of AR (Augmented Reality), MR (Mixed Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality). Other players include Google, Microsoft, Magic Leap, Sony, HTC and a little known company called Apple! The implications of this are that in the next few years we will see an explosion in demand for content across all facets of business.
If you would like to know more or have a demonstration of the these game-changing wearables and how they can help you with your communications and marketing strategies, please get in touch.
Senior Freelance Motion Designer
8 年While I definitely agree that VR and AR are making strides that will become part of our future, I feel that they are still the test bed of something that will ultimately become a more portable less cumbersome piece of tech. VR is truly awesome but only with strong computing power which you are currently tethered to, the mobile phone VR experience is disappointing if you've experienced the Vive or Oculus. The Hololens is a true push fowards as you're not tethered and you can freely interact with virtual objects without being closed off to the outside world, but the field of view is incredibly narrow so it's the tech that's still holding things back. I feel it will definitely be the tail end of the next 5 years before the tech catches up with the vast amount of cool development ideas, and who knows when the price will be both accessible to all without sacrificing the quality of the experience. When 5G becomes a standard things will definitely step into high gear as you'll be able to stream a high quality experience to a device that is in no way tethered.
C-level Corporate Communications Leader | Strategic Branding, Marketing & Reputation Management | Change & Transformation | Leadership Coach
8 年Scott, You are right, AR, VR and MR will be definitely game changers, but don't focus too much on the big companies as mentioned. The real difference will be made by the small, start-up companies, who jump into the right niches and develop them to a level where the big once will come in and buy them for a lot of money like FB did with Oculus VR.
Head of Communications and Brand - Philips
8 年Nice article Scott. I Agree that VR and AR are the future of visual communications....our customers and employees will come to expect it within the next 5 years.
Media relations
8 年You're right Scott. The reality is this new reality is here and growing fast.
Commercial & Marketing Director for Criterion
8 年You're never 50?! ;-) Good piece Scott Shillum.