The first wave of digital is going by where
people have essentially been focused on digitizing
what they already had.
So you have newspapers online and radio online
and TV online.
And a lot of people first thought well, that’s
it.
And now they realize that’s just the first
part.
And now it means starting to do things online
that you otherwise would not be able to do
offline.
And that’s what a lot of companies are discovering
now.
The ones that are the incumbents in the offline
world are just starting to discover that that’s
just the first part of being online is being
digital.
And now we’re getting into the piece where
it’s about being connected.
Being connected in a way that you otherwise
wouldn’t be able to be connected.
Being able to connect to individual people.
So in media connecting with the people formerly
known as the audience.
But you can take that into education and you
can connect with the people formerly known
as students.
Or you can connect with the people formerly
known as patients because the technology exists
now to be able to engage with individuals
and also get the massive amounts of data that
come from that.
So that’s a significant shift that’s occurring
right now.
Some of the immersive video, 360 video experience
that we’ve done have been of Syrian refugee
camps so that you get more of a visceral feeling
for what that feels like, what it looks like
by being able – and by the way it’s not
just the video.
The sound being able to get 360 sound so that
when you turn your head you hear things in
a different way.
So that experience has to come together.
And that is much richer, has much more information
packed in it which gives you more context
for the story, right.
Now let’s not forget that whether it’s
straight linear video or VR oftentimes you’re
still trying to tell a story.
It isn’t just visiting the Grand Canyon
and being in your living room but you’re
in the Grand Canyon and you’re looking around.
That’s not a particular story.
But when you’re doing journalism about hey
what does life in a refugee look like.
There’s a narrative there.
There’s a story.
And so being able to immerse yourself adds
more texture, more richness to that experience.
But still you have to do it in such a way
that it doesn’t detract from being able
to pick up the story.
And that’s where I think this is tricky
because I think that the technology is ahead
of the storytelling around it.
Because I think storytellers still feel more
comfortable in tight linear narrative, right.
They’ve already written a script and they’re
just out there to shoot things according to
the script, right.
Versus being able to open that up and then
how do you do that while maintaining the storylines
that you want to provide.
People are still figuring that out.
The example I give to folks is like when Grand
Theft Auto came out, you know, as a video
game.
And it wasn’t just a set of missions that
you progress through but they created a world
and you can roam freely throughout the world
and that world was then loosely coupled to
these missions.
So sometimes you were just roaming around
experiencing what that was about and then
you’d go back into mission progression mode,
then you’d jump out.
And I actually think that’s the way that
we operate.
You know we’re not always in transactional
mode.
We’re transacting, we’re progressing and
then we’re experiencing everything around
us.
And I think that’s what VR, 360 video gives
us the opportunity to do.
