UploadVR is a relative newcomer to covering the virtual reality space, but it’s quickly establishing itself as a leading voice in first-person accounts of trying out the latest VR technologies, but also providing a stage for the emerging players in the VR ecosystem.
Will Mason is the editor in chief of UploadVR.com, and he says that UploadVR’s mission is to elevate the VR industry through two different approaches of holding consumer-facing events to evangelize VR to the wider public as well as providing a microphone to VR startups and developers through the UploadVR.com news site.
UploadVR actually started as a VR meetup in the Bay area by Taylor Freeman after the Facebook acquisition of Oculus VR because he wanted to experience VR for the first time. There were over 100 people show up without a lot of advertising, and then UploadVR continued to do more events focusing on promoting and evangelizing VR to the wider public. UploadVR’s first big blowout event featured over 60 different VR demos and was able to bring in over 1400 people attend. Will says that they tried to create an event that had a nightlife vibe and would be interesting to attend for people who don’t typically get excited about technology, and he’s proud to that reflected in a 50/50 gender balance of attendees.
Will started to write about the VR community on the UploadVR site after the South Park episode which featured the Oculus Rift with an article VR getting a South Park Bump, and then a follow-up piece about the customer service team from Oculus making an inside joke referring to that episode by responding as “Steve” to all of the customer service tickets. The articles attracted a lot of attention on Reddit, and so he started focusing on writing more and more articles about the VR space.
Some of the other topics that we discuss include:
- Keys to holding a successful consumer VR event
- Some of the contributing writers including Ryan Damm, Matthew Terndrup, Tony Davidson, and more recently Ian Hamilton.
- VR can only succeed if the VR developers are able to succeed, and they want to help provide that exposure.
- Some of his favorite experiences are being creative in VR like Tilt Brush
- Hardware news gets a lot of attention, and he’s really interested in how VR can be used in education
- VR can undo the damage of what social media has done and can restore the non-verbal body language within our online communication as well as be able to scale better in online social situations.
- Compelling social VR experiences with just simple head movements in Convrge.
You can keep track of different VR events through the UploadVR meetup page and keep track of the latest VR news on the UploadVR.com site.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:11.994] Will Mason: My name is Will Mason. I'm the editor-in-chief at Upload VR. Everything we do at Upload is really meant to try and elevate this industry. It takes a village, and the village really needs a voice. And that's what we hope to be, is that microphone for the VR startups to come up and have a presence on stage.
[00:00:30.770] Kent Bye: And so you have a website where you do news articles, but you also have been doing a number of different events and different activities. So maybe you could talk first about some of the gatherings and events that you've been holding for virtual reality.
[00:00:41.535] Will Mason: Yeah, sure thing. So Upload really started as a meetup. We grew from that space. The story behind it is Taylor Freeman, my co-founder, saw the Facebook acquisition notice and said, I really want to try an Oculus Rift. I've never tried one. So he started a meetup and without any advertising or anything, had 100 people show up and got his first taste and was like, I'm hooked. So he started hosting more and sometime over the summer, he and I met when I came to visit San Francisco and started chatting sort of more broadly. How can we sort of turn this into a way to help the industry? And so we looked at the meetup scene and we said, look, there's a bunch of meetups that are happening with developers and they're getting together and they're showing each other their stuff and they're giving each other tips. It's a lot of padding on the back and it's really good internally for VR. But it's not sort of taking that and turning the mirror outwards to the community and saying hey come try this stuff Experience it there wasn't really a VR meetup group doing that so we sort of went back to the drawing board said let's do that we want to make sure that the events that we do have a bit more of a consumer face and So we started working on this thing that we put on in January, which was a big consumer-facing VR event that we built as this fun night with drinks and DJs and stuff like that. We ended up having about 1,400-1,500 people show up with a 50-50 male-female ratio, which is honestly the thing that we're most proud of. It's difficult to have that happen out in the valley, especially for an event like this. So, you know, that format has been fairly successful. And since then, we've sort of been trying to take that format and work with it in a different ways and try and impact community in as many different ways as we can. And right now, we're actually preparing to do an event at the Augmented World Expo, which will be on June 8th through the 10th. And that's going to be the first Augmented World Expo with a virtual reality track. So that'll be really fun.
[00:02:37.772] Kent Bye: And so maybe you could break through some of the key components of what it takes to kind of really pull off a really good consumer-facing VR event, from everything from the content to the promotion, marketing, and all the other logistics that you have to take care of.
[00:02:50.529] Will Mason: Well, so it's a little interesting. Within Upload, I sort of established this dichotomy within there where I let Nick and Taylor handle most of the event stuff, and I handled the publication. And that's just sort of an effort to maintain journalistic integrity, seeing as how we have sponsors on the other side. It's just as good to keep a separation of church and state. That being said, I did help out with the first event, so I can give a little bit of insight into that. When making an event consumer-facing, it's really important to sort of say, like, okay, what are the experiences of somebody that's never tried VR before, what's going to draw them in? You can't just say, oh, we've got a bunch of headsets together. You need to have something that's more of a nightlife draw, so something that they can say, you know, you can turn to your girlfriend and say, hey, babe, you want to come to this with me? Maybe she's not going to say, oh, VR, yay, but she might say drinks and dancing and fun stuff like that. That sounds awesome. So it's about getting people that wouldn't normally think about technology as a really exciting event through the door. And once they do and they try on the headsets, they're hooked. I mean, we're the VR drug dealers.
[00:03:59.206] Kent Bye: I think another challenge is that a lot of developers are working on their own things. But yet, their experiences may not be the most comfortable, or they may not be the more casual, kind of exciting, sexy type of VR experiences for someone experiencing VR for the first time. And so do you also try to take kind of the best of what's out there and say, hey, here's some of the best experiences that we have? Or do you really leave it up to the VR creators, the developers, to be able to bring their own experiences and then kind of hope for the best?
[00:04:29.579] Will Mason: Well, with the first event, we went with the sort of, let's bring in as many people as we possibly can approach. And then we brought in over 60 demos just of every single make, shape, and form. And that was great, but I feel like it could have been tighter. And so I think going forward, we're going to approach it a bit more curated and sort of try and section it off a bit more into consumer-facing and then also After they've experienced that, like, oh wow, I got to walk through a drift and see space like that, then they can go down and go to the immersive learning demo and see, like, oh, VR is more than just a game. I can learn a language in VR, or I can overcome my fears in VR. All these different sort of applications. And I think once you establish that first sort of, oh, this is cool, then people become more open-minded to that sort of stuff. And I think that's, in my opinion, that's what we really want to open people's eyes to. So I think people, they're like, VR is definitely going to work for gaming, but they don't necessarily think beyond that. And I think that's really important that we start thinking beyond that.
[00:05:39.198] Kent Bye: And so, yeah, tell me a bit about the publication side of UploadVR, like how that kind of first got started and, you know, how you measure success in that realm.
[00:05:48.125] Will Mason: It's interesting. I actually had no journalistic experience going into it and had sort of the thought process that, you know, we just needed something to support the community aspect, something that we're, between events, we were adding some value within the VR space. And so there was the South Park episode that featured Oculus, and I turned to Nick and Taylor and I said, guys, like, I want to write something about this. I hadn't written yet for publication. And so they were like, all right, go for it. So I did, and I posted it on Reddit, and it got, like, crazy attention. Like, it was on the top of the subreddit. And I was like, OK, well, I'm going to maybe write something else because In the comments section, someone from Oculus mentioned something about responding from Steve. And I said, oh, that's interesting. So I contacted them and found out that, yes, in fact, Oculus Support was replying as Steve. So that was the follow-up story the next day, which also grew and got a bunch of attention. So the guys were like well you got to keep doing this and so from there on out like I started writing I think three posts a week and then it turned into a daily post and Now it's you know between one and three pieces of content that I'm writing a day
[00:06:59.974] Kent Bye: And you're also bringing in a lot of experts. Ryan Dam, I know, is someone that, you know, is doing some amazing work in terms of Lightfield and all sorts of really high-tech sort of, you know, beyond what anyone else that I've seen is out there. So talk about some of your other contributors and stuff that you have.
[00:07:14.328] Will Mason: We've been incredibly lucky to have some really talented people come in and Offer to write for us, you know for free right now. I mean we we really aren't ad supported right now We really don't have a lot of stuff coming in for the publication It's really us just really pouring out into the community And so, you know, I've had some people that have come in and freelance a little for us but for the most part it's been all pro bono volunteer work and I met Ryan a couple months ago. He and I were chit-chatting, really connected about VR and he was sort of in a transition period where he just sort of left the job he was doing and he wanted to sort of get his name out there. So he came and he wrote for us and then the next day he says, I just got all these like phone calls and all this stuff, it's awesome, let me keep writing for you. Of course, I'll let you keep writing for you. You're like absolutely killing it and like so it just it started as like a wonderful relationship and then Matt turned rip has come in and he had this idea and this passion for doing a flashback series, you know looking back and hearkening back to the 90s VR creators the people that you know aren't necessarily getting the the spotlight today and trying to Encapsulate the lessons that they can learn that can be applied to Today and I've really enjoyed that series it's been it's been really cool to see that some of the people and hear some of the things that they've had to say and Then also he's written some great other pieces for us as well and then occasionally we have like Tony Davidson came in and wrote about his vibe experience for us and and We like to have luminaries come in. So if I can just get a plug here, if you are interested in writing about VR and have something that's burning that you want to say, contact me. Reach out to me on Twitter, WB Mason, or through my email, will.uploadvr.com. Pitch me your idea. We want to be able to broadcast as many voices out there to the community as we possibly can.
[00:09:11.448] Kent Bye: And so if you were to kind of have a mission statement around the publication of Upload VR, what is the deeper intention of what you're trying to accomplish?
[00:09:18.671] Will Mason: We encapsulate it simply as inspiring virtual reality. But to go beyond that, we believe that this industry is not going to succeed unless the people in it will it to succeed. And so we want to provide a platform for them to be able to reach out to the rest of the world and say, hey, we're here, we're doing really cool things, come check us out. And the more exposure that the industry can get, the better. Because right now, it's so nascent, and there's so many people doing cool things that are just, it's hard to have everyone get the proper exposure. And so, having platforms that are covering exclusively VR, like us, or like RØDE VR, for example, it's really great, and I think it's important for the whole industry.
[00:10:04.965] Kent Bye: And so what type of experiences in VR do you want to have?
[00:10:07.688] Will Mason: Oh man, I love creation in VR. And I think that the best things I've done have been ones where I've had some sort of impact on the world that I've been in. Tilt Brush immediately comes to mind as probably the preeminent experience I've had. And it's one of those things where, as a medium, anything you can imagine, you can create. But giving somebody that doesn't have the development skills, like myself, to be able to go into a virtual canvas and create something is a whole unbelievably new experience. And that's the thing I'm looking forward to being able to do most in VR.
[00:10:47.099] Kent Bye: And in terms of covering the scene of virtual reality, what do you see as kind of like the most cutting edge or exciting aspect of the industry right now to cover?
[00:10:57.255] Will Mason: I mean, obviously the hardware stuff is really where a lot of the attention is going. I think that's a really interesting place to cover, but you can't cover that every day because there's not new news on that every day. I'd say that the way that people are using VR for education is really interesting, and I like to cover that when I can. The only problem is, unfortunately, there's just not enough money going into that side of VR right now, because it's not as monetizable as certain other things. So if you had to ask if there was one thing I'd love to really see happen in VR, it's more grants for virtual reality education projects.
[00:11:40.238] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:11:45.742] Will Mason: Wow, that's a doozy. I think it enables the correction of the damages that social media has done. I say that is if you can imagine like the world has been sort of steamrolled out and like we're flat now That's great. We're connected. You can like instantly connect to anybody, but you've lost so much in that communication 92% of what the communicative acts that we have are nonverbal and all that is lost in your typical online interaction. Even if you do Skype, like, one-to-one Skype, yeah, you can get, like, some really good, like, nonverbal communication from that, but as soon as you add, like, multiple people to that, it just becomes, like, ridiculous. Like, you can't manage that conversation very well, and it's just not an effective medium for communication. So, you look at the way society is impacted because of social media, and I feel like we don't have a strong connection as human beings to one another. We are connected to far more people, but not in a more intimate way. And I think VR will have that same connectivity as digital social media, but I think that it'll also have that same intimacy of face-to-face interaction. And I think culturally, the impact that'll make will be absolutely enormous.
[00:13:07.241] Kent Bye: Yeah, I agree. And having face tracking in VR, I think, is going to be huge. And yeah, any other final thoughts on social applications that you've seen that were able to start to hinge and give a sneak peek of what's to come in terms of having that type of telepresence or social interactions in VR?
[00:13:24.422] Will Mason: yeah i mean it's funny like i get asked that question occasionally and the best most present social experience i had was the most simple one i was in converge this one time and i was just sort of shitting around uh chatting with um sean and hayden and this guy comes up whose name escapes me at the moment and he's because he's just a heart avatar with a top hat on and little sunglasses. And he just starts chatting with me. And we ended up having this 30-minute long conversation about some random business thing. And halfway through it, I looked at him and I was like, dude, I just completely forgot I was talking to a heart with a top hat on. I was so immersed in the conversation and it felt so natural. Just having that little head bobbing movement translated in there was enormous. And once we get past sort of like the Uncanny Valley aspects and other things, that'll be great, but we don't actually have to. And that's what Converge showed us, like, and showed me. And, like, you go into alt space and you can, like, fist-bump somebody. Like, that was awesome. I fist-bumped Simon and Bruce, like, and I was just like, dude, that was really cool. You know, love to have the haptic feedback on that, but, you know, coming at some point, I'm sure. But yeah, I think that there's a lot of really promising stuff coming out of the social space. I'm really excited to see it develop. OK, great. Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much.
[00:14:52.931] Kent Bye: And thank you for listening. If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voicesofvr.
