Here’s my interview with Sonia Haskins, Head of Programming at Augmented World Expo, that was conducted on Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, CA. This is part 2 of 2 of my conversations with Haskins, you can see part 1 from 2023 here. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling in the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing on my series of AWE past and present, today's episode is with a brief conversation I had with Sonia Haskins, the head of programming of AWE. this past year of 2025, just to get a sense of what's happening in this year's program, how she starts to make sense of what's happening. Also, generally her sense of, is it growing? Is it getting smaller? A lot of people, when they go to AWE, they'll see the audience and like, oh, I think it's smaller this year. I think, you know, the overall industry is tanking, you know, kind of these types of extrapolations that end up happening. But I want to just see if she was willing to share some data around what's happening with AWE in terms of a reflection of the larger industry. but also some of the different trends and the ways that she's programming the different talks, but also helping to bring in gaming. And she's a key part of helping to kind of facilitate the community coming together. So we'll be coming all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Sonia happened on Wednesday, June 11th, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:23.427] Sonia Haskins: Hi, I'm Sonya Haskins. I'm head of programming at AWE, and I actually curate all the speakers and the content for the Augmented World Expo and make sure that we have a lot of variety in all the different verticals. I'm in charge of helping think of new initiatives with the team. So this year, for example, we have the Gaming Hub, which is a new initiative. Very excited about that. We brought in Nolan Bushnell as a keynote speaker, and we also have a lot of the big gaming companies and other axiom resolution games shell games many many great awesome speakers and companies represented we also brought in a lot like maybe 60 or so content creators who create content for vr then we put them together and of course the creators also cover all the different things on the expos floor but basically the idea is we all work together and it's a synergy you have to everybody work to make sure that all the different areas are represented and promoted and people have the right connections and networking. So basically I'm a big connector. I'm a big networker. So I try to make sure that everybody has an opportunity or a place at the table, regardless of who they are. And then another big part of what I do is I love our enterprise program. We bring in enterprise end users. And of those end users, you're talking like Delta, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Walmart, Target, people like that. And they speak and or participate in our enterprise VIP program, which allows them to be in a room with no recording or anything. They basically just sit there at round tables. They can go on tours and stuff. But they have the opportunity to network with other enterprise professionals. And it's a great opportunity for them to do that in an environment where it's a no-sales zone, and they can have their questions answered. And we've had fantastic feedback about that. That's something we'll do again next year. So anyway, I just do a lot of different things, try to keep everybody together, happy, make sure all our speaker needs are met, and that we have an awesome program that people want to hear and see, and it'll benefit them and their professional growth.
[00:03:24.102] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:03:28.271] Sonia Haskins: offer me so so for me personally I was a stay-at-home mom and 2017 my oldest son had been deployed to he was getting ready to be deployed Afghanistan and literally I was staying at home taking care my kids I had been homeschooling but my children are almost grown at that point and My son said he wanted me to try something called virtual reality. And I was like, OK, this just sounds weird. But I went and did it with him. And I put on that headset. And honestly, it still gives me chills. It just makes me feel my life changed. And I know it. And you have those moments in your life when you know there's just a drastic change. And that's what happened. I thought, wow, there's so much we could do with this amazing tool. And so I bought it on the spot, took it home. I actually, for me, I started playing games in the headset and i initially did robo recall then i switched over to a game called echo arena which is a vr social game i ended up being very good at it started playing competitively oculus began a vr league and in the summer of 2017 they had a competition we could go to i qualified for that competition i was the oldest player the only female player and the only seated player and so they were shocked that First of all, I was a female, because they thought I was a little boy, because my voice was high pitched. And then they found out that I played in a chair. And they were like, well, nobody plays VR in a chair. And I said, well, I mean, I do. And nobody told me not to. So they were very shocked. So when I met all these executives at Oculus Connect 4, Basically, they were all saying, you know, I was an anomaly, very much an anomaly. And I was telling them, you know, you have to realize this is an amazing, amazing tool. Like VR is just awesome. And so if you build it, though, within only your own perspective, let's say you're a healthy young guy. then that's literally the only people you're going to be there. It's not because the other people don't want to be there, but because you're making it in such a way that other people are actually excluded. I'm like, because it's hard for me to play shooter games because I'm a female and I have, you know, breasts and I can't reach the guns. Or if I'm overweight and my things are at my thigh, the objects I need are literally inside my body. And so you can't pull them out in virtual reality. So we had a lot of these discussions. And if I'm a seated player, there are issues where I can't reach things across the room because they expect you to walk across. So we had a lot of these discussions about accessibility and how many more people would use it if we made sure that we build our tools and build the games and apps and things in such a way that anyone who wanted to actually use it would be able to. So I feel like for me, honestly, I love being head of programming at AWE. And I really, truly love my job and working with speakers. But if I had to say one thing that I hope people can remember always would be my legacy, it would be that. I worked really, really hard early on to make sure people were aware. We have people of all different backgrounds, ages, overweight, unhealthy, women, pregnant. It doesn't matter. There's all kinds of people from different areas, types, body types, perspectives that wanted to play. And I feel like my greatest legacy is the fact that I kind of put a face and a voice to that.
[00:06:42.910] Kent Bye: Well, you're involved in both helping to put together the speakers, there's the exhibitors that are here, lots of different companies showing different things, and there's also the audience that's here at AWA. And so whenever I come to these events, people are often asking me, like, what's the story of this moment in terms of trying to distill all these different patterns into some sort of coherent thing that's happening? And so as you look at the different trends of both the speakers and also the exhibitors and also the audience, what are some of the things that you're seeing in terms of starting to put together the story of where the industry's at?
[00:07:13.720] Sonia Haskins: Well, our theme this year is XR is going mainstream. And so Ori came up with that, and I do agree with that. We have so many more builders this year. Like, for example, we normally have around 100 applications for the startup pitch competition. This year we had over 200. And then we have a situation where so many people want to build. You have different companies like Snap and Meta and Niantic. They're creating tools that are making it easier for developers individuals to get into the industry and become builders, which allows them to do things like make apps or tools or games or whatever so they can then create their own businesses. So I think that's part of this whole theme of going mainstream because the more we have those people that are able to follow their dreams and do this, then that can create more opportunities for the consumers who also want to, they're interested in VR and they're definitely, you know, it's growing. We have, and AR too, I mean, we've got all these things, VR, AR, the glasses, we've got headsets. People are interested, they know what it is now, whereas when I started this, I would mention VR or say virtual reality and they would look at me like they had no idea what I was talking about. People know what it is now. So it is mainstream and we have it and we're also getting to the point where there are more more opportunities for anyone who wants to be involved in a business way or simply just to enjoy the technology to do so. Like they can buy a headset where a few years ago it was even difficult to do that. Well now we have affordable headsets and more affordable glasses and stuff. So I think glasses still need to come down a bit. But there are many, many different types of glasses out there. So for me, that's the big thing about pulling it all together is that we have literally this year with everything that's available now, we have reached a new level. Yeah.
[00:08:58.117] Kent Bye: In terms of the trends and speaker, what are some of the different themes that you're seeing? AI seems to be everywhere here, both in the companies and the talk. So just curious to hear some of your thoughts on what are some of the other themes that people are talking about here?
[00:09:10.731] Sonia Haskins: Yeah, sure. So definitely AI plus XR. We had a whole track on that. I'll say a couple different things. One is I always like to plug gaming because I love it. It is growing. We have a lot of VR gaming. The gaming hub that we did this year was our new initiative. It's been absolutely packed. That was fantastic. The enterprise I mentioned, that has been fantastic. We have more than ever before because we have more large companies who are now using XR for training or a lot of it's scaling or building things that they can then test in VR and then implement in physical reality. So that's definitely something that's happened. For the other topics or main themes I'm seeing, AI plus XR, that's for sure something that is being very talked about and also used. You can see it everywhere. If you want to, let's say, build an app or a tool or even a game, for example, whatever you want to build, you can literally use AI and say, hey, how do I write this script? And it will help you write the script. Or like Horizon OS, they have now their new OS where you can go in and create the world and then you can say, can you make it so that the background is full of plants and flowers or whatever. So these things are using AI so that you don't necessarily have to know you've got to do bracket, dollar sign, blah blah blah. And so you don't have to necessarily write the code. And so that's cool. And then the last one I'll mention, just because I had mentioned it on LinkedIn, it's gotten a huge response, and that's immersive video. We have had a lot of interest in that. There's been a lot of talk about it. We have several talks this year, and it's been so popular that I actually, for a spatial video, I'm going to do a separate track, I think, next year on that.
[00:10:53.423] Kent Bye: Part of the discussions I have sometimes when I come to AEWE is almost like the audience trying to read the tea leaves of looking at what they can perceive in terms of the patterns of the audience and this or that, where they are making judgments around the trajectory of the industry. I think we're lacking a lot of data in terms of really understanding where this industry's going and how well it's doing. I know that there's some economic headwinds people are facing. There's lots of different shops that may be closing down in the gaming context. We have the Trump administration having all sorts of really oppressive policies in terms of not really encouraging for people to come visit in the United States. And so I feel like that may have had an impact. But I'm just curious if, from your perspective, if you feel like AWE is on the upward trajectory, if it's stabilized or going down, or just curious if you can share any type of objective data in terms of what you see the state of the industry relative to the data you have access to?
[00:11:45.837] Sonia Haskins: Yeah, absolutely. I think that is a fantastic question, so I'm glad you asked that. One I will say is, if the world weren't burning right now and falling apart, we actually would have been on target for around 6,000 people. I think that everybody knows. I think it's okay for me to share this because everybody's just aware of what's going on. That obviously has affected us. You know, people are a little bit nervous right now to come to the U.S. We've got Canadians who are kind of boycotting, and you've got the money situation just all around the world. So that's a bit frustrating, but I will say I don't know this because I'm not the registrations person and it's not my area, but I believe we are almost at where we were last year for attendance. So definitely not a down movement at all. And I most certainly think that if everything else in the world weren't happening, we would positively be a nice percentage over. So that's encouraging. Unfortunately, I think that from a realistic perspective, we're looking for the next year or two or possibly three. We probably have some difficult times ahead unless some major things change right now in the world. But it seems like, you know, we can't do anything about that. We just have to keep pushing. It's like whenever COVID hit. You can't do anything about things that are completely outside of your realm of influence. And so you just have to have the best attitude you can, keep pushing forward, build what you can, work hard, try to make sure you keep a positive perspective. That's where I think we are again now, the same as we were with COVID, except a totally different reason. But it's the same sort of thing. You just can't give up. You know, the world's in a weird place and people are sad. And so for me, it's just more about if you have a tool or a gift or an idea or a business or you want to play games or build, it doesn't matter. Whatever you're doing in life, pursue it wholeheartedly. Make sure you're seeking joy and then just focus on that rather than all this other stuff going on. Because you can't change those things, but you can change your own little experience for yourself.
[00:13:52.438] Kent Bye: And I know there was a bit of controversy with Palmer Luckey coming here to speak. Palmer Luckey, formerly founder of Oculus, which sold to Facebook slash Meta, now onto Android, which is doing a lot of defense contracting and pushing forward the intersection of automation, AI technologies. There's ways that Palmer is very much encouraging this idea of killer robots in a way. I think in the past, he's very much been about having humans in the loop. There is this history of immersive technologies being funded, both AI and VR, being funded by the military industrial complex and this kind of long association. And so I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on some of the controversy that came up and your reaction to that.
[00:14:31.809] Sonia Haskins: Yes, Kent, so thank you for asking. I will say, first of all, before I answer the exact question, I want to say, for the record, Palmer is one of the best speakers I've ever heard. He is a positively amazing speaker, just putting that aside from everything else. Now, the second thing I want to point out is he literally founded Oculus, and he has founded a company, Andrew Old, that is just two weeks before this event had announced a major deal with Meta. This is incredibly relevant to our industry. We have so many defense-related people in the enterprise program. And so I won't list them, but we have so many defense-type companies in aerospace that we need those types of talks here. It's relevant. People are interested in it. So I think that if people watch his talk, he goes in a little bit to discussing a tiny bit of the perspective. He can clarify it. a little bit better than I would but from my perspective I just want to say whenever we curate talks I try to make the most diverse inclusive agenda that covers all the various topics related to our industry. I do not discriminate if topics aren't necessarily in line with my own personal views or anyone else's. An inclusive event means you're inclusive, period. You don't exclude certain people based on what they think. And so anyway, yeah, there was a little bit of controversy, but it's one of those things where, again, they're also entitled to their opinion. And I always welcome different views, and so if someone wanted to come and do a talk on a different viewpoint, there's a difference in having a talk that presents data or statistics or an alternative versus someone just complaining that somebody is at a place. That is not acceptable. If you want to present a different viewpoint, like today, you're actually doing a talk where some people are going to be presenting different viewpoints and having a Socratic debate, that's appropriate. And if people want to just complain about stuff, they're more than welcome to do that. But I can't act on that because everybody's entitled to their opinion. And many, many people have come up and said they were real glad he was here because they enjoyed hearing his perspective on the meta deal, which is the whole reason he was invited. It's an important and relevant topic to our program at this time.
[00:16:50.407] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think part of my unease of the current state of the world is that we see more and more of tech billionaires that are getting involved in politics and this democratic backsliding and moving into like authoritarian forms of governmental control. And so I feel like there's typically been a separation between like tech and politics, but we feel like in a moment where all those different contexts are collapsing. And so for me, I'm happy to have an opportunity to connect the way that AI's and automating technology and consolidation of wealth and power is also directly connected to all these moves towards authoritarianism and that maybe not something that has been discussed widely, but I think there's a bit of a disconnect there in terms of people feeling a little untethered, all the different chaos in the world right now and how our professional lives and technology can be disconnected from that larger story And I think this issue with Palmer was kind of a collapsing of those contexts again. So the way that the outside world is connected to this reality of our world. So I feel it being here and I'm going to be speaking to it on the panel, but I do want to just put that out there and into the discussion.
[00:17:48.482] Sonia Haskins: Yeah, that's a lovely way to word it. I really appreciate that. And again, I try to be diplomatic about it, but first of all, I agree with you. And second of all, I definitely feel the overlap. I mean, just to be quite blunt, I try to be careful about sharing too much of my personal viewpoints while I'm doing event-specific stuff and just generally to be respectful. But yes, I'm very much not a fan of having our entire lives invaded by anyone in particular, but... billionaires who have no concept of what it means to literally like me live in a trailer where I had no indoor bathrooms for six months because I had to go out in the woods. There's no way they can possibly understand what that's like to live that way. And so like where I live, and where I'm from, my background, I still have a healthy respect for everyone, including them. But I think it's one of those things where I also feel like there's an opportunity there for those people to be around people like me or other people here who don't have that same lifestyle. But yeah, I totally feel like your comments were completely on point and that it is a little bit... nerve-wracking where you have people who are starting to come into your realms and you're just not sure what that means you know I think people don't know what that means and so yeah I don't know I agree with you I don't know what else can be said about that except I have my own views and I just feel like everybody should be able to be represented but that doesn't mean we all have to agree even me I don't have to agree with everybody that's here
[00:19:23.345] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of XR, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality with artificial intelligence, with spatial computing and all those things coming together, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:19:36.044] Sonia Haskins: Wow, so I've always seen the potential as helping humans in various areas, whatever that be. So, you know, whether we're using it now for training or healthcare or whatever. Although I will say, I mean, that's always been my vision. Like, you can play, you can do physical therapy, you can see doctors at home in an actual real-to-real physical immersive environment. Those kind of things, I still see that vision. And because it's happening, it's literally happening. And so I love all that. But I will say in the past year, that I have begun to see more things that are with AI plus XR crossover and it being so easy to build stuff now. I have a little bit of concern with maybe insane people or deranged people, you know, kind of doing stuff where How do we want to make sure that we also have tools in place or plans to not harm people, harm humans? So for example, let's say you put a headset on someone and it has this horrid, scary experience where someone wants to be abused. I mean, this is just an extreme example. But let's say you have a parent who puts that on and says, no, you're going to sit here and do this. This is really extreme. But I'm saying overall, I'm just a little bit also thinking it's so easy now to make stuff and do things. At some point, we're also going to have to see how to mitigate the negative side of what we do. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm sounding bad and negative and trying to explain this because I don't want to do that because I love our field and technology and XR, whether it be augmented or virtual reality. But like with augmented reality, that's probably a better example. That's actually a much better example. You have a society that's moving toward wearing glasses or something augmented all the time and let's say everywhere you go somebody's doing activations and you walk down the street and there's a cute monster hopping out or a scary monster hopping out. I guess what I'm thinking is how do we make sure that the average person who sometimes isn't aware of all the dangers, like my family, they can't even tell you if they get a phone call. They think that Joe Bob from wherever called them and cares about them. Well, no, it's AI and it's trying to get your money. But I think the same thing about AI glasses and stuff and all this. If you're walking down the street, how do you make sure that those kids, let's say growing up, not reality. So does that make sense? Yeah.
[00:22:13.204] Kent Bye: Yeah, for sure. I think that taking into account all the promises and perils of the technology and to equally understand those. So anything else left inside you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:22:23.064] Sonia Haskins: No, that was much better worded there. I could have summarized all that in one sentence. But no, I just appreciate you. And thank you for always doing these interviews with people and highlighting people. You know, we both talked before. Being a journalist, I love the human interest features. That's what I used to write. And so I think what you do is basically human interest features in a podcast form. So it's my favorite thing. It's actually just wonderful. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for letting me chat with you.
[00:22:49.659] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Sonia, thanks so much for all the work you're doing here at AWE and trying to really bring in, expand out all the company and all the participants and, yeah, just doing an amazing job of increasing the diversity and including everyone's perspective. And, yeah, I just really appreciate hearing your ideas and perspectives. So thank you.
[00:23:04.138] Sonia Haskins: Thank you so much, Kent.
[00:23:06.377] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
