The Virtual Reality Girls group was started as a Instagram and Twitter accounts by Paisley Smith, Ashley Pinnick, & Julie Young. I had a chance to catch up with Paisley and Ashley at Oculus Connect 2 about their efforts to celebrate and promote women working in the field of Virtual Reality. They each talk about their projects in VR, and how they see VRG is helping to grow community of women who are embracing the medium of virtual reality.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.040] Ashley Pennick: I'm Ashley Pennick. I work with Paisley Smith on VR Girls, and I'm also a indie VR dev and a 3D artist.
[00:00:21.294] Paisley Smith: Hi, I'm Paisley Smith. I'm a virtual reality creator, and I come at VR from a documentary background. I did my MFA at USC in the film and television production program. And I spent the last year producing with Nani de la Pena, who's known as the godmother of VR. And she produces amazing virtual reality immersive journalism experiences.
[00:00:44.133] Kent Bye: Great. So yeah, maybe you can tell me a bit more about what is this Virtual Reality Girls, and how did it get started?
[00:00:49.330] Paisley Smith: Virtual Reality Girls is an awesome community of women who create virtual reality experiences. We are all from different backgrounds. Some of us are CEOs, some are students, some people are just getting their foot in the door and we are just, we decided we wanted to create a community of women who we'd love to hang out with in real life and make sure that we see each other at events and showcase each other's work. We're definitely a growing community right now.
[00:01:17.761] Ashley Pennick: Yeah, we're all about just finding people who are making the same great things that we're interested in and trying to grow a community and really have support for each other, help each other learn together, mentor each other, and just share our work and start really talking to other chicks who are out there making stuff that we think is awesome.
[00:01:34.149] Kent Bye: And when did you get started and what type of events have you had already?
[00:01:38.287] Paisley Smith: Virtual Reality Girls started as an Instagram and then grew to Twitter. So we're really, really just growing right now. Sprouting. Sprouting. We've been around for a couple of months now, probably around February is when we first started. You might have seen our famous stickers on laptops around the country.
[00:01:57.497] Ashley Pennick: We also just hosted one of our first sort of in real life, in person events last month with another one of our VR girls. Shout out to Julie Young who's been super awesome helping us with everything. So we're just trying to get into more of a physical space, throw some parties, get people together and start really building our community in the real world as well.
[00:02:17.535] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think that, you know, diversity was an issue here at Oculus Connect last year and certainly had some interviews around some of the challenges around that. So maybe talk about what you see may be different this year or some of the initiatives that you may have been a part of.
[00:02:31.170] Paisley Smith: for sure. I come from a little bit of a different experience because I was working with Nani de la Pena who's such an amazing fierce leader for women in VR and so attending events with her I just you know that was just you know the norm so I realized at some point that not everyone has such an amazing leader with them giving them access to tech and informing them on how to to make everything work and so I figure if we can make that possible for other women more amazing diverse content will exist.
[00:03:02.912] Ashley Pennick: Yeah I feel like coming from an indie dev sort of background trying to make my own games and my own experiences and just like working from the ground up as somebody who's interested in creating VR content it's definitely a challenge to first just get in there have people listen to you and take you seriously especially if you're especially if you're a female sometimes. I feel like a lot of the time it's not a problem but when it is a problem it's a problem and that can be really unfortunate but I think that we're just trying to sort of level the playing field and just be friends with everybody and figure out what we can do to make awesome stuff together and have the same experience like what Paisley had of just everybody being able to feel like they can be a part of something that they care about.
[00:03:39.781] Paisley Smith: I think first of all for me it's when you see a diversity of people and a diversity of experiences you're going to have better content for everyone. So it's just it's more fun ultimately to have more content. So if we can help in any way with that then we're really excited. So that's what we hope will happen with Virtual Reality Girls. So if you are a woman and you're listening to this we'd love to have you join us.
[00:04:04.273] Ashley Pennick: Please. We want to hear from everybody and anybody who's interested in working in VR or if they are working on whatever project that they're doing, like if we can help in any way or just, you know, be there, you know, even if it's just online to just share feedback, like interest, everything.
[00:04:19.421] Paisley Smith: Or introduce you to someone who might have the thing that you're looking to figure out, you know, like we know a lot of people and we're really open to connecting. We would like to see ourselves as connectors mostly, yeah.
[00:04:30.382] Kent Bye: Is there any like centralized city where there's actual like in real life meetups that are happening with this group?
[00:04:35.765] Ashley Pennick: Los Angeles. I'm LA based and Paisley's here a lot as well so we all are sort of trying to work together to start building a really awesome hub in LA that we can then just grow out to and have more people in different parts of the world and different parts of the country really putting together something awesome.
[00:04:52.032] Paisley Smith: I'm actually also in Vancouver so for the Canadian virtual reality girls we have our chapter up there.
[00:04:58.945] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could talk about some of the experiences that you're creating, you know, and people get into VR and they want to create what they want to experience. So maybe you could kind of talk about what you want to experience in VR by also talking about what you're creating.
[00:05:11.287] Paisley Smith: So I have two kind of different interests. I'm a Mr. Rogers Memorial Scholarship winner for New Media from the Television Academy. And I'm really interested in kids and tech. So I'm all about that awesome kids content in VR and very interested in other people's thoughts on that. I know it's a very controversial area. So I'm really interested in that. And so this past summer, I've been conducting interviews with people who I've met in the industry and just asking them about what they think about it and what they would love to see in an ideal world. Like what would they want to see as a kid? So that's one thing I'm really interested in and I've been working on a kids TV show that I would love to do as a 360 music video. It's a lot of like cute kids. songs about imagination and all that. And then on the other side of things, I come at virtual reality from my work with Nani. And so I really, through her work, traveling with Project Syria, for example, we got to see people's reactions to VR. And there are skeptics out there, but after you see so many people run through a project coming out in tears, it changes your perspective. So through Nani's mentorship, I've been creating a project with the National Film Board of Canada called Taro's World and it's basically about a foreign exchange student who lived with my family who was a huge lover of video games and he came from Japan and he was an amazing kid and he lived with my family but ultimately he committed suicide so through virtual reality I wanted to allow the viewer to experience his three worlds. His first world is the real world, Vancouver in Japan The second is his life in our home, which he spent a lot of his time in our basement. So as my brother and him call it, the man cave, where they video game and hang out. And the third world is his online identity, where he was a huge Skyrim player. So he had this amazing fantasy world with a lot of action and adventure. So that's where he really thrived. So I want to show the three worlds and where he felt the most comfortable. basically explore his experience with cultural difference and learning a language and ultimately his depression. So it's a little bit heavy. I'm sorry.
[00:07:19.022] Kent Bye: I think it's great. Yeah.
[00:07:21.944] Paisley Smith: Thank you. We're just in the beginning phases of it, but hopefully we'll have something out later this year for people to try. Yeah.
[00:07:30.333] Ashley Pennick: Yeah, so I come from VR and like a couple different sort of avenues as well. Different ones than what Paisley's doing, but also kind of the same in a way. It's interesting how we overlap. So my sort of day job is working at an interactive experimental ad agency called Part 4 here in LA. And we do digital media and digital marketing, but we also do experimental experiences using augmented reality and virtual reality. So we've been working on so a lot of different awesome projects some I can't really talk about right now But one that we just finished up was a booth actually for a d23 where we had an augmented reality photo booth That was really really awesome You get to be transformed into characters for one of the upcoming Disney movies that is coming out next year so that was a really amazing experience and we're trying to cultivate more of like a an emerging tech world that is also crossing over with entertainment and advertising just to really start focusing on stuff that we're interested in but also to bring VR and AR to the masses in ways that they're interested in and they don't even realize really that they're experiencing something that's so new and this amazing emerging technology it's more about the content for them than it is the actual technology behind it so hopefully we can continue building things like that. Otherwise I produce my own sort of indie VR games by myself and with my boyfriend with our company and we're working right now on a VR exploration game that I've been producing for about the last year and that's getting ready to launch in January hopefully and we're working on it right now all day all night but it's basically called Dead Bug Creek it's like a VR exploration game that takes place in the rural Sonoran Desert so You play an alien that's dropped from outer space that has to find a mysterious object and you get sort of led along this wild goose chase looking for it and just it's really about trying to find a way to do immersive storytelling and exploration in a medium that can be hampered in a lot of the time with experiences that are on rails or where you don't have much of a choice to be autonomous. And coming from a place of loving games like Fallout, where you can just go forever into the desert and do whatever you want, I just really wanted to replicate an experience where you feel like you have total control. So hopefully when that comes out in January, it'll be something fun people can check out.
[00:09:52.474] Kent Bye: Awesome. And are there other experiences from the Virtual Reality Girls that you've heard of that you're really excited about?
[00:09:58.645] Paisley Smith: Well, you know the thing about our community is that everyone comes from a different background. So some of us have our own companies, some people are in 360 videos, some people are in animation. So everyone has kind of a project that they're excited about. To list them all might take a while, but if anyone is interested in learning more about the Virtual Reality Girls' work, we will be showcasing it on our website and hopefully sending out a newsletter in the near future.
[00:10:23.667] Ashley Pennick: Yeah, and the hashtag virtualrealitygirls is pretty widely used, I think, through everybody, so you can use that anywhere on social media and you'll probably find one of us lurking somewhere on the internet posting about our project, so it'll be pretty easy for you to locate any of us and see what we're up to.
[00:10:39.257] Paisley Smith: Our Twitter handle is VRGRLS, so you can find us there. And that'll lead you to all our other social media sites.
[00:10:48.142] Kent Bye: Great. And just to come back to the children aspect, because I know that Oculus has a recommended age that you have to be in order to use virtual reality. And on top of that, I was staying with some friends and seeing their kids, and the kids really love the TV shows. They're really sophisticated now with how much they just watch them over and over and over again. I'm sure that there is quite a bit of potential for VR in children, but yet also that same type of potential addictive quality where your children has this thing on their face and you can't even necessarily see what they're seeing. So yeah, I don't know if some thoughts there.
[00:11:25.169] Paisley Smith: One of the things I've noticed is that the technology that's really popular with kids It isn't necessarily something that is attached to your face, like the iPad is something that's taken off in a massive way for kids. And for example, there's a virtual reality viewer that you can attach to your iPad. So you don't necessarily have to be something like concealing your eyes. I think that's the fear factor for parents is that you're going to lose your child in this device. I think one of the quotes I will misquote but I'd like to reference is Mr. Rogers, when television was first freaking parents out, he saw it as an opportunity to share and connect with kids around the country. So I think if we look at it as an opportunity rather than as something to be afraid of, there's power for really amazing education, imagination, all those good things that you want your kids to have access to. So I think that's important.
[00:12:12.463] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the things that, I don't know if you've had a chance to try the Toy Box demo yet, but, you know, there's a strong sense of the future of VR being a social component, so there could be some interesting, but also potentially complicated issues with having children in with other children or other adults. Because being a parent these days, it takes a lot of energy, and this can be very isolating, and so any way that you could have interactions with other children with other children, but, you know, even potentially for the parents. Yeah, I don't know if you've thought about that in terms of the content and the social dimension.
[00:12:44.033] Ashley Pennick: Well, I think that as long as the parent is educated on what the technology is and they understand what it's doing and how children access content, that there can definitely be ways that they can use it without having a problem. I mean, I feel like that we're all sort of in this open field right now trying to figure out how all of that stuff works. And it's up to us to really think about all of those problems and try to figure out how we can educate people so they understand that technology isn't the thing that's the demon, you know? Like, technology's not evil. And you really just need to find a way to educate people, I think.
[00:13:20.814] Paisley Smith: Yeah. I will quote my mother right now and say, everything in moderation. So I like to use that across the board. You know, I love social media, but only in moderation. I don't want to be only attached to my phone. I don't only want to be in virtual reality. It's like the special sauce. You want to use a little bit. It's about like enhancing things rather than dousing it and ruining a perfectly good meal. You know what I mean? I just ruin, I'm sorry mom, I just ruined that.
[00:13:48.211] Ashley Pennick: No, you're right, you're right. I think that that's really important because you lose that sense of wonder and then everything just becomes grey and boring. It's like anything else, like you do anything too much, you eat pizza too much, you don't enjoy it anymore. Exactly.
[00:14:00.962] Paisley Smith: So, virtual reality has an amazing potential and especially for kids and I think parents Just don't be afraid. Just try it yourself too. I feel like a lot of people are like, oh, well, that's not for me. Well, why don't you just take a second and just give it a whirl. Try it out. You might enjoy it. Then you can do it with them.
[00:14:21.303] Ashley Pennick: Well, and what's nice is it's becoming accessible. And as it becomes more social, there's potentially the opportunity for parents and children to be able to be in VR together. I mean, it's not necessarily this experience where the kid is putting on this box in their head, and it's the Matrix, and they're never going to get out of it. I feel like there's an opportunity for learning and there's opportunity for compassion and empathy that people aren't necessarily thinking of first. They're thinking of, you know, like a kid in World of Warcraft where he doesn't do anything but like just sit and play games until his eyes bleed, you know, 160 hours a week or something, you know, but that's not the reality of virtual reality.
[00:14:57.167] Kent Bye: Yeah, just going to the toy box demo, it's really clear the quality of experience that you have when you're with another person and they're kind of facilitating an experience. So I could see actually a parent and a child being in VR together and being able to facilitate potentially a really fun and engaging way to learn.
[00:15:13.792] Paisley Smith: Imagine you could play with your parent whose avatar was themselves as a child. That would be crazy. There's so many awesome things you could do. Just think about it. You might actually have a better relationship with your parent.
[00:15:28.219] Ashley Pennick: I think that also you want your kid to be able to understand different contexts, different types of play. you can find all these different ways to interact that you can't do here. It's like the holodeck, anything is possible. You can imagine anything, you can create it. And I think that harnessing that ability to create wonder and imagination in children is super important. And if you can do that together, where you're not just sitting in front of the TV or you're not just sitting in front of the iPad and being like, all right, I'm going to do this, you do that, that's even better.
[00:16:01.086] Kent Bye: Great. So a question that I like to ask all my guests on my podcast is, what do you think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:16:11.528] Ashley Pennick: Well, I mean, I feel like the ultimate potential of any technology is dictated by the people who are creating the content for that technology, right? And I think that as long as we come from a place of like passion and earnest creation, that whether or not it's for kids or it's a shooter where you like kill zombies for five hours or whatever, you know, if it's a movie, if it's a game, I think that what's great is that it can really bring people together in new ways. you know, just like how we can do that with the internet, and it's crazy 20 years ago, not necessarily the way it was, at least not for me when I was little. And I think that finding ways to connect communities in like a more globalized way is a really amazing thing. Building empathy, I think that all of that can come together to really have us understand each other better, and I think that that's the best thing for me about technology is, you know, creating more understanding, creating more connectivity through play, through imagination, all of that.
[00:17:06.122] Paisley Smith: I don't think I could say it any better than that. I mean, it's all about connection and creativity and making sure you're asking questions along the way for me. So thank you so much for talking with us today. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's been great.
[00:17:21.986] 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 Voices of VR.
