Sophia Dominguez is going all in with virtual reality, and she talks her journey of making virtual reality a career. She’s the author of the weekly AllThingsVR newsletter, and she has been working as the entrepreneur in residence at the Rothenberg Ventures River Program. She was inspired by M. T. Anderson’s Feed inspired her to get into technology in order prevent a sci-fi dystopian future, and eventually traveled to a number of countries showing people Google Glass for the first time in order to counter the negative press it had been receiving. Sophia is really interested in social VR and she shares her experience of the Toybox demo from Oculus Connect 2 as well as her vision for her own social video viewing experiences using WebVR. Sophia has a lot of passion for the potentials of these immersive technologies, and is making a lot of strategic moves to be involved with VR for a very long time.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:11.999] Sophia Dominguez: Hi, I'm Sophia. I'm currently an entrepreneur in residence at Rothenburg Ventures and I'm helping out with the River class until December. I also have my All Things VR newsletter. So it's once a week I update the community on what's going on with VR and any advancements and like the real focus and like what I really wanted to do and what I've been doing is highlight innovators in this space because I felt like it gives them a voice and it gives them an extra channel for things that they're building, and maybe people that aren't being written about. So I've also been blogging a lot about different things, especially social VR. I was also building web VR stuff on the side, and continuing doing that as I work at Rothenburg.
[00:00:49.301] Kent Bye: Great. So maybe you could tell me a bit about how did you get into VR?
[00:00:52.463] Sophia Dominguez: Yeah. So when I was 13, I read this book called Feed by M.T. Anderson, and it talks about us having a chip in our bodies. And it freaked me out. Basically, the way that the story ends is this one girl who decided to go against the grain because she didn't get a chip in her body when she was really young. And so she wasn't a good investment, according to the advertising agencies that ran the world. And the fact that technology can control our bodies that way, and if we let advertising agencies control our lives that way, I didn't want to see happen. And so I made a decision then that whatever I did, I was going to influence the next generation of technology. And then when I went to NYU, I kept thinking about this topic and ended up writing my senior thesis based around this entire book. And that led me to all the technologies. And then when I graduated, I toured the world of Google Glass. And that was my first experience with augmented reality. And when that kind of failed, I started working at a, well, the experience was amazing and people around the world were super excited about Glass, but just Glass wasn't taking off. So I joined a startup. And then from there, like six months ago when VR really started picking up, I started the newsletter. And we'll not be going back now.
[00:02:06.020] Kent Bye: Great. So what is it about VR that's really drawing you to this technology then?
[00:02:09.680] Sophia Dominguez: I think it's just the next dimension of what we'll be experiencing. It's the next evolution of mobile. It's super immersive. And I think that every time you see someone experience it for the first time, it's just like the most amazing look that they have on their face. And so you know just by that look, because you've experienced it as well, how big this is going to be. It's just a matter of time to get all of the different things right so that we have a consumer version. And I think we're a couple years out from everyone really having VR. But I think that it'll happen. And I'm excited to be a part of it.
[00:02:44.187] Kent Bye: Nice. And so you mentioned social VR. And you had an opportunity to try the Toy Box demo today for the first time. So what did you think of that social VR experience?
[00:02:52.925] Sophia Dominguez: Toybox was probably the most amazing social VR experience I've had to date. When I first put on the headset, there was this person in the experience and he said, hello, and I just kept playing because I was like, oh, this is just an avatar. Like, he's just talking to me. And he was like, anyone there? I was like, oh yeah, hi. And he was like, hi. And I just had this moment, like there's someone standing across from me right now. He's not in the room but I know he's there and suddenly we just started like throwing things at each other and like bouncing a ball off each other's head and I was just like mind blown because I didn't even have to see his face. I didn't have to see any sort of physical features. I just knew that he was there and Toy Box is amazing. I wish it were shipping with the consumer version because I feel like it would turn so many more people to VR, but I'm sure it'll be out soon and I think that the people working in social VR are gonna be influenced by seeing Toybox and everything that they've done with it.
[00:03:47.631] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's definitely thinking about how to create a social experience with other people and how are you interacting with them and how can the either context or environment really facilitate a deeper connection or some sort of interaction that's fun that, you know, in a lot of ways a toy box, you're doing things you could theoretically do with each other, but it's just like, you know, dangerous throwing fireworks at each other and throwing blocks at each other. It's just sort of like a safe environment to do things that would normally be dangerous. But there's also things that you just can't frankly do in reality, like turn off gravity.
[00:04:18.238] Sophia Dominguez: Right, like when he threw a different, it's so hard talking about it just because I want everyone who would potentially listen to this just to experience it. But the man that I was in the demo with like threw a world, like it was like a spherical world and suddenly we were underwater, right? And just the physics of everything started reacting to everything as if we were water. So before when I was hitting a ping pong ball and like it was going all over the place, now suddenly it was floating and everything was floating. And then we went to another world and it was like anti-gravitational and And that was just another dimension of like, wow, this is a whole other world of things that I didn't even think were possible, and now they're possible. And I'm so excited for the future of that. I really do believe that whoever tries it here, and I assume everyone will try it here, will be inspired from this point forward.
[00:05:04.750] Kent Bye: Great. And maybe you could tell me a bit more about what does it mean to be an entrepreneur in residence at an accelerator that is focusing on funding VR companies?
[00:05:13.478] Sophia Dominguez: Yeah. So first they would say, we're not an accelerator. So we're a three month program and we are stage agnostic. So we'll invest in people who are like series A, seed. I'm just starting out and the idea is that VR and like all frontier technologies. So this is like augmented reality a computer vision robotics It's just a really really early stage right now and a lot of people aren't investing in it Rothenburg ventures like prides itself in that like if you come into our program like we will help you be successful in every single way possible because We're going to connect you to the right people, we're going to introduce you to other virtual reality companies or whatever company you're working in. And so that doesn't exist right now and Rothenberg was the first to do it and I think they're going to continue doing a great job. What it means to be an entrepreneur in residence, it's an interesting role for sure. I mostly work with Dylan to make sure that all the river companies are getting everything that they need. We know exactly what they want to get out of the program, all their goals. So my job is to be there for every single company, their entrepreneurs as well, and so I can help make them successful. And then I'm also working on my own stuff at the same time. I think the past two weeks have been really crazy, so hopefully I think things will normalize after Connect and I'll be able to spend more time on that. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, the reason why I'm there is to really help bridge the gap between what Rothenberg can do and then what the companies want.
[00:06:35.798] Kent Bye: And so yeah, maybe you can talk a bit about what you're creating in VR and from the context of what type of experiences that you want to have in VR.
[00:06:42.962] Sophia Dominguez: Yeah. So I started building for WebVR in part because I don't know Android or iOS. And I really believe in Google Cardboard. I was living in New York and barely had access to any DK2s, DK1s. I knew one company with a vibe, but I saw Google Cardboards everywhere. And I was like, all right, maybe I think Google Cardboard is going to be the thing that really takes off. So let me start building for that. And the way to get it distributed to most people is WebVR. So I'm building a player that will work on any browser. or trying to, at least. And from there, I would love for your friends to be able to chime in. So I'm watching, I don't know, a verse experience, or I'm watching a video experience, anything. And I can tell my friend, hey, I want to watch this right now. Here's this link. Let's do it together. And I think that that at least will compel more people to experience virtual reality, because most people are not going to have access to HMDs, but they'll have access to a web browser, and they'll more than likely be able to get their hands on a Google Cardboard.
[00:07:36.861] Kent Bye: I see. Did seeing the toy box demo change your perspective of the potential of sharing a social space with someone and give you any new ideas in terms of what that means to watch videos together?
[00:07:48.275] Sophia Dominguez: Yeah, definitely. It made me think more and more about depth and how important it is to be facing the person that you are experiencing something with. For example, we're doing this interview in person right now, and I'm looking at your face just as you're looking at mine. And that's way more compelling than just being on the phone with somebody or video chatting with somebody. And so what I'm doing is for the browser, and the browser definitely wouldn't be able to support that, but maybe in time it will. And so if I can incorporate those aspects into what I'm doing, then I would love to. So first step is getting it working. But yeah.
[00:08:22.279] Kent Bye: So you traveled around the world with the Google Glass. And so what were some of the reactions that you got? Because in some ways, there was the whole glass hole phenomenon, which was the people wearing this technology that could be perceived as invading somebody's privacy. But wearing something in public like that, you had a direct experience of introducing this technology to people around the world.
[00:08:44.229] Sophia Dominguez: So I think the negative press really that's what got me going because I was like there's no, I mean I was so excited about it and not because I thought that this was going to be the thing that took off and everyone was going to have it, because I thought it was like the first stride that anyone really took and I like applaud Google for doing that because someone had to do it and someone had to fail and like Google did it and they started to get so much negative press in the United States that I was like there's something wrong with this. And so that's why I decided, OK, let me see around the world if people think similarly. Do even people know what it is? Are people going to go up to me and just not know, or is it just like an international phenomenon? So what I found was that in the European countries, I mean, Spain, first I went to Spain, and then from there I went to Paris, London, Berlin. In those countries, Spain was just so enthused about it. They were like, oh, we saw The King wearing it the other day on TV, and that's where most people had gotten their introduction to glass. Otherwise, they didn't really know what it was. They were excited about it, but it wasn't. Anyways, then Paris came, and I was at a tech event for the night. and people loved it. Everyone wanted to try it. I had a line of 50 people who all wanted to try glass and all were really, really nice and thought it was really interesting. London, people were not so enthused. I got more questions like, oh, what are you doing? And so there was just resistance. And then Berlin, it was just not cool for me to wear it. And I really felt that way. But then when I went to Asia, when I went to India, people just immediately looked at me and were like, oh my gosh, I want to use this to help with my DIY projects. I want to use this in manufacturing. I want to be able to take Google Glass and walk through the streets and start mapping where I live. Because in India, they don't really have addresses. So it's like I live in the house next to the red door that's in front of the gas station. And so they saw the immediate potential of just video recording everything around them and then sending it to Google. So then maybe they could use vision data to then be like, OK, we know where the red door is in this town. So that was really fascinating. And I think that I said in multiple blog posts, if anyone wants to build augmented reality, they should go to India, because people are willing to take any sort of technology and really utilize it to make their life better. And then stemming that into VR, I just was in Korea. And the Wi-Fi speeds are like 30 megabytes per second, which is what we need to make VR network streaming work. And so what I've been thinking about a lot is every virtual reality company should be marketing to Korea because they have the bandwidth. They're obsessed with phones. They all have big phones. Samsung is there. Why not? And so just the way that I thought about India as where you should go for augmented reality, I'm now beginning to really feel that way about Korea.
[00:11:19.054] Kent Bye: And because you, you know, had some experiences with what could be called augmented reality, and you've since been moving more in the virtual reality direction, do you foresee, like, in the future that you'll try to do some more things with AR, or are you sort of going all in with VR, and why?
[00:11:33.850] Sophia Dominguez: Yeah, so I think the first virtual reality has to take off before augmented reality can. I think we're going to learn a lot in terms of UI, UX from virtual reality. And as these devices get smaller and smaller, we'll be able to start imagining a world where augmented reality exists. And I believe that the ideal ocular technology is one that has both augmented reality and virtual reality inside of it. So whether they're these contacts, glasses, whatever. Because we interact with the world just because we have to walk in it, we live in it. But then you're going to want to visit virtual spaces and do things virtually, because it's going to be a much better experience than we would get out of AR. So I think that naturally, they will converge. And I want to be a part of everything, from now until AR really takes off, and then the convergence. I want to be in it forever.
[00:12:19.428] Kent Bye: Great. And what do you see as the ultimate potential of virtual reality, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:12:25.292] Sophia Dominguez: So I'm really passionate about the social aspect of it. And like, I think being able to bring people together from all over the world, like imagine this conference that we're all here, right? Like all of us feel really compelled because we're meeting everyone in person. But like, what if that could just exist as like a virtual conference, right? Like can that exist now? I don't think so because like not everything is there yet, but like things like that where you have to meet with your coworkers instead of like going to work, you could like do it from your living room or wherever you want and be able to like interact as if you were in work. And so I think the collaboration aspect is the most amazing part of virtual reality. And I also think a lot about the way screens are. You see people who have multiple monitors because they can't fit everything on one screen, which is me. And imagine you're just working in VR, right? What does that look like? Because the more screens you have, in my opinion, the more productive you can be because you're managing so many things at once. And so VR, you can do that much more easily. So that's the more enterprise-y side, but I think that that also has a lot of potential.
[00:13:26.792] Kent Bye: Great. And is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:13:30.413] Sophia Dominguez: Voices of VR is awesome. Keep doing your thing.
[00:13:34.414] Kent Bye: Great. Well, thanks so much.
[00:13:35.274] Sophia Dominguez: You're welcome.
[00:13:36.895] 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.
