Episode 4- Private and public Metaverses  

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Transcript

Find below the transcription of the video from Amit Vyas and Andrew Thomas.

 

Andrew

Hello Amit.

Amit

Hey Andrew, you alright?

Andrew

Yeah I'm good. I'm good. I'm thinking that we're gonna have to have Howard Stern have “Hey Now” like when he comes on and other people have a phrase that they have to say we're gonna have to try and think of that. I'm only thinking of that because I was listening to a podcast with the guys from Saturday Night Live, Dana Carvey, and the other guy called David Spade and they're interviewing people from Saturday Night Live and they had on this week Mike Judge who obviously created Beavis and Butt-head and create this and just things that you know sounds that some of us have things, I think we need to work on that. Anyway, welcome to the - perhaps we can call it the rambling. Welcome to the Web3 Digest. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Obviously we said that we want to try and get back in the swing of things. We had a big whole dive into NFT New York, but I think we want to take a bit of a turn to something that you know is, I'd say a softer landing, um in this web 3 space and that is metaverse. 

Amit

Okay, cool.

Andrew

Go for it.

Amit

Yeah. Look I think we haven't touched on the metaverse much in this series so far so I think I think we need to kind of start to delve into this. 

Andrew

Exactly. It's very apt. The timing is right. 

Amit

Yeah and I think you know I guess just based on sort of media attention and focus and things like that NFTs are getting some love, but I think the metaverse is still getting a little bit more love. 

Andrew

Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a couple of factors associated with that first and foremost, you know, Facebook renaming themselves as Meta and obviously the press that has generated around their focus in their metaverse. Obviously Horizons and we've spoken a bit about some of the Oculus and that there, I think that's obviously, you know, made metaverse more aware to people that perhaps aren't aware of it. And then here, like obviously you guys know where in Dubai last week and a half ago, there was a huge announcement whereby the Crown Prince essentially said that, you know, he wants Dubai to be that kind of focal point for, for the metaverse build and in that sense, you know, allocation of funds, but then also he was talking about 40,000 jobs in this space. And I think some of those, if not a lot of those 40,000 jobs at the moment, we may not even know what they are, you know, so as much as augmented reality, virtual reality - these are not new technologies, I mean, you know, the VR stuff has been around for 20-25 years, but the exposure and the entry point to this is now is now coming down, so we got asked to speak on kind of radio here and talk a bit about what's the impact, what does it mean? And that goes down to the education piece again. So this is a radio show that's a daytime radio show, right? That kind of regular folk listening to not business focus, not more lifestyle driven, you know, and they wanted to explore will tell us, you know, what is the metaverse, what is it out there? So I think that obviously a couple of months ago here, Dubai launched Vara, the virtual asset regulatory authority and launched that in Sandbox, right, which is definitely one of these popular metaverses. 

Amit

Yeah. I think there's a lot of - there's a lot of kind of movement and noise, I think that's happening, especially I think on that local level. 

Andrew

Yeah, definitely. 

Amit

Yeah, guys, I think we're fortunate to be here because Dubai is definitely positioning itself, you know, as a kind of a prominent leader within that and we're seeing that even in some of the global communities that I'm a part of, you know, we've seen that people really kind of looking at Dubai saying, oh it’s Dubai, you know, they really kind of embraced this and I really want to lead from the front which is, which is pretty cool and inspiring, definitely helps. I think the - I guess on a local level, how do you see it playing out here? Is it somewhere that brands should be focusing their attention or is it just maybe the government?

Andrew

I think what's interesting is, you know, at a brand level, I think there’s sectors and industries at the moment that are leaning into it harder than others. Right? So if you look at the kind of fashion industry, um they've really fully embraced that, you know, thinking back to South by southwest, most of the metaverse talks that we went to where they were branded, actively embraced metaverse have been in fashion. So Ralph Lauren in kind of Roadblocks, you know, you got Gucci and Louis Vuitton, all these guys in Decentraland and in fashion district, there's actually a fashion district in the Decentraland where people can kind of go in and have their digital twinning and stuff like this, you know, physical asset, digital asset. So I think that some of - when we looked at it, there was definitely a spark there, but I think what's interesting specifically about this part of the world and we saw this, it made me think about the time that you spoke at South by when we're talking about Instagram and there's no rule book, so what happens here is because there's no rule book um everyone just believes, well I'll jump in on it, right? So you know, I had in the last two weeks with recruitment companies about metaverse, um agricultural companies, government bodies that monitor agricultural and farmers all on metaverse frozen food companies right? Tinned goods company. So as much as globally industry is fashion. And I've had three fashion talks as well as fashion. Everyone is now almost seeing metaverse, and I liken it to social media - metaverse specifically it's like you know okay I've heard about Facebook um what can I do? 

Amit

Right, conversation that's 10 years ago.

Andrew

Exactly now it's metaverse. I've heard about the metaverse, don't understand it, first and foremost I understand what it is, what is it? And then obviously the follow on from that is you know what can I do in it? Right? So I think because of the exposure that it's got in the local press and because of the international heat on the back of it and obviously Meta and and and … all the things on Facebook and everything I think all of that is and in all honesty people can grasp it within usually a couple of sentences. Right? So whereas some of the other things in web three, if we jump into Blockchain or DeFi or NFTs, you do need to think about it and you have to kind of work through some of the processes. Metaverse, I don't even have to tell you where this and then talk to me once you've jumped around in VR chat or you've played you know what do you call it, the saber game, so like that's what I mean.

Amit

But there's still a lot to navigate. It's huge if we go back to those Facebook days, there was Facebook right? And yeah and right now I mean how many, what's that number? 166 different metaverses 

Andrew

That is currently out there in public space. But I mean I've had conversations with 2 in the last two weeks I didn't know it existed, right? I had no clue - and they’re huge

Amit

And there's a bunch of private metaverses. 

Andrew

Yeah yeah there's a bunch of private metaverses. You know you and I went to a session there in South by with a guy from Dell. So one of the other metaverse conversations I had last week was with a company for sales and sales training. So we want to pull people together in the metaverse to train them because we've got them all over the Middle East right? How do we do that? You know how we have a sales event in the metaverse instead of having a zoom call and it's all boring when you’re sitting there. So I think the thing is you're right, you know the difference was 15 years ago that it was Facebook, right? But the metaverse isn't a company, it's a technology um you know, so it's like somebody walking up to 15 years ago and telling me about social media, it wasn't the conversation 15 years ago you're right was tell me about Facebook and how you can use it?

Amit

And I think, I think that's the key difference because it is very different and I think there's a lot of people are saying, oh well web2 is social, web3 is kind of metaverse - well no, metaverse on its own is just so big and the reality is I think there's there's kind of application there for a lot of different businesses but finding that right application and then being able to execute on it I think is what is going to be that that challenge and some brands are doing some really good stuff in there already, I think you mentioned a few, but I mean the reality is is again, you know, we we will be living in this kind of virtual space, there'll be a lot of activity that's going on in that virtual space because it makes a lot of sense for business and transactions and stuff like that. Um so, perhaps it makes sense for companies or brands and within different industries to start to explore. Even real estate agents are really kind of interested in this. 

Andrew

Yeah real estate, real estate kind of, you know, looking at how they can embrace the metaverse and what they can do in that world. I think what you said there, which is crucial, is that you have to look at now, like our kids even um you know growing up in this space, right rob lox and things like that, it's not unusual for them to operate in a digital environment and own digital assets. So, you know, there's a desire and a want to do that, you know, in your adult life, right? You know, and that's I think that's important, that's that's that's the difference. And look, I'll be honest with you, even something as simplistic as a workroom, virtual reality meeting versus a Zoom meeting is vastly different, right? You know, the ability to have your avatar and look and talk to each other and see micro emotions and and kind of things like this, it's big, it does allow a different type of connection. 

Amit

The thing is again, some of those verses that we've seen, which are some of the private ones, even really simple right there saying actually you don't even need your avatar - stick a photo of yourself, you can still get the spatial audio, still exactly network people you still engage with the screen and all that kind of stuff. But I think it's just finding, I think right now, the, you know, I think what brands need to figure out is if they do want to be on, you know, in the metaverse firstly, which metaverse is right, how do they then get their audience and how do they kind of really kind of engage their audience when they're in there and then measuring some level of outcome, I mean, if we go back again to Facebook in the early days, you know, the question was, what are we going to get out? People were jumping in there, but there was no real measure about, you know, that kind of happened afterwards when Facebook kind of needed to justify their valuation. But again, we're not talking about a single entity. So yeah, it's a really kind of fascinating space, but one I think, which is just going to exponentially grow and I think on the back of the local government here, I think Dubai has got a real opportunity to lead the way with this. 

Andrew

I think also as well, I mean to show you how powerful this potential is. I spoke about this on the radio. You know, there was a job advertisement for a tour guide for a particular place in the metaverse. I mean that that's a real job, right? Which seems insane. Um but any time you've got an environment that is fueling the economy, that's fueling jobs is fueling growth, lean back to education, you know, what do I need to study to understand how to do that? I mean these, that's the massive impact. Right? So I think when we talk about this Web3 shift and change, you know, it is revolutionary, right,  in that sense and kind of making huge inroads. I think the thing is as well, when people say, oh I want to be in the metaverse, you know, I want to try to explore the metaverse there is you know that that kind of that base understanding that they do think it's a thing, right? You know and that's that's that's a problem, it's technology, right? So it's not it's not a thing, I can't pick it up and then walk around with it, right? Um you know it's not it's not that, so I think what's interesting about that as well is is that but yeah, I mean so most of the conversations that we've had the last couple of weeks have been around, like I want to be in it, what is it, how does it work? You know? And I think also one of the things that's quite interesting is from a price perspective, it's hugely varied, right? So there's some things you know out of the box straight away, you know that you can jump into you know that we can jump on and start to explore and start to experience um you.You know it is relatively low cost for people to experience it. It's obvious when you're trying to build out the individualized personal services brand experiences, that's when you kind of need that skill set and expertise to pull in. But every single conversation I've had around metaverse, the follow up to all of the conversations I've had is like go and have a look, jump in it yourself, understand it because I think that's another thing you need to kind of jump in back to, you know the reluctance see early on of people jumping on social - that not me, I don't want to - you need to understand it, you need to have a look at it. 

Amit

Yeah, 100%. Cool.

Andrew

Good stuff. Alright guys, we're trying to pinch these at that kind of 15 minutes, so I appreciate you listening, appreciate you watching kind of looking forward to to the next show. So yeah, we'll catch it and thanks so much Amit. 

Amit

Thanks Andrew.