Metaverse Summit: a summary (Part One)

Personal notes and takeaways from the conference

The Economist impact is a powerful global platform that brings together corporations, foundations and governments around strategic business issues, facilitating connections and inspiring business leaders who want to take action and make a powerful impact.

Last week, they hosted their first Metaverse Summit #econmetaverse both #IRL in San Jose (CA) and virtually on the Virbela platform. I had the pleasure to attend both sessions, thanks to Helen Ponsford and Caroline Hunt’s invite.

It was a two day packed with insights, new connections and interesting conversations. I just found some time to skim though my notes and put together a summary of my #takeaways. I will share them in a series of short post. If you wanted to attend but couldn’t be there, here is your chance to catch-up!

Side note: if you are curious but too busy to keep up with what’s happening in the #metaverse for the #financialservices industry, you may want to subscribe to onemetaverse.finance: a weekly “straight to the point” newsletter that helps untangle the complexity and understand the opportunities for this industry.

The session opened with Bertrand PEREZ — CEO of the Web3 Foundation Team.

He pointed out the unpredictable potential of the metaverse and how it may allow to reinvent “the ways to do many things”: from education to healthcare, from entertainment to banking and insurance, changing the way many companies will engage with their customers.

He highlighted some potential issues (health, regulatory, over-centralisation — Web 3 can play a clear role here) and launched the invite to work towards a livable metaverse that benefits the entire society.

The second talk by Alvin Wang Graylin — China President at @Htc was one one of my favourite

The talk helped to set the scene for the day by providing some useful definitions:

• #Metaverse mainly refers to: 3d/XR, Natural UX in cloud, Open and Immersive, Social experience
• #Web3 mainly refers to: crypto/blockchainm, NFT/DAOs/DApps, decentralised, Transactional

The two are separate concepts but they overlap. He debunked some of the common myths about the metaverse (it’s not just VR/XR, it’s not just gaming, is not Digital Twins, it’s not about escaping reality, it’s not just about virtual land and NFTs) and pointed out to the fact that (a) “it’s not here yet” and (b) no single company will own it.

He defined the metaverse as:

An immersive 3d version of Internet powered by AI that will use “natural” XR interfaces for interaction.

He also provided a formula to estimate the Value of the Metaverse, explaining how this is proportional to:

• the number of worlds;
• the number of people in these worlds (with bigger value attributed to those using XR)
• the time they spend in such worlds

#supercool

He then used a powerful analogy of the life of a butterfly, to imagine how the metaverse will transform in the next 10 years, pointing at the fact that only the open interoperable worlds will be able to complete this metamorphosis, remain relevant and express the full potential of the metaverse.

He made some predictions for the coming decade (including):

• a Virtual Economy could enable a more egalitarian society and culture
• a global virtual life-style may help reduce our carbon footprint
• the fact that the metaverse will bring together people across different cultures may help reduce the geo-political conflicts for the next generations
• the realised metaverse will no longer be called the “metaverse” (we don’t call the Internet the “highway of information” anymore :-) )
• - …

He then provided some data showing how the use of VR can boost concentration and effectiveness in learning environments and some studies pointing at *no* negative effects of VR on Vision, Sleep and Fitness.

He closed pointing out that to build a “betterverse” that is a public good for future generations, we need to start acting now on some important fronts including: the need of ubiquitous high speed cloud computing, simple tools for content creation, clear guardrails and policies around security, privacy and users protection, and the creation of industry wide (device and content) interoperability standards.

The following session was a fireside chat between

Joanna Popper — Chief Metaverse Officer at Creative Artists Agency

Jeannie Weaver — VP Retail marketing at AT&T

Eric Shamlin — EVP Global Head of Entertainment at Media.Monks

Moderated by: Sir Martin Sorrell — Executive Chairman at S4 Capital Group

The panel discussed some of the challenges brands face to get into the metaverse and take advantage of the emerging opportunities. Businesses need to take a strategic long term view and start getting ready now by building the connectivity, acquiring the tools and skills that will allow them bridge the gap and develop experiences that resonate strongly with their communities.

In terms of skills, the ideal talent is someone who combines a creative and technical background but also has a clear understanding of the customer (in Eric’s words: “a data geek who can colour outside of the lines and is passionate about clients”).

The panelist also highlighted the importance to start small and scale fast as a way to work efficiently even with limited budgets.

The following panel focused on how the metaverse may change the ways we live, learn, work and play

Krista Kim — Artist, Founder and Chief Creative officer at 0.xyz

Philip Rosedale — Creator of Second Life & founder of High Fidelity (spatial audio for immersive experiences)

Natalia Modenova — Founder and COO at DRESSX (startup leading the digital fashion industry)

Edward Bowles — Global director of public policy for Meta Financial Technologies

Joanna Popper — Chief Metaverse Officer at Creative Artists Agency

Some key themes emerged from the panel.

Getting people in virtual worlds is a challenging task: lonely spaces are not appealing. For the metaverse to be useful and used, it has to be social and engaging for people. Moreover, it has to allow creativity, sovereignty and the possibility to leave a personal footprint (in Joanna’s words: “the metaverse needs to be social, interactive and embodied”).

As such is it important to partner with creators and build engaging stories that deep into people’s emotions (building a creator’s economy where creators are empowered and remunerated fairly is key).

In particular Krista offered an interesting perspective on the subject: she sees the metaverse as a blank canvas for creativity at the intersection of art, tech and science (in particular in the educational and health spaces).

Important building blocks:

• to have a safe and frictionless environments for interaction
• an open interoperable metaverse
• low fees and a stable (non speculative) coin are key to enable a creator economy
• regulation around legal rights on digital asset

This will allow the metaverse to become a place where we can uplift the human potential: a place where people can fully express themselves creatively, be sovereign, leave back all baggage form real world, make new social connections across multi cultural boundaries and foster real peace.

In Joanna’s words:

a place of great belonging and self realisation; a place for communities, voices dreams, ideas to come together

This wraps up the first article in this series

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