A Short Conversation with Kris Kolo of the VRARA
What Pokemon GO did, what 2017 will look like for VR and a bit of advice.
Kris Kolo is Global Executive Director of the VRARA. The association is dedicated to the advancement of the industry with local chapters in major cities, connecting leading solution providers with brands and customers. VRARA works with each member company to promote their solutions.
I invited Kris to talk a little bit about the Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Association (VRARA) and how they can help companies and move forward by connecting them with the right names and faces in the industry.
Did Pokemon GO accomplish anything for the industry?
Pokémon Go definitely helped the industry because it helped push AR into the consumer market. I think Pokémon Go is affiliated with AR a lot of the time. What is interesting is its location-based AR, but it’s definitely helping to educate the market and spread awareness. What I would also like to add is a lot of people use Pokemon Go as the famous AR example, right?
However, Snapchat or Snap is the largest AR company in my opinion. They don’t use AR; they call it lens or filters and they have some pretty amazing image-recognition stuff. So, yeah it’s really happening.
How are Snapchat spectacles AR?
So, that’s an interesting story about the whole Snap and the spectacles. I was in Santa Monica when it was announced. It was revealed and I was in line-shop standing for the spectacles. It’s a real phenomenon.
The spectacles have a camera and it just records a video right now. It’s not overlaying anything in your sunglasses yet, however, the video that you can record doing spectacles, then shows up in your App, the Snapchat App and that App already does a lot of AR including Image recognition AR.
I understand, I was wondering: “Wait, why is this being called AR?” For me, it was just a camera on your face.
Yeah. So, a lot of people including myself are referring to Snap, it’s a camera company, it’s an AR company and they did at least five acquisitions for the hardware, the video, for the image recognition, for the AR. So, they have the tools in their playground that they’re starting to put together and this is just the first product.
What’s is the VR-AR association?
The VR/AR Association is the global industry association for VR-AR as every industry, including the gaming industry and the medical industry, have their own professional association. We created the VR/AR Association for the industry to accelerate the market via smart growth. We’re doing that by having chapters in major cities around the world to have that local presence. To work with different companies, institutions in those cities, help them grow globally and also to establish best practices, recommendations, call to actions for the industry to act together and accelerate the industry for all of us for everybody’s benefit.
What does cooperating with the VRARA look like? Lets say I’m looking to open a VR/AR related company and I want to learn more, or my established company is looking to broaden our horizons. What does that look like for you guys?
Yes, thank you for asking. We are a member based association and we’re crossing the hundred-member mark. Even if they are not members, we talk to everybody and there’s over 3,000 companies now that do VR-AR. Start-ups can join us, corporations can join, individuals can join us, institutions, universities can join us. We have a lot of start-ups joining us. A lot of them are in stealth-mode so we help them get introduced to Angel investors or VC’s. We work with a lot of start-ups to promote them locally and globally and then we work with big corporations like Google, Samsung, AT&T to create and promote an ecosystem where everybody can benefit. It’s important for everybody to come together and work out the challenges and call to actions for standards, and guidelines. Every industry, including the mobile smartphone market, has a lot of standards already and best practices. So, we need to have the same for VR-AR.
How do you differ from other member organisations in the industry that are growing, like the New York City meetups?
Good question. We partner with the meetups and every different group to promote their events, and to promote their mission.
We are similar to meetups in that we have local chapters in major cities, 20 chapters so far and we also organise our chapter events. So, in that way, we are similar to meetups but what we find is that meet-ups usually attract more of the hobbyists and our events attract people that are doing VR-AR full-time as a profession. Their companies are already invested or there is a VR-AR full-time position that these companies range from VR-AR architect. It’s amazing how many people put VR-AR into their titles already, over 15,000 in fact in the US alone, when you search on LinkedIn.
What is the process when a company approaches you and says: “We want to expand our horizons, we want to see what our options in VR/AR are.” — What would you do from there?
Brands and retailers come to us to learn best practices, to learn the ROIs and the KPI’s for doing VR-AR, and why should they invest in this now. We educate them, we share best practices and then we connect them with the right company or individual ranging from a consultant to an agency or a vendor that can help them.
You mentioned a few minutes ago that there are a lot of acquisitions in this space. Is it an active thing? Are there small VR companies that are in stealth mode that are being acquired by giant corporations?
Snap, for example, acquired four companies that I know of that some people never heard of and some of these are secretive.
There are over 3,000 companies including 1,000 start-ups many of them are in stealth-mode or under the radar and a lot of them come to us because they need more visibility and more awareness, but eventually we are starting to see this there is consolidation happening.
You see Verizon acquiring VR-AR related companies, Google acquiring them. Even consulting agencies like Accenture and others we might acquire such companies.
What are you most looking forward to — 2016 was the year of VR or so one says. What do you think 2017 is going to look like?
I’m hoping 2017 will be the start of the mass-consumer adoption for VR-AR as it’s a niche right now. The headsets are a niche market. So, I’m hoping the spectacles will succeed and evolve into AR glasses with overlays. It’s starting to happen in the enterprise sector, I’m hopeful and looking forward to seeing the consumer market really happening next year.
What advice do you have for people looking to enter the industry?
Well, first advice I would say is email or call us, talk to the association. We have over 20 chapters in different cities that you can see on our website so we have a chapter president who’s an expert in VR-AR in your local city. So, come talk to us so we can share everything we’ve learned from members in that industry, do your due diligence but also follow your dream and passion and expertise because there is a lot of gaps or holes in solutions and they need to improve to become a holistic VR or AR experience. I mean, AR is not only image-recognition. AR can be audio, it could be touch, it could be using other senses and augmenting the real world using voice or vibrations even. So, there is a lot more to do so definitely leverage your skills and passion.
