BROADCASTS.com

Regular listeners have heard plenty\nof stories from Alan\u2019s numerous adventures at Augmented World Expo.\nIn today\u2019s episode, we go to the source of all those tales, with\nAWE\u2019s co-founder and executive producer, Ori Inbar \u2014 just ahead of\nthis year\u2019s summit. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Welcome to the XR for\nBusiness Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. I am super excited to\nhave our next guest today, Ori Inbar. He\u2019s a world leading expert in\nthe field of augmented reality industry, and he has devoted the past\ndecade to fostering the AR ecosystem as an entrepreneur, advisor, and\ninvestor. He\u2019s the founder and managing partner for Super Ventures\nand the CEO of AugmentedReality.org, a nonprofit that produces\nAugmented World Expo, the top industry conference for AR since 2010.\nTo learn more about what he\u2019s doing, you can visit\naugmentedreality.org and awexr.com or superventures.com. \n\n\n\n\nOri, welcome to the show, my friend.\n\n\n\nOri: Thank you, Alan. It\u2019s\nawesome to be here.\n\n\n\nAlan: It\u2019s so exciting to have\nyou. I\u2019ve been waiting for this episode for so long and I just can\u2019t\nwait to get right in. Maybe can you just give us your first AR\nexperience, and how did you get into this? You know, I watched your\n2019 keynote from AWE again, and put on these these welding glasses\nthat you had back in 2009. You\u2019ve been doing this for ten years\nwithout any reduction in passion. And how did you get involved? Like,\nwhat was that precipitating moment for you?\n\n\n\nOri: So for me, after the\nstartup I was working for was acquired by SFP \u2014 and I spent seven\nyears there \u2014 decided to leave and go back to my roots in startup.\nAnd then I realized that my kids are always stuck in front of a\nscreen, computer screen or playing video games. And on one hand, it\nfelt like we cannot really change the future. But I was trying to\nlook for a way for kids \u2014 and adults \u2014 to kind of interact with the\nreal world, like we did as kids. But by adding some of the things\nthat attract kids and adults to computers and to video games and to\nsocial media and kind of merge it into reality. And at that time, I\nthought I kind of invented something new. But then upon some\nresearch, I realized there\u2019s a term for it, it\u2019s called augmented\nreality, it\u2019s been around for many decades. But it was hidden in labs\nin a few places around the world. So the mission immediately became\nto find a way to bring it to the mainstream, to the masses. And then\nthe iPhone was announced and it felt like finally we have an ideal\ndevice to deliver augmented reality to everyone, because they already\nhave it in their pockets. Of course, from there the path was very\nlong and arduous and still is. But I think we\u2019re starting to see some\nof the fruits in the last couple of years where a bunch of new\napplications \u2014 whether it\u2019s for enterprise or for consumers \u2014 are\nhitting the market and are actually showing value. So it seems like\nwe\u2019re definitely on the path to making it mainstream.\n\n\n\nAlan: My first AWE was three\nyears ago and I remember it was amazing to me, because I went to\nSilicon Valley VR meet-up or SVVR, and it was mainly VR. And then I\nwent to AWE and it was a lot of augmented reality, and glasses, and\nthere was companies there making glasses that looked like aliens had\nbuilt them. And it felt really clunky. I almost had this feeling like\nthis is really cool, I can see where it\u2019s going, but it\u2019s not quite\nthere. And it\u2019s it\u2019s just not ready for the real world, in my\nopinion. But you go back this year and everything is actually,\nPorsche\u2019s using this and Lockheed Martin is using it. Huge\ncompanies not only are done with their pilot phase, but they\u2019re\nrolling it out at scale. So what do you think has hap