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Verizon\u2019s XR development lead, TJ Vitolo, dreams of a day where he can download an entire TV series in an instant, or visualize info about the entire world with AR glasses, even living in a connectivity dead zone by the beach. In his position, he\u2019s able to work to make that dream a forthcoming reality by developing the technology that will make 5G possible.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Welcome to the XR for\nBusiness Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, I\u2019ve got an\namazing guest, TJ Vitolo. He is the director and head of XR\nTechnology Development at Verizon. Today, he leads the commercial\nstrategy and product execution behind Verizon\u2019s VR, AR and 360\norganization environment. Recently, TJ and his team launched AR\nDesigner, the world\u2019s first streaming-based AR tool kit that allows\nbrands and developers to quickly and easily create augmented reality\nexperiences, with no technical expertise. You can visit Verizon.com\nor envrmnt.com. I want to\nwelcome TJ to the show. Welcome.\n\n\n\nTJ: Hey, thanks for having me,\nAlan.\n\n\n\nAlan: Oh, it\u2019s my absolute\npleasure. I\u2019m so excited to have you on the show. This is like\u2013 all\nthe things you guys are doing, from working with the accessibility\nteam at Cornell Tech, to your acquisition of Riot, to working with\nthe Sacramento Kings, Yahoo! News. There is so much going on at\nVerizon. You want to just give us a high level summary of what you\ndo, and what the plan is at Verizon for introducing 5G and XR?\n\n\n\nTJ: It\u2019s quite dynamic here. You\nknow, the VR space is ever evolving. Teams that do a number of things\nwithin VR here. But specifically you mentioned Riot. Between our team\nand Riot, we manage both of the content and creative end of XR, and\nthat\u2019s Riot. And our team manages the technical\u2013 technology side of\nvirtual reality. So really, my team is focused on building tools and\nenablers, systems, platforms on the 5G network, sort of the\nunderlying side of XR, to help accelerate and grow the adoption of\nthe technology. On the other side, Riot\u2019s all about the product and\nthe creative storytelling around VR, which really brings these things\nto life for people.\n\n\n\nAlan: So you\u2019ve got both the\ntechnical side and then the creative. And this is something that I\u2019ve\nbeen harping on with customers as well, and just the industry at\nlarge: that this industry is no longer about just making products.\nAnd you look at the VC investments and they\u2019re investing in platforms\nand products, but you still need people to create the content. And I\nthink you guys have found that balance with Riot. What do you see as\nkind of the future of how we create this content, is it going to be\nuser generated versus studio content, or a mixture of both?\n\n\n\nTJ: It\u2019s going to be a mixture\nof both. User generation is quite difficult today. One of the\nproducts you mentioned, we launched was AR Designer. And really the\nfoundation for that was to put the power of augmented reality and\nvirtual reality into the hands of even the most common user of\ntechnology. We built this platform initially with the mindset that\nschoolteachers\u2013 and not by any means that they\u2019re simpletons, but\nthe fact of the matter is they\u2019re teaching students, young children,\nand they\u2019ve got to have a very effective way to do that, efficient\nway to do that. And so when we were building this tool, we baseline\non children as the audience, schoolteachers as the user of the tool,\nto produce something that\u2019s really effective. So I think you\u2019re going\nto see as VR/AR becomes more ubiquitous, access is going to be much\ngreater, and more in the hands of users. At the end of the day,\nthere\u2019s always go