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As this episode goes live, Alan\u2019s\naway giving a talk at the XR\nIntelligence conference in San Francisco. A little while back, he\nsat down with Event Director Kathryn Bloxham, to get a sense of who\nwill be there, what there is to see, and where the XR market is as\n2019 comes to a close.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Hey everyone, it\u2019s Alan\nhere, with the XR for Business Podcast. Today, we\u2019re speaking with\nKathryn Bloxham from Reuters Events brand, XR Intelligence, about\ntheir amazing business conference, VRX happening in San Francisco,\nDecember 12th and 13th. I will be speaking at that conference on the\ntransformation of learning with XR. We will also be discussing the\nfindings of their 2019 XR industry report. All that and more, on the\nXR for Business Podcast. \n\n\n\n\nWelcome to the show, Kathryn. How are\nyou today?\n\n\n\nKathryn: Hi, I\u2019m great, thanks.\nHow are you doing?\n\n\n\nAlan: I\u2019m so amazing. I\u2019m really\nexcited for a number of things. One, your industry report is the\nquintessential report on what the industry is actually looking\nforward to in 2020 and beyond. I\u2019m going to be speaking at your VRX\nconference \u2014 we\u2019ll talk about that, and all the great things \u2014 and\nyou also host a number of really informational webinars. So we\u2019ll get\ninto that. But let\u2019s talk about you and how did you end up being in\nwhere you are right now?\n\n\n\nKathryn: Yeah, so I work for XR\nIntelligence, which was actually recently acquired by Thomson Reuters\nunder the new Reuters Events brand, which is very exciting. We speak\nto people throughout the entire year about the trends, challenges,\nsolutions, and opportunities that they see in virtual, augmented, and\nmixed reality. So primarily our audience are end users of the\ntechnology. So it started mostly as people in gaming a few years ago\nand the entertainment side, and gradually is actually getting more\nand more focused on enterprise customers. And then we also put\ntogether various types of content throughout the year. So we do the\nwebinars, industry surveys and reports, as well as three events\nthroughout the year across the US and Europe. And that really allows\nour contacts to keep their eye on the progress of the industry and\nmake informed business decisions about investing in immersive\ntechnologies.\n\n\n\nAlan: Seems to be the perfect\njam for the XR for Business Podcast, as our mission here is to\ninspire and educate business leaders to invest in XR technologies. So\nhaving said that, what are some of the findings of this industry\nreport you guys did?\n\n\n\nKathryn: Yes. So it was really\ninteresting. We\u2019ve done it for the past few years. and this year we\nmanaged to get around 750 people take part. And there was some really\ninteresting patterns that emerged when we looked at the 2019 survey\ncompared with the 2018 survey. So this year, for example, the\nhardware, software and third party content creators to XR have seen\nmuch stronger growth in the enterprise side of that business,\ncompared to growth in the consumer sector over the past 12 months. So\nI guess that\u2019s kind of in line with people moving towards the money\nas people are seeing a lot more money in the enterprise side. And\nthat\u2019s kind of reflected in the fact that consumer adoption hasn\u2019t\nbeen as much as people would have expected it to be at this stage. So\ngrowth is accelerating for enterprise applications, particularly\nmaybe surprisingly in VR. So in 2018, 38 percent said that they were\nseeing strong or very strong growth in VR for enterprise and this\nrose to 46 percent in this year\u2019s survey. So it kind of reflects the\ndemand trends with enterprise end users seeing strong ROI. And then\n93 percent of the enterprise users said that VR had had a positive\nimpact on their b