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Alan recently discussed immersive learning with his partner in life and business, Julie Smithson, on her sister podcast, XR for Learning. We thought it was a good episode, so this week, we\u2019re sharing it here for XR for Business listeners.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0Hi, my name is Julie Smithson.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0And I\u2019m Alan Smithson.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0And this is the XR for Learning podcast.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0Well\u2026 which podcast are we on? Is it mine or yours?\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0I think it\u2019s mine.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0Yours, so the XR for Learning podcast.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0Yeah.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0I\u2019m going to interview you.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0Yes.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0OK, cool.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0Hi, my name is Julie Smithson, and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. In all of my episodes, I talk about the way that we need to change the way that we learn and we teach, to adapt to the immersive technologies that are being implemented in enterprise and business today. So today, my guest \u2014 my special guest \u2014 is Alan Smithson.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0Hello.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0My partner and husband of almost 20 years. And we\u2019re going to talk about education. So welcome. Thanks for being on *my* podcast.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0Thank you so much for having me. I\u2019m a little nervous, I\u2019m not going to lie. This is an interesting podcast dynamic.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0It really is. We\u2019ve never done this before.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0No, we have not. So I want to ask you questions, because you are the guru in immersive learning systems. So we\u2019ll hopefully kind of dig up where this lies, and what we have to do as a society to really push the needle forward.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0So what I like to do with all my podcasts is start with a baseline technology. Where are we today? Like, what\u2019s going on today? Which is really good question, because it\u2019s definitely different than it was six months ago.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0I would say, in the industry\u2013 I\u2019m coming from the business side of things. What we\u2019ve seen is there\u2019s been a hyper-acceleration of digitization. So in retail and e-com, it has been decimated. People couldn\u2019t go to a store physically, and so everything moved online. And in e-commerce, we\u2019re seeing shopping trends that would have existed in 2030 happen today. This is trickling down to everything, not only retail, but then also meetings. Everybody\u2019s meeting on Zoom these days. Everybody. There\u2019s just\u2013 we\u2019re moving to digital and we\u2019re moving to these things much faster than we had ever, ever hoped to do. Plans of digital transformation that would have taken five years are now happening today. So it\u2019s an interesting time to revisit and relook at what does education look like in an exponential world of digital transformation.\n\n\n\nJulie:\xa0And this is where the skillsets that are now needed \u2014 in enterprise, business, and organizations today to digitally transform \u2014 those skillsets are not being taught in the school system today. So COVID coming in and forcing people to virtually connect online, the education systems were forced to actually be online and rethink how they\u2019re teaching things. But the unfortunate thing is, is that we didn\u2019t get to the point of talking about what we were actually teaching. It was just more of a digital connection for the past six months.\n\n\n\nAlan:\xa0Well, I think since this thing has hit, it\u2019s been really just how do we make the technology work in a seamless way that is comfortable for both the teachers and the students? And to be honest, we\u2019re not quite there yet. My kids