Get Excited About 2022! (End of Year Note from Sandy Hammer)
I’m not going to focus this message on 2021 but instead, get excited about 2022 – and talk about the future!
As a technology company, people tend to ask what we think will be coming in 2022. However, technology does not play a part on its own – when we move forward with ideas, we ask ourselves two very important questions. One is, will our customers be able to use it? Can we make it simple? And two, is the market actually ready for something new/different? Once we have these answers, we can then apply the discussions and build the tech to fit the market needs.
However, times have changed. The market is shifting at such an incredible speed that we sometimes feel as though we cannot catch up with development for the demand. The demand as we see it for 2022 will be in areas where giants have already made the decision for many – and we, as well as others, will follow. You have heard the words such as Metaverse, NFT’s, Blockchain, AI, AR, VR, and many others over the last few months. We as a company have already been very involved in many of these so-called new terms. However, these terms are not new, they are just being talked about more often by more people.
Let’s take the Metaverse for example and what can it do for us as an industry. Today the virtual world is being used by absolutely everyone. This virtual world has been introduced to hybrid so that in-person events can connect to the virtual world — which is basically a Metaverse. So why is everyone really making such a big fuss about the word and more importantly, and why are giant brands investing billions and billions of dollars into the Metaverse?
One thing is for sure – we as an industry are demanding experiences, we are not interested in creating 2D flat surface/square boxes to broadcast our content and expect our clients to be happy and fulfilled. A paradigm shift has started to happen. When such a large shift in an industry happens, many things ripple, including large companies that think they can do it best and they are the only ones that can lead the way — But Allseated has been there from the beginning. In 2017, we introduced our “venue on the go” through VR Oculus. In 2018, we then continued to connect clients in a zoom-like fashion with visual collaboration through the venue space. You could enjoy set-up, design, and showcase a space all from your living room. Once 2019 arrived, we had the knowledge and creative talents to bring our technology into an experiential virtual world — a Metaverse!
If the internet is two-dimensional—text and images on flat screens—think of the Metaverse as three-dimensional and multi-sensory (including touch in small ways today). The word “Metaverse” was coined in Snow Crash, a 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson. So the Metaverse is what we will continue to build using EXVO, our virtual technology. We plan for 2022 to expand and bring you only better and more interactive experiences so that you and your clients will actually want to be more engaged. Clients will continue to demand more high-level experiences with faster video and high-quality imagery — we will be bringing Hollywood to everyone who wants an experience!
