Building an XR Vocabulary for Businesses, with XR Bootcamp’s Ferhan Ozkan

XR for Business

English - March 17, 2020 10:00 - 26 minutes - ★★★★★ - 12 ratings
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Code is a big part of what makes XR work, of course. But for most businesses, knowing the DNA of the technology will be less important than knowing how to best use it. XR Bootcamp co-founder Ferhan Ozkan is enabling businesses interested in XR to enable themselves.

Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we're speaking
with Ferhan Ozkan, the co-founder of XR Bootcamp, a platform to teach
professionals how to create VR and AR applications, and support
companies to bridge their skills gap in XR development through an
intensive onsite program, cutting edge curriculum, and industry
renowned lecturers with a focus on industry portfolio projects. I am
personally very, very honored to be on the advisory board of XR
Bootcamp and helping them really develop the future of how
organizations will train their staff on how to build XR technologies.
And so with that, I'd love to welcome Ferhan to the show. Ferhan,
welcome to the show, my friend.

Ferhan: Hi, Alan. Pleasure to be
here. Thanks for inviting.

Alan: It's absolutely my
pleasure. I just want to give you a little bit of history about you.
XR Bootcamp started from VR First, which was an organization bringing
VR labs into universities and colleges around the world. Is that
correct?

Ferhan: Yes. Yes. Back then --
almost four years ago -- we started as VR First. The main mission was
to democratize VR and AR around the world. And you also supported us
on these times, because it was hard to find headsets as a developer,
as a startup. And we actually tried to tackle this problem with the
help of major headset manufacturers - Oculus, HTC, Leap Motion, Intel
-- and they supported us to create VR/AR labs around the world. And
we are quite happy with the impact being created now, these labs are
actually really become big and creating amazing projects. And we are
actually proud to have this network and enable this network. Yeah, we
are now actually around 800 university that we can reach and over 400
startup clusters. But as a lab that we have supported and seeded --
as in equipment and other support -- we reach to almost 52 labs. And
now we see that these labs become actually quite impactful in their
own region to create a regional VR/AR development scene, and VR/AR
startup and clusters, and they are even creating VR/AR programs --
academic programs -- and industrial based trainings.

Alan: Ferhan, when did you guys
realize that bringing this type of knowledge into the enterprise was
the next step?

Ferhan: It is quite interesting,
because we talk with institutions not only in educational, but
government institutions. They reach to us after hearing about VR/AR.
"Can we educate the people in our health institutions? Can we
train the people, the employees that is actually working in the--
airport workers, like on the aviation industry?" And we
understood that there is actually already an initiative happening on
different parts of the world, on different industries based on each
government's or each region's industry focus. And then we decided,
"OK, what we can do first of all to start the VR/AR innovation
in each key destination?" So as I mentioned, seeding the
equipment was the first one. I remember in the beginning of 2017, we
had some kind of survey, and unfortunately for every 51 developer,
there was only one headset in any institution or in a startup
cluster. So think of like you want to create something, but you
cannot even access the VR headset, which is a shame for this region.
So we first of all started this seed equipment program, and then
training programs come afterwards. And the biggest supporters or
beneficiaries were actually the top enterprises in this local area,
from manufacturing to automotive, from aviation to defense indu

Ferhan: Hi, Alan. Pleasure to be
here. Thanks for inviting.

Alan: Ferhan, when did you guys
realize that bringing this type of knowledge into the enterprise was
the next step?

Alan: You've seen a lot of
startups in the industry kind of come-- some of them have come and
gone. But what are you seeing as the major trend as we enter into
kind of 2020? VR and AR are starting to pick up steam. Companies are
starting to ask for-- what are you seeing from startups now, that you
weren't seeing a few years ago, that is really trending?

Ferhan: Yeah. I mean, this is a
question that I can answer differently in every year, because of the
rapid, crazy, evolving shape of the industry. But when we look ahead
-- 2020 and 2021 -- what I see personally is the startups are usually
creating platforms as a service. They just try to create their own
businesses based on their maybe previous experiences, their previous
business strategies. But they also see that it is not working like
that, especially on B2C side. And what I have realized that there are
many agencies, solution providers and startups who have started as a
B2C product. Most of them are pivoted to enterprise application,
because they see that there is already a market there that they can
benefit from. At least to make a proof of concept for the enterprise
and prove themselves there, and then skip to the B2C site whenever
the mass adoption starts. But on the other side, from an enterprise
perspective, most of them already need solution providers and they
are not-- maybe they were looking for some kind of normal
advertisement agency. They were approaching to their advertisement
agency, their usual film producer, production agency to create VR/AR
experiences. But they understand that if they want more than a
glorified POC, they have to actually reach the real VR/AR solution
provider or startup. So we are right now seeing the clear distinction
between the advertisement agency based VR/AR solution providers, and
the enterprise based VR/AR solution providers. Especially in Europe,
in Germany, what we have observed, the most successful startups -- or
startup leaders, let's say -- is coming directly from the heart of
the enterprise, because they know how these big corporates work. They
know all the old-fashioned -- maybe you can call it --
infrastructures work. And they are also aware that they have to find
a solution based on these IT infrastructures, without changing so
much on the IT infrastructures. Otherwise, it would create a lot of
decision making process longer or it will make a lot of commitment
from the corporate side, which is not easy from a startup
perspective. So I have realized that the startups with this kind of
enterprise knowledge, previous knowledge, they are the ones who
actually achieve to work directly with the corporates. And we also
see a lot of, of course, spinoffs from these corporates. They see one
niche enterprise XR application needs, and they actually spin off to
create the solution for the company that they have worked with.

Alan: What are some of the
solutions that you're seeing that are driving the value now?

Ferhan: Yeah. Instead of maybe
the content related stuff, I think the navigation and also what I am
seeing right now is on the enterprise application side, there is a
lot of remote collaboration solutions right now, that is ramping up.
But still it is not easy to show this to the corporate or to a client
how it will work from their perspective. They can easily create a
prototype and make a very nice pilot program for maybe one seat, two
seats, five seats. But when you want to deploy this in the long run,
it always comes down to how to scale. And we have witnessed that most
of the startups who can tackle with this scaling challenge, are the
ones that is actually having much better success while working with
the clients.

Alan: So you also mentioned
something that's really interesting to me, the fact that large
corporations are kind of spinning up teams, and this leads directly
into XR Bootcamp and the work you guys are doing. It almost seems
like enterprises have realized the value of virtual/augmented/mixed
reality technology -- or XR -- and they're starting to spin up teams
in-house. What are some of the recommendations that you can give for
a company that wants to start an XR division or a team?

Ferhan: What we have seen is,
there is actually-- this not only for VR/AR. This is usually in some
kind of a vicious cycle or a chicken-and-egg problem that we are
seeing right now. If I'm-- let's say I'm an evangelist in a large
corporation and I see that OK, for my learning development needs, I
would like to start the transformation towards VR/AR. Perfect. But
there is always a boss that I have to convince. So in order to
achieve that, I have to bring a demo to convince the decision makers,
the board, my boss, whatever, so that they will provide-- allocate
some kind of budget for me. And then I'm going to an agency without
any budget telling them, "OK. Let's create a demo. It should
look nice. It shouldn't be maybe the whole experience. But I need to
have something to pitch to my boss, to my executive board," and
then agency says "It is not possible, because you are not paying
it. And I don't know if your boss will allocate money for the
upcoming potential project." And since agency needs budget, I
cannot even create a demo showcase. From an internal capacity
perspective, this is actually a very unlucky situation and
disappointing situation for the people who would like to initiate
their first VR/AR deployment or pilot. And we believe that instead of
trying to find an agency, what if a company creates their own team of
VR/AR-- we can call it maybe "VR/AR creation team" and then
they will be self-capable of creating at least demos or showcases for
convincing the bosses. OK? So in order to achieve that, you don't
necessarily need to even hire new staff members, because hiring new
employees is always a problem, because it shows that you have to have
a long term commitment, etc. But you can easily tell to your own team
-- or your own content creation team -- to create a project for 2-3
hours per week, so that in the following weeks they can even create a
small prototype, or maybe you can create a Hecaton. But it all comes
down to how you will make your own engineers, your own designers,
your own developers become a creator of your XR learning demo, or
your XR app interface, or your XR club.

Alan: It's interesting you say
that, Ferhan, because as you know, we spoke offline earlier about
what we're working on. Part of what we're working on behind the
scenes is enabling individuals web-- just regular web developers the
ability to create spatial computing, and make that as easy as making
a website. And I think the tools are starting to come that will allow
anybody, in any organization to start making this content. And if you
look out even five years from now, the glasses will be super cheap.
They'll be running on cloud and edge computing. So the processing
power will be distributed. And it really comes down to making
content, and making content fast and inexpensively, and democratizing
the content creation, in my opinion.

Ferhan: I totally agree.
Eventually-- we already see a few examples, but it will become much
more seamless -- or let's say frictionless -- from the developer
perspective or developer-- we can call it a developer-friendly, and
we will see WordPress or Wix of VR/AR creation. So the most important
point here is, that is why we also concentrate on our upskilling
bootcamps, instead of trying to show tools -- which it can change,
because if you have a WordPress or Wix or these kind of tools for VR,
you don't necessarily need to know all the coding and knowledge or
all the details of the tools, because it would probably be intuitive
and developer-friendly -- but understanding how to create an
immersive experience or how to even project the data to your AR
device on the right moment, to the right person, to the right eye is
more critical than explaining or teaching any tools on the market. Of
course Unity, Unreal, and these engines is already important to make
you enabled, which we strongly recommend if you already have a
commitment for VR/AR. But on the basic part, how to create a digital
reality and immersive strategy on your own company, how to create a
VR/AR demo for your company and so that you can convince your boss,
is much more important than other options, because now you become
self-capable of understanding how you can work with even the third
party providers.

Alan: Basically what you're
doing is you're enabling businesses to enable themselves.

Ferhan: Exactly. Self-capable,
self-capable.

Alan: Wonderful. [chuckles] OK,
so how can people find out more information? I know the website is
xrbootcamp.com. What do you have coming up in the next little bit
with XR Bootcamp?

Ferhan: So with the valuable
contribution of our advisory board, our board members include
important pioneers, like yourself. And in addition to that, we have
VR/AR managers from all the Accenture, BNP Paribas, KLM, Bosch, HTC
Vive. So all these people are coming together. We are actually
meeting quite often, every month. Even though all of out board
members are quite busy, they really give a lot of important. So I
would like to thank to all of our board members for their valuable
support. And we are actually designating the top skills requirement
of today and try to find the best matching modules, so that we can
add to XR Bootcamp program. Our bootcamp is starting on May and we
will have two paths. One is VR/AR full stack development. The other
is VR/AR full stack design. So you can select one of them. And the
first batch, it will be in Berlin. But in the upcoming batches, we
would like to actually use the opportunity of our network in both US,
Europe, and Asia with the help of our labs. We would like to deploy
the similar bootcamps with the similar industrial based curriculum on
different locations, based on the demand. So from a B2B perspective,
of course, when a company wants-- a company may want to send one of
their employees, or a few of their employees to these bootcamps, or
if they would like to upskill all of their designers, developers,
engineers. We are also receiving applications for onsite bootcamp. So
deploying this similar industry based curriculum inside the company
for a few week long period.

Alan: So you have these things
coming up soon. You've got the ability to do this onsite for
companies that have larger teams that want to spin up. You're going
to be running this in Berlin, but then in also North America as well.
I guess people can apply to be part of the XR Bootcamp at
xrbootcamp.com.

Ferhan: Yes.

Alan: And is there anything else
that you want to discuss about XR Bootcamp before we move on?

Ferhan: The most important part
that I would like to share: our normal bootcamp programs is-- maybe I
can mention a little bit about the model here. The coding bootcamps
is quite popular around the world. As far as I know, there are over
300 coding bootcamp programs in US. Most of them are providing web
development, UI/UX design, product design, sometimes cybersecurity
bootcamps, which-- some of them are quite good. What I'm seeing here
that the perception of upskilling is changing. Of course,
universities are still serving an important purpose to give you the
fundamentals of your own discipline. But from a bootcamp perspective,
there are still people who like access to this knowledge without
being part of a university. Since on a bootcamp you have-- either you
have a full stack-- sorry, a full day program, which is, you are
actually coming from morning till evening every day, it is three
months. But you can also have a after work program, which we call it
"part-time", which you can actually finish the whole
program in six months. So what we have seen that people like to
access this kind of high-tech knowledge, even though they are not
coming from these disciplines, because as you can easily see, VR/AR
is something quite interesting for many people. And then you look at
from a professional perspective or from an employer perspective, if I
have a digital teaching project that I need maybe five people to
upskill, instead of finding VR/AR developers and giving them
engineering skills, I'm actually finding five engineers and
upskilling them on VR/AR development, which is easier than upskilling
on engineering background. So that is the exact thing that we are
right now focusing. And as I mentioned, for our onsite programs,
sometimes companies requires not the whole module itself, but some
specific parts. So we can actually shape it based on their needs,
since we have an modular program.

Alan: So Ferhan, what problem in
the world do you think we can solve or do you want to see solved
using XR technologies?

Ferhan: Yeah, so this is-- this
is hard to answer. And if you are talking about today, my answers
will be different than if you are talking about in the long term,
because--

Alan: Let's talk about today,
and let's talk about 10 years out.

Ferhan: Okay. So today, I
believe VR is quite a meaningful tool to use, especially solving
today's problems. Especially since we are talking about today, I
would expect from the enterprise side, I would like to see people
coming to their work or accessing to their-- any kind of job
opportunity with the help of very nice training and onboarding
processes happening on VR/AR. So making the jobs -- or even the jobs
that requires more skills -- and making it accessible is quite
important. So making these jobs accessible through VR/AR development
is quite important from my perspective. Maybe you have heard as well.
The best onboarding is no onboarding, right? So in order to achieve
that, maybe you will just start your job today and then start already
contributing to your company, by just with the help of augmentation
or with the help of virtual/augmented reality tools. So this is the
world that I would like to see today and in the upcoming years, which
is already shaping up in some companies. And for the next ten years,
of course, we may think about a little bit like mass adoption on the
consumer level, and AR. We are part of Open AR Cloud. So I believe
that 10 years from now, we can see the implications and impact of AR
cloud. So VR/AR can also be part of our daily lives, and helping us
on any way possible. So I'm expecting that we don't need to look at
screens anymore. So 10 years from now is screenless future that I'm
imagining.

Alan: That's pretty cool.
Today's focus is enterprise. Tomorrow is the mass market in a
screenless society. Well, Ferhan, thank you so much for taking the
time out of your busy schedule. How can people find you?

Ferhan: Yeah, xrbootcamp.com.
I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn, "Ferhan Ozkan". If they
write, they will probably find me.

Alan: Awesome. Well, thanks
again, my friend. Have a wonderful day. And that has been the XR for
Business podcast.

Ferhan: Thank you.