0:03

Hi everybody. My name is Mark Sage. I'm the executive director of the AREA,

0:06

Augmented Reality for Enterprise Alliance. And it's an honor and a pleasure to be speaking with a friend and

0:13

someone I look up to hugely in the industry. Christine Perey,

0:18

independent analyst and consultant, as well as a million other things you do for the XR ecosystem.

0:24

And Christine, quite rightly, you are one of the inaugural A WE Hall of Fame

0:30

recipients. So firstly, congratulations. Thank you. Amazing.

0:35

So please tell me a little bit about your background and what led you do you

0:39

think becoming a inaugural a WE Hall of Famer?

0:43

Gosh, thanks, Mark. It was a surprise for me too,

0:48

as a matter of fact, I guess I don't feel like I'm old,

0:54

but being an OG is an honor and I really appreciate the

0:58

opportunity. Why do I think, well, I'll set a little context.

1:03

I'm not going to go back into ancient history before I got into

1:08

ar, but it was in 2006 that I was part of a think

1:14

tank. It was organized on behalf of European Research Institutes who

1:20

were going to respond to the European Commission's call for topics.

1:25

And there were probably 40 us and we

1:30

brainstormed for two days. And I had

1:34

amazing experience of being on a team that invented to

1:39

ourselves the possibility of augmented reality. We had

1:45

some materials, you know how in think tanks you have all these little pieces of paper,

1:50

different sticky colors, and in our case,

1:53

we had pipe cleaners and I made a pair of

1:57

glasses and tied on something with pipe cleaners and

2:02

had this, the use case was that you were traveling and were passing people

2:08

that you might know or you might be related to

2:13

closely, but you didn't recognize them or you didn't have any context. So the

2:19

use case was a social augmented reality setting.

2:24

However, in my past lives,

2:27

and even in 2006,

2:30

my focus is more on productivity.

2:33

It's more on getting stuff done.

2:36

I think that's one of the things that I personally

2:41

try to achieve, but I also want to provide support to technology so the companies can be more

2:47

efficient, employees can be more productive and have less risk and so forth.

2:54

So it was very quickly that this project and this idea

2:59

became a passion for me. So I started to provide consulting services.

3:03

But what was interesting in that time in 2006 is

3:08

there were still some remnants of virtual reality.

3:14

There were, people still remembered a decade before

3:19

what had happened, but there was no one really talking or using or really

3:26

selling augmented reality materials.

3:30

It was entirely a research domain,

3:35

mostly in big universities but also in military.

3:40

So really at that time, it was still quite evident that the military had their hands all over augmented

3:47

reality for aviation pilots,

3:51

but also of course for other disciplines I would

3:55

say. And then there were people who had worked in these areas and augmented reality

4:02

who could imagine

4:06

enterprise use cases. And then not very long afterwards,

4:11

there were a few companies, Mattia was one,

4:15

a notable one that emerged and provided these

4:19

platforms for companies to be able to create

4:23

experiences on their own. And I think

4:28

I did not code, I didn't participate in any of those companies,

4:32

but I was really kind of,

4:35

I think of myself as part of the matrix,

4:38

the glue sort of to understand what a one company

4:43

was doing differently from another company. And

4:48

I enjoyed being at that nexus point,

4:51

and it was one of the places that I go to every year

4:56

if I can, is the international symposium on mixed and augmented reality. So

5:02

that's called imar. And this is where the research community gets together.

5:07

It's not commercial or so forth,

5:10

although there are commercial researchers that are there. A lot of Nokia people,

5:14

there were Microsoft people in those days in the early days.

5:19

So I attended Isma from probably 2006

5:23

until this year I'm going to be going to that event. And

5:29

what happened to me a few years in is I was organizing the birds of a

5:34

feather. And there was one of these boff sessions was

5:40

about enterprise and industrial use cases,

5:43

and it was standing room only.

5:45

There was a line at the door and Mark that was for me,

5:49

the pivotal moment when I decided that I was no longer

5:54

interested in consumer use cases and that this technology would really be

6:00

for enterprises for productivity,

6:04

risk management and so forth. So it was in 2010 that this kind of

6:10

surprise and very

6:15

fundamental, I guess for me a moment. But that's only been 14 years.

6:20

That's not really that law. It's not,

6:25

well, what followed in the years that came is I started talking with Paul

6:30

Davies at Boeing and other people who were

6:35

in big companies manufacturing very complex products.

6:41

And then we decided to collaborate and create the

6:46

area, the AR for Enterprise Alliance.

6:49

But I think one of my passions since

6:53

then is perhaps one of the reasons

6:59

that I'm part of this inaugural group is I had

7:03

learned before and other technologies that I'd been

7:07

involved with that interoperability could lead to innovation

7:12

and that I was too late for that in the past in the industries that

7:20

I'd worked in. And I thought, I'll get the jump on this.

7:24

And I wanted to enhance or at least

7:29

explain to people why interoperability would be good and how to

7:34

approach this so that we didn't end up with just a few

7:38

technology silos. So that was much too early afraid.

7:46

Well, just jumping back very quickly to the area that you founded as well and lucky

7:51

enough to include me in that after a couple of years, just real quick,

7:56

what was your vision of that when you first started and you and Paul and some of

8:00

the other companies? Just quickly on that and then I'd love to talk a little bit more about your

8:03

amazing work in the Sanders and interoperability space.

8:07

Yeah, I was trying to pitch standardization to these large

8:15

enterprises and they said something to me that was

8:20

similar, that there's an echo that happened just in 2024,

8:25

I'll get to that in a minute. They said, Christine,

8:28

we appreciate your enthusiasm, but we have other problems.

8:33

We have much bigger fish and much more complex

8:38

issues to just get the technology to work.

8:43

And this for them was,

8:48

that's the crux, was getting the content that they have into AR

8:55

experiences. It was so early in their digital transformation that they didn't

9:01

have the assets.

9:05

And when we launched was the year that Apple acquired

9:10

Mateo. And that was also a wake up call for everyone to

9:15

understand that if you rely on one vendor and then something

9:20

happens out of your control,

9:23

you will be left kind of with some antiquated

9:27

code. And that it already happened before the matayo acquisition.

9:35

So there was concern among the large enterprises about

9:40

the future of these technologies and how to integrate them

9:44

into their existing IT systems way before they had done the

9:49

digital transformation. So I think that was probably one of the most important goals.

9:57

And one of the things that I bonded with them was also the desire and the

10:01

need for research, applied research that could be conducted in a

10:07

setting that resembled as close as possible to the real

10:12

world. And this is probably now we are on our

10:17

14th research project for the area.

10:21

We've released many of those projects to the ecosystem.

10:26

We are sort of like a think tank doing research on

10:30

projects that can't be done by one company internally and

10:35

that are collaboratively funded and supported and

10:40

we decide on the topics as a group in these ballots in

10:45

very democratic way. So I think

10:50

that was a good anchor point for us. Of course,

10:53

we've developed many other committees, the statement of needs,

11:00

the requirements database,

11:03

the committees about of course safety and security,

11:07

human factors. So these are first order

11:13

problems. They're not back burner issues.

11:18

That's amazing. And thank you for the kind of work on the research,

11:22

like you said, what it's really important, they're very practical, usable,

11:26

there's always something in there that can be reused numerous times by

11:31

the area members. I think the research projects, they've evolved of course.

11:38

And one of the things that we've really done well,

11:43

I'm very pleased with and thank you Mark, for your support on all this,

11:47

is creating a tool,

11:50

trying to get each project to provide us the

11:54

area members with a tool. It might be code,

11:58

it might be a spreadsheet, a decision support tool.

12:07

These then can be adapted as you said,

12:09

or they can be compared with the tools that have been built internally. Now,

12:14

these are not intended to be tools that compete with any of our members

12:19

products or services. They are financial tools like the

12:25

return on investment calculator or as I said,

12:29

decision support tools and things that allow people to examine their own

12:33

procedures to improve them.

12:38

Yeah. Wow. Thank you. So coming on to the last question,

12:42

and I had another look,

12:44

and I quite often have a look at your LinkedIn profile and it still amazes at me

12:49

the amount of, and I'm not even sure is up to date,

12:51

but the standards and interoperability and research

12:55

organizations that you support. And I think one of the reasons for this award is reflection of the amount of

13:02

time and effort and drive you put into them.

13:04

So globally recognized for all of that outstanding work in

13:09

standards and interoperability in the immersive technology space.

13:12

But where do you think we are and what needs to happen for that to

13:16

become, to drive innovation, as you mentioned earlier.

13:20

Right? So thanks for bringing that up and turning the conversation to this topic.

13:27

I think to me,

13:31

we are still in the dark ages.

13:37

There's still a strong attachment to technology silos.

13:42

And I believe that that is hindering the adoption because the

13:47

large enterprises, they don't want to be exposed to just one vendor for all

13:55

of their technology stack. So we're still not

14:02

running, we're still crawling

14:07

in this domain. I think that

14:11

what we are seeing now,

14:13

and certainly I saw it at the most recent area member meeting,

14:18

and I see it elsewhere when I work with large industry clients

14:22

and partners,

14:25

that in order for augmented reality to be

14:29

integrated into the existing IT systems,

14:34

there have to be APIs and there have to be components,

14:38

there has to be a modular architecture.

14:41

And while numerous modular architectures have been proposed,

14:46

and I've been involved in two of, well, not even three of those,

14:52

there are not enough providers who embrace

14:57

that philosophy. I think the only way we're going to make long-term impact is when the

15:05

customer segment, in other words, the oil and gas companies,

15:10

manufacturing companies, aviation, automotive,

15:13

those industries ask for or require

15:19

certain standards to be implemented in their solutions.

15:23

So that's really what I work on most

15:28

actively now is working on the messaging and how to convince the customer segment

15:37

that they are doing themselves a disservice if they

15:41

don't ask for interoperability,

15:45

don't require it even. I'm very passionate about the standards that I see developing

15:53

in the Kronos group, the Open Geospatial Consortium,

15:58

the IEE, Etsy,

16:01

the European Telecommunications Space Standards Agency.

16:05

There are many great teams working out

16:10

there. I'm often just a bystander.

16:14

I do lead three committees or working groups,

16:18

and that is a way for me to contribute.

16:21

I can't write these codes,

16:25

I can't do the engineering. But one of the steps that we're all working,

16:32

I think towards more actively now in 2024,

16:37

is demonstrating what interoperability can provide

16:42

without tangible demonstrations of what standards adoption could

16:49

bring. The large enterprises won't be convinced.

16:52

So a lot of my effort right now is on applied

16:56

demonstrations, videos that show demonstrations.

17:00

I also want to say that augmented reality is never going to achieve

17:08

all that we hope it to achieve if the human factors

17:14

are not resolved. And that's not an area that I see standardization

17:19

being a big contributor in.

17:22

I think that is a trial and error.

17:25

It's a agreement among users

17:30

about how they want to have this information provided.

17:35

So that's a big factor. And having hardware that supports the types of interaction

17:41

that the users need. Now,

17:44

interoperability in the hardware domain,

17:47

we have OpenXR showing a lot of promise.

17:51

We're not finished with that particular standard.

17:54

That still needs a lot of work.

17:56

I think it's important for people to understand that standardization isn't a

18:01

one-time fix. It is something that is a continuous process.

18:06

And as we do demonstrations, we learn where the standards are weak,

18:10

where they need to be improved. It's an iterative process,

18:15

mark. It's just never going to be finished.

18:20

It's a journey rather than a destination.

18:22

Exactly. Exactly. No,

18:24

I think there's just a lot of

18:29

potential, but a lack of attention.

18:33

And then what I said about innovation is that when you have interoperability,

18:37

then companies can specialize.

18:41

They don't have to provide the entire technology stack, all the hardware,

18:46

all of the software for delivering and for authoring

18:50

experiences. They can begin to focus on their own

18:57

areas of expertise if it's rendering or

19:02

seen recognition, object segmentation,

19:06

all of these things have to be excellent,

19:12

not just average.

19:15

And I think companies then can innovate by bringing the best parts of all this

19:19

stuff, but they have a infrastructure or model to join them all.

19:23

And that's obviously where interoperative makes is one of the big plays,

19:27

is allowing companies to pick the best, bring it together in a controlled way.

19:32

Right. Awesome. Christine, thank you ever so much. Congratulations on this.

19:38

Thank you for all the work you do, not only for the area,

19:41

but all of those other organizations.

19:43

I know they're all appreciative and it's one thing for clear with all

19:48

your hard work in pushing. We will get there. We will get there.

19:52

I hope so. Mark, it's journey like you said.

19:57

And I think that it's very exciting to see that a WE is

20:02

recognizing people, other people much more senior than myself who have contributed to this

20:09

before. And I guess we're all still involved. Many,

20:13

many people are still involved. Okay, Christine, thank very much and congratulations. Thank.

20:19

You.