The Immersive Wire - 29 August 2021 (Sunday edition)

SUNDAY READ EDITIONCurated VR/AR analysis every Wednesday and Sunday

// 29 August 2021

I'm not the best doodler.

Help shape the future of philanthropy

Let's talk about how we can make the immersive community more welcoming. It's not often that I get riled up, nor drawn into aggressive Twitter debates that are comparable to muddy pig fights. Yet last night I argued with a YouTuber on the use of thumbnails that can be seen to

spawning a testy exchange on the topic (image below). While the spat drew out, it got me thinking about what more we can do to make our niche group a better place. The crux of my argument is that I find lewd picks that farm clicks more damaging than it's worth, raising soft barriers for people who wish to join a safe and inclusive community. I do not think there should be any context where demeaning women should be used to garner more interest in content, in any circumstance. I was also surprised that this was a controversial stance to have - which, again, is part of the issue. I had responses where the thumbnail was innocuous and minor, reflective of the material; though I was not convinced. We fought back and forth, and eventually the YouTuber acknowledged the situation and changed the picture to

- which I greatly respect

. But it opens a wider debate on how we should be more welcoming as a community, as it is imperative we avoid situations like this again.The conversation warrants a much longer discussion, and any argument I make would be echoing the hard work of others far more qualified than I. With that in mind, I recommend investigating the following groups:

• Women in Immersive Technologies. Aiming to create an inclusive network of talented women driving European innovation.

• XR Women. A group dedicated to uplifting women and allies in the XR space.

I encourage everyone to take the small steps necessary to make the community better. If you have any views on the topic, please respond to this email and let's have a chat.

The logo in question. Photo credit: The YouTuber in question.

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Sarah Johnston, COO at Motive.io

What is your background?

My journey to becoming a business leader has been anything but a straight path. I started my working life as a math and computer science teacher. When my children came along I decided to not to go back to teaching and pursued masters studies in user experience design. Shortly after that, I connected with a small group who needed a front end design for an in-house productivity tool they wanted to commercialize. This collaboration led to V1 of the Motive platform. Since then we have worked diligently to produce an enterprise-ready immersive training platform. It’s been an incredible amount of work but feels like an incredible accomplishment.

What are you working on, and what’s a key learning that you’ve had from it?

I wear many hats and on any given day I may be working with our dev team on UX design and updates to the platform, building VR training content for clients, designing training and onboarding for new Motive users, or digging into business strategy with our leadership team.

If you had to give one piece of advice, what would you give?

I’m going to break the rules and give two:

Advice on business-building - Try with all your might to avoid mistakes, but also accept that you will make them. The best learning comes from working through the missteps and emerging stronger on the other side.

Advice on creating VR training - Many people who are creating training in a 3D medium for the first time forget to leverage the fact that the trainee is surrounded by a rich environment. It can be tempting to throw a bunch of slides with text and images in a 3D setting and call it immersive learning – but that’s just a really bad PowerPoint experience. VR training becomes game-changing when the trainee must move through the space and interact with the virtual environment as they would the real one. Allow trainees to pick up tools, interact with equipment, and fail along the way. That is when the real magic happens.If you want to know more about the Motive Training Platform, click here.

Jobs boardVR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER (Unity3D, C#), London. Valkyrie Industries, an early stage haptics start-up, is looking for a talented and experienced Unity3D developer with a passion for VR to join the R&D team. You'll be involved throughout the development cycle and must be able to evaluate new technologies, develop new experiences from scratch and optimise existing projects. Click here for more. FULL STACK DEVELOPER, remote position. Looking for a competent Software Engineer with 4+ years of industry experience to join our dedicated Web development team. This talented individual must have a vision and drive and must not be afraid to back big ideas. Click here for more. SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER (Node.js), remote position. Looking for a competent Senior Software Engineer with 5+ years of industry experience to join our dedicated Web development team. This talented individual must have a vision and drive and must not be afraid to back big ideas. Click here for more. SENIOR DEVELOPER (VUE.JS), remote Position. Looking for an experienced JavaScript developer who is highly skilled with Vue.js. You will be joining our Web development team to develop and enhance customer facing Web Applications, where you will be responsible for following best practices to produce modular and maintainable code. Click here for more. QA LEAD, remote positions available. Looking for a competent QA Lead with 2+ years of industry experience to join our dedicated QA Team in Waterford. This talented individual must have a vision and drive and must not be afraid to back big ideas. Click here for more. SENIOR UNITY GAME DEVELOPER, remote position. Looking for a competent Senior Unity Developer to join our team with 5+ years industry experience. The talented individual must have vision and drive and must not be afraid to back big ideas. Click here for more.  SENIOR PRODUCT OWNER, remote position. Looking for a competent Product Owner. This talented individual must have a vision and drive and must not be afraid to back big ideas. Click here for more. UI DESIGNER, remote position. Looking for a competent UI Designer. This talented individual must have a vision and drive and must not be afraid to back big ideas. Click here for more. UX DESIGNER, remote position. Are you looking for a unique challenge working in virtual & augmented reality with a bleeding-edge technology company? Then read on. Click here for more.ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN DIGITAL MEDIA, UK. We are looking to appoint a dynamic and adaptable course director for our BA (Hons) in Digital Media to lead and deliver teaching, learning and assessment on the BA Digital Media and steer its next phase of growth. As well as a track record of academic leadership you will have extensive practical experience in digital media such as immersive storytelling (AR/VR/XR), modelling and animation, creative media design / production, or web / mobile app design and development. Click here for more.SENIOR IMMERSIVE LEARNING DESIGNER, UK. Make Real is looking to expand our digital learning team with a Senior Immersive Learning Designer. Your role will be to consult with clients in order to create exciting and imaginative design solutions. Your designs will affect behaviour change in order to deliver on specific learning outcomes, while being achievable within a set budget and timeline. Click here for more. SENIOR UNITY DEVELOPER, UK. As a growing and exciting business, we are looking for full-time talented multi-disciplinary Unity developers to join our expert team in central Brighton. Our ideal candidates will have a broad range of technical experience with a proven track record of delivering interactive Virtual & Augmented Reality projects across a range of HMD & mobile hardware. Working as part of our existing team of designers and artists, the roles will primarily involve the delivery of VR/AR projects for our global clients. Click here for more. EU ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE. Avatour is the remote collaboration platform for site meetings. Our cloud service enables full-motion 360° real-time communication, experienced via a web browser or optional VR headset. We are looking for an Account Executive to expand the Avatour business in the European Union. You’ll be initially our only salesperson in the EU, and directly responsible for the expansion and preservation of our customer base in the region. The ideal candidate will have a track record of success selling an Enterprise SaaS product, and experience in customer success as well. Click here for more.BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGERS, UK. VRTUOSO, a rapidly growing and multi-award winning company, is looking for three full-time B2B Sales Managers who are excited about technology advancements, and able to sell to CxO/Director level within enterprise accounts. Click here for more. HEAD OF MARKETING, UK. VRTUOSO, a rapidly growing and multi-award winning company, is looking for a Head of Marketing capable of taking VRtuoso to the next level. We’re looking to make the leap to working with enterprise level companies at scale and we hope you’re the one to help us accomplish this. Click here for more. CHANNEL SALES MANAGER, UK. VRTUOSO, a rapidly growing and multi-award winning company, is looking for a Channel Sales Manager to lead the channel and reseller programmes. The role is primarily responsible for onboarding new partners, serving as the primary liaison for new partners, growing the sales of existing partners, and assisting with sales/marketing initiatives for our reseller channel as a whole. Click here for more. DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, UK. VRTUOSO, a rapidly growing and multi-award winning company, is looking for a Director of Engineering to lead our engineering department and help us build, deliver, and maintain the leading VRtuoso Virtual Reality products for the enterprise market. Click here for more. Display your vacancy in front of thousands of talented VR/AR professionals in just a few clicks. Click here for more info.

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That's all for this week! Want to have a chat, let me know about a news story, or talk business? Either reply to this email, or contact tom (at) virtualperceptions (dot) com. Have an excellent day!