VIDEO CLIPS: STEM Womxn Driving Innovation

Recently, I joined a panel of talented women to discuss the career trajectories of women in STEM. Computer Futures and the Flatiron School produced a memorable event featuring myself, Michael Robin Manning at Valkyrie; Janell Guzman at USAA; and Joyce Deuley at Geekdom. The panel was moderated by Nikole Phillips at Cloudflare.

The live stream event centered on three central questions. See my brief answers to each question featured below.

“How are companies planning in COVID?”

“What advice would you give to an entrepreneur?”

“Why is digital transformation confusing?”

5 Ways We’re Embracing Virtual Reality in COVID-19

Appears in Women in IT Awards and Series Blog

During the COVID-19 lockdown, I wandered the streets of Hong Kong, toured the Vatican Museum, and practiced mindfulness in a lush garden. I went “outside” and connected with an Oculus headset.

Virtual reality (VR) is a connector in a world where six-feet social distancing, seeing someone’s face from the eyes up, and meeting co-workers through Zoom is the norm. In a time of disconnection, people are embracing immersive experiences through VR. This artificial environment as a user to accept an immersive experience as a real environment.

Technological developments are changing the ways people experience physical and virtual environments in COVID-19. Leaders in business, education, entertainment, real estate, and mental health extol the value of VR as a highly-interactive and physical-virtual connection. Considering the unique opportunities and benefits VR offers during this pandemic, let’s take a look at five industries that leveraged VR to facilitate connectivity.

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Work From Home

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, 88% of organizations encouraged or required their employees to work from home. From the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, Spatial is enlivening work from home with a VR and augmented reality (AR) experience.

As video conferencing skyrockets, people working from home lament using a two-dimensional screen as a replacement for in-person meetings. Recently, Zoom reached 200 million daily participants (paid and free) up from 10 million in December. With Spatial, two-dimensional meetings are in 3D. The goal is to help users connect in a way that better represents real life.

Many companies — large and small — understand the value of Spatial’s technology during COVID-19. The platform is usable with a VR headset and controllers, or, a laptop computer camera.

As the cost of VR headsets continues to drop and long-term opportunities to work from home grow, this virtual office is likely to remain popular.

College Scouting

GenZ is turning to VR to inform college scouting. As the first real “digital-native” generation, 79% of Gen Z users are comfortable with VR. Today’s high school students use university mobile apps, offering in-app VR experiences, to research campus culture and coursework. Amidst COVID-19, rising high school seniors are “visiting” colleges without leaving the couch. VR may not replace a friendly student-led tour of campus; however, it is presently a viable alternative.

Photo by Jessica Lewis on Unsplash

For example, GEAR UP VR for North Carolina provides tours of 16 colleges statewide. Prospective students familiarize themselves with various aspects of students’ life. They can visit dorms, gyms, and cafeterias. They can also learn about degree options, where to apply for financial aid, and what extracurricular clubs thrive on campus. Their virtual visits give them the means to compare universities and find for a good “fit.”

As a silver lining, VR also saves the time and cost of a college visit tour de force. CampusTours, YouVisit, Chicago HBCU Alumni Alliance, YoUniversity, and CampusReel are additional resources that offer VR tours, interactive maps, photos, videos, and current student testimonials.

Catching a Concert

The national COVID-19 lockdowns present a challenge to the entertainment industry and fans. In-person live music performances and movie theater shows remain temporarily suspended as an entertainment option. VR and AR offered alternatives for entertainment consumption beyond video on demand. “The show must go beyond” is the thoughtful slogan of Wave, an immersive platform that transforms artists into digital avatars so we may enjoy a performance in a virtual world. Throw on VR headset and enjoy performances by Tinashe, T-Pain, and John Legend. The experience recreates and augments the sound, excitement, and camaraderie of a concert.

A review of John Legend’s remote concert in partnership with Wave.

Virtual Real Estate

The pandemic is buckling the real estate industry. Real estate agents are embracing digitization as a means to stay afloat. Chinese startup Beike developed VR to allow potential buyers and renters to view homes on the market. Beike’s traction is undeniable, as 660 million people are leveraging VR to see the 4 million homes on the market.

Additionally, the platform enables homebuyers to sign contracts and complete transactions online without breaking quarantine.

An example experience of how buyers use VR to make home-buying decisions

Mining Mindfulness

Experts report that virtual excursions can help us feel calm and connected amid COVID-19. New research shows that immersive VR videos of a peaceful garden can address various quarantine psychological factors, including stress and isolation. According to Dr. Albert Rizzo, a Director at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, immersive simulation can be “emotionally evocative” and result in a user’s development of relaxation strategies to cope with anxiety and allow a bit of escapism.

A guided experience for Oculus Rift

Meditation, coupled with VR technologies, make the mindfulness learning curve easier. Plus, when wearing a headset, you can focus and tune out of any distractions while undisturbed.

Guided Meditation VR, FLOWVR Meditation, and Relax VR: Rest & Meditation are great places to start.

AI & eSports: It Was All a Stream

The following is a speech presented at the 10th anniversary of TEDxRiceU’s speaker series. The talk took place at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for having me. And, thank you for being here.

The Houston Texans. Houston Astros. Houston Rockets. Team Liquid and Cloud 9.

If you haven’t heard of Team Liquid or Cloud9, you may hear more about them soon. eSports is here, thanks to increasing global awareness, more platforms offering live eSports coverage, eSports revenue growth, and sponsorship opportunities. Audi, T-Mobile, Bumble, Nike, Drake, and The Weeknd (among others) spend millions to back talented teams. A recent League of Legends competition garnered more views than the Stanley Cup finals, the World Series, and the NBA finals combined. And, Intel will host an Olympics-sanctioned eSports tournament leading up to this year’s games featuring teams from all over the globe.

Why should you care? Why would anyone want to watch people play video games? To the uninitiated, it can seem almost unbelievable. Some dismiss it as a niche pastime and move on.

But, while eSports may have begun as a niche industry, it would be hard to argue that term still applies. I was apathetic until I realized that my tech realm, artificial intelligence or AI, magnifies eSports. Opportunity knocks with artificial intelligence. AI improves player-athletes, improves the game, and boosts business all around.

For marketers, eSports viewers are a prime target demographic. The audience is young, tech-savvy, and willing to embrace new things. Investors, media, technology companies, brand sponsors, and venture capital firms are catching on. eSports enthusiasts are millions of potential customers who are tuning in to watch online streams of events. There’s a reason that tech companies sponsor most of the world’s top pro teams. As an example, Samsung White, a recent League of Legends world champion team, is a group of Korean player-athletes sponsored by Samsung Electronics.

Let’s bring it home to Texas and Houston, respectively. Player talent and eSports generates a lot of money in Texas, and not just for the people and companies who develop and sell the video games. This year, eSports’ revenue will top an estimated $1.5 billion. This milestone means a new source of state tax revenue, opportunities for job growth, the support of S.T.E.M. careers, and the possibility of attracting new eSports teams and businesses to our state. Here in Houston, the University of St. Thomas, University of Houston, and the University of Houston-Downtown are home to dedicated academic eSports programs.

AI Enters the Arena

AI in eSports is changing the game. Pun intended. AI is refining talent in a way that traditional sports haven’t even seen yet. The technology changes players, teams, businesses, and large-scale data collection.

Traditionally, in gaming, players are self-taught. A player picks a game she likes, and she plays for hours on end to memorize every move, every out, and every possible win. Think of a boxer in training. A fighter finds someone of similar height and weight and invites the person into the ring as an opponent. She mimics and learns from the other person; she improves skills and builds muscle memory. In eSports, AI is the boxing partner. AI enhances the performance of humans while humans develop the teachings of the bot. The new training yields better performing player-athletes and better bots.

AI is HUGE for player-athletes, amateurs, and entrepreneurs. As tournament prize pools and viewership continue to grow year over year, the industry attracts lucrative sponsorships at an increasing rate. New players enter the scene every day. How would a player gain an edge in a competitive world? Athletes turn to AI software for new-age coaching. It’s the secret weapon.

High performing players, who win cash prizes in the millions, can pay for AI tools and write it off as a business expense. eSports analytics platforms, like Aim Lab, provide AI-powered coaching to assess player stats and suggest better strategies to increase the odds of winning.

Picture a player playing a first-person shooter game with AI software running in the background. The software is recording the player’s performance. At the end of the game, a screen similar to this one pops up with observations and recommendations. Poor tracking indicates the players aren’t following the opponent’s movements well. A slow hand is when a player switches weapons too slowly. Left side weakness occurs when the player’s attention is uneven. He is too busy paying attention to activity on the right-hand side. Then, the game starts up again, offering the opportunity for a player to address these issues.

Elite gamers, who are backed by global brands, are adopting AI to gain a tactical edge. Take Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a first-person shooter video game where multiple players can play at the same time. Here, an AI coach can teach the player favorable positions. For example, they are hiding behind a building or near a bridge to better shoot opposing players. The recommendations make the player less vulnerable to a counter-attack.

And now, in good news, AI training is no longer just for the “elites.” It is now available for those interested in purchasing a subscription, a business model similar to Netflix. Subscription-based AI training is on the market. Amateurs can pay a monthly fee to access continuously updated AI-trained models alongside best eSports players in the league.

As a conjecture, businesses are most likely to back AI-trained players. It’s an opportunity to sponsor and showcase branding on “the best of the best.”

How AI 1Ups Business & Data

Outside of player-athlete training, AI impacts business revenue and data collection. Currently, computer researchers design machine-learning systems that can solve real-world challenges. Video games are simply proxies for overcoming technical difficulties.

Again, AI trains the human, and the human trains the bot. It’s an infinite loop.

What do you do with this data? Gaming helps developers to optimize machine learning in emerging fields, like self-driving cars. That’s because a computer (just like in eSports) needs to detect objects and anticipate how others will behave.

AI presents a revenue opportunity for training firms with the promise to move the gaming world forward. eSports analytics platforms, like Omnicoach, rely almost entirely on AI-powered insights to provide coaching to professional eSports teams.

Cloud computing and data analytics are at the core of eSports. Where traditional sports have often struggled to capture performance data, the digital nature of gaming competition means that there’s no shortage of information. Cutting-edge fields, such as machine learning, exist for multiple reasons: to open up even more avenues to help players win, to help firms understand how to align their businesses best, and regulate the competition itself.

It Was All A Stream

Why would anyone watch other people play games? The short answer is simple: for the same reasons you and I watch traditional sports. If you aren’t interested in watching the world’s best on the virtual battlefield, I encourage you to pay attention to the market.

We’re in a $1.1 billion industry and growing. It’s a gold rush, and the future is bright. The increase of live-streaming and corporate sponsorships, coupled with the emergence of well-funded eSports leagues and increased investments from the technology sector, venture capitalists, celebrities, professional athletes, and team franchises, are accelerating the growth of eSports. The market opportunity for AI is booming in the eSports industry.

As an example, take Kyle Giersdorf, a recent Fornite champ. Kyle won $3M in a tournament. He took home more money than Tiger Woods ever won for a single Green Jacket. Champion pots will only get bigger.

“It’s like playing 5-dimensional chess against the world.” — Mark Cuban

In an interview with Fox Sports, Mark Cuban remarked, “I love [eSports]. It’s like playing five-dimensional chess against the world. This is a real sport, and people are going to figure it out really really quick.”

AI trained player-athletes will make eSports a slam dunk, and invite more marketers into the arena along with an expanding fan base. Embracing AI in eSports will help brands evolve to meet innovation. I, for one, am excited. Game on!