[00:00:00] Shannon Putman: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of Putman's Podcast Pops. I know I say this every time, but today is truly something special. You get to meet the man, the myth, the legend, as I like to call him, somebody who is not only amazing at work, but he is just an amazing human being who I consider a dear and cherished friend.
[00:00:23] Shannon Putman: Everybody, please meet Chris Madsen from Engage.
[00:00:28] Chris Madsen: Oh, thank you. Hi, Shannon. Thank you so much for the intro. Good to be here.
[00:00:33] Shannon Putman: Thanks for being here. I undersold you even a little bit, but I know that you have extensive experience in the human behavior field as well as virtual reality. So I would like you to just take a couple minutes and tell everybody a little bit about yourself and what makes you so special.
[00:00:49] Chris Madsen: Yeah. So, 20 years behavioral science had a strong career going with building programs for mental health, family therapy, in home interventions, all kinds of different things. And my career trajectory changed when I discovered virtual reality back in 2012, 2013. Yeah. When I got the Oculus Rift developer kit number one and had my first social VR experience and instantly realized how this would be impacting the way we learn, the way we communicate the way we entertain in so many things.
[00:01:24] Chris Madsen: I mean, this was really, I saw the first. Proof of how we were going to elevate the way humans communicate through experiential learning, which is the value that virtual reality brings for that communication.
[00:01:38] Chris Madsen: Absolutely. And you beat me just a little bit. I got started with the DK2 kit. So you just beat me to the game, but
[00:01:45] Chris Madsen: Still early though, right?
[00:01:47] Shannon Putman: I had that exact same experience though. I was like, this is a game changer for so much and you said Experiential learning, which is such a key term and why VR and XR, like you said, can be so incredibly powerful.
[00:02:02] Shannon Putman: So what is it about that experience that you think, why Mixed reality, virtual reality, why that adds to the learning.
[00:02:12] Chris Madsen: Yeah. It's a, because it is a shared experience, right? A virtual reality. And I know this sounds very sci fi when I say this, but people know when they've tried a social VR experience, they know what I'm talking about. So virtual reality has the. ability to teleport our consciousness into a shared virtual space where we can embody avatars and interact with each other physically and with the virtual environment as though we were actually there to reach out and grab something.
[00:02:44] Chris Madsen: You're literally reaching your physical hand out, grabbing that object. And looking at it from all different angles and sharing that with others. There's a physicality involved in this, and this is way, one of the important ways in which our brain learns is through interacting with our environment.
[00:03:01] Chris Madsen: You can't do that in any other medium. It's always a shock when people come in to engage for their first time, where I reach out my hand and I shake their hand. Where else can you do that other than in the real physical world, right? So, our brain learns experientially, best learns experientially.
[00:03:22] Shannon Putman: Absolutely. And having shaken your hand in VR, and you've mentioned the platform engage, which I refer to it as the Swiss army knife of VR, because I started using it. I think we got connected back in 2017. So I've been dedicated and a fan of the software since even. Back then, and I've seen the progression and the change that you guys continuously make.
[00:03:48] Shannon Putman: So can you kind of give us a little insight into your journey, specifically at Engage and how long you've been there and what you've seen the changes?
[00:03:56] Chris Madsen: Yeah, so, you know, rewinding the clock 10 years, early days of large scale social VR interactions. We were one of the first to do this. There was like 40, 000 developers around the world that were playing in these social VR environments, you know, early on. And we've seen it go, when I first started out, it's like, we're at the mercy of the developers.
[00:04:18] Chris Madsen: I had very little agency in what I was able to bring to the table because I'm not a programmer. I'm not a developer. I come from a different background. So. I was leaning on those developers around me to create this experience or this experience. I couldn't do a lot myself back then, but the coolest thing is Shannon, as we've seen over the last 10 years, there's been so many developments that are now allowing.
[00:04:45] Chris Madsen: Us everyday folks to be able to be content creators and bring what we want into that virtual experience. There's lots of different ways of doing that. For example, let's take one of the basics, 3D models, for example. There was no way I was bringing in a 3D model back in the day, but since that time, we've seen entire ecosystems come into existence where you can go and look through millions of 3D assets to pick the assets you want to bring into an experience by doing a drag and drop process through a web app, right?
[00:05:21] Chris Madsen: Just drag, drop, and there it is in virtual reality for you. So now we've got this ability for anybody of any type of background can come in and create these experiences.
[00:05:31] Chris Madsen: I compare it to an advanced PowerPoint. There's still a learning curve to it. But it's not like I have to go to school for four years to learn how to build a virtual environment.
[00:05:40] Chris Madsen: And now we're kind of taking it to the next level With AI coming into the picture, right? So now we're at a place where we can use generative AI in these virtual spaces and begin speaking our intentions and having AI bring that into the experience.
[00:05:58] Chris Madsen:
[00:05:59] exactly. And that ability to be able to have things at your fingertips and change is so critical, especially because we know life, even though we plan for everything, life in general, never goes how we plan it.
[00:06:13] Shannon Putman: And, you know, education and lessons are important. No different. And so being able to, as an educator, I know a lot of teachers probably aren't believing it, but I tell them I created my entire dissertation experience inside engage. And this was before any of all this new, easier stuff and I have no programming or coding knowledge at all.
[00:06:34] Shannon Putman: And it was a 25 minute experience about John Lewis, you know, and if I can do it. Absolutely anybody can and even since then it has gotten easier and more user friendly and it's just getting over that initial hump of the fear of, well, I don't know what I'm doing or, you know, I tried Google cardboard and now I get sick in VR, you know, like, how are you seeing people accepting the technology or are you seeing a nice shift in that or is it still breaking down some of those barriers?
[00:07:05] Chris Madsen: It is so much easier now. You know, you look back a number of years ago, it was a true challenge, even for us in the business to be able to operate within virtual reality. Comfortably, efficiently. Oh, I remember pulling wagons of equipment back in the day. And now that entire wagon is shrunk down into one.
[00:07:25] Chris Madsen: Headset, right? It's amazing how far we've come and the costs have come way down, but you're absolutely right. of the challenges of virtual reality is, you know, we can provide these tools that enable us to do whatever we want, but making those super easy to use, making those super accessible is always still a challenge.
[00:07:47] Chris Madsen: We're right in the middle of this. We've come a long ways, but we still do have a ways to go. You know, by using your audio up from your mouth to be able to pull up menus and stuff rather than using your hands. There's so many different aspects that we want to just make easier and easier for people to use.
[00:08:05] Chris Madsen: So that's an ongoing process there. But yeah, I mean, Now, it's so funny. I used to I have close family and friends are like, well, Chris, you know, we love coming over. We love doing VR with you and stuff. When should we buy a headset? And I'm not, I've always put them off and said, no, it's not ready yet.
[00:08:23] Chris Madsen: It's not ready yet. So now though, over this last year. Absolutely. Now is the time. I think it's finally crossed that threshold where it's easy for the average person to access and get involved. We're there. I think we're there.
[00:08:41] Shannon Putman: I agree, and I think the content is catching up to as far as, you know, and, you know, me and, you know, my, my philosophy on there doesn't have to be an app for that. But there needs to be things that at least are engaging to people. You know, I know the industry likes to talk about the killer app and, you know, and I don't really buy into that because there doesn't need to be.
[00:09:03] Shannon Putman: And if there is for me, it's always been engaged. And so, you know, the. You can have the best app and experience in the world. And if people can't. Get to it and use the technology. It doesn't matter. So I've also said the same thing and I think in education, we are not as far along on the journey.
[00:09:21] Shannon Putman: Educators are very much in the beginning of the VR journey. And so I think that there's going to be that big push, but as we do being able to continuously support them through that process, so they feel comfortable in using it every day. And in the beginning, I'm like, no, you don't have to use it every day.
[00:09:42] Shannon Putman: It's not every lesson. And it's not, it's never going to be a replacement, but if you get the knowledge and the understanding, you could have an engaged lesson every day. And the educator wouldn't even need to put on the headset if they didn't want to.
[00:09:56] Chris Madsen: Yep.
[00:09:57] Shannon Putman: We want them to join in though
[00:09:58] Chris Madsen: And I kind of see there's when it comes to education, you know, for lower education, higher education, there's kind of three different ways I see engage being used. One is this great ability to bring people together remotely or in the same classroom and build whatever content you want that meets your need.
[00:10:18] Chris Madsen: That's one aspect. A lot of people don't. Necessarily want to build their own content. So being able to access content that's already built is another big element to that. And then lastly, it's also a really great tool for teaching students how to build in a spatial computing way, because this is only going to become more and more important that students have these skills to build In 3D is not going away.
[00:10:49] Chris Madsen: It's only going to get more and more pervasive and students need to have these skills. And it's a great platform to use lots of different tool sets to bring in and learn how to build and operate within spatial computing.
[00:11:01] Shannon Putman: perfectly said, especially because it is different. Like, when you're designing something for a flat 2 D screen, like you said, like a PowerPoint, you don't have to worry about the sides and the back and how far the spaces and everything. And then, when you do step into that virtual environment, and it is to scale, like, you're on the deck of the Apollo rocket, and you're sitting there, you're looking up and you're like.
[00:11:25] Shannon Putman: It's just overwhelming and in the most beautiful way, but it is an incredibly different way of thinking and planning.
[00:11:33] Chris Madsen: Yeah, and it gives students so many opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have. Let me give you a great example. John Gress, the Metaverse Film School, they've built an entire. Film school inside of virtual reality, where if you're a student of this, one of the first lessons you do is you come into this sound studio, virtual sound studio, and you've got these expensive 100, 000 red cameras sitting before you on a desk, all in pieces.
[00:12:02] Chris Madsen: So there's an instructor, a live instructor up front that's showing you how to put this camera. There's got to be like 20 different parts to this thing. You know, putting the camera together in different ways, different formats, and then using that camera to now walk into the soundstage and do a shoot.
[00:12:23] Chris Madsen: You're moving around props. You're setting up the lighting. You have live actors in there. Or maybe you want to do a led up screen layout. We've got that set up in there too. So you can play a video on that screen and do a shoot and make it look like you're on a beach, a motion cat. There's a big motion capture orb in there that shows you how you can capture people's motions and bring those into production.
[00:12:49] Chris Madsen: Every single aspect of the film school is replicated in these experiences. But the point is it gives students the hands. on experience of not only doing the workflows, but also getting creative and doing actual shoots. Once you've done that, it even allows you to go back in history and back through time and experience some of the old techniques that they use for films.
[00:13:14] Chris Madsen: It's amazing.
[00:13:16] Shannon Putman: That's absolutely incredible. Wow. Now, I know for this to be effective, you know, we need everything to be at a certain level of quality and the headsets have come a long way, especially being able to handle, you know, these higher resolution images and models and things like that. But we know 1 of the barriers is, is well, a budget, but then also bandwidth and accessibility to the Internet and things like that. So, how is engage able to help with schools that maybe are rural or have different. Types of challenges like that
[00:13:52] Chris Madsen: Yeah. And you're right. We've come a long ways in resolution and fidelity of the experiences. And it's also important to note it's also important to, you know, have Engage accessible on desktops and tablets and phones where regardless of what device you're using, you're able to access those experiences together.
[00:14:12] Chris Madsen: So what we do, you know, there is. It's kind of a crapshoot when it comes to a brick and mortar school, you don't know how their I. T. is set up, so it is important that we're in communication with the I. T. folks there to walk through how to best set up the experience, what ports to open, we've got a whole bunch of documentation on how to best set up your institution to run, engage, or quite frankly, any sort of experience that's bandwidth dependent we help walk folks through that on how to best utilize that.
[00:14:44] Shannon Putman: your support is bar none too. I mean, I, you know, I mean, I'm a little special. I know that I have your cell phone and everything too, but I always say that I partner with people that I feel always have the same beliefs as me and engage has not only. Talk to that talk, but you guys have walked it because you've supported anything I've done in any institution.
[00:15:03] Shannon Putman: You've been the main software and support for the entire Kentucky Department of Ed project. And so, when I tell people that engage cares, you actually do. And so it's important for people to know that, because there's a lot of companies that say they do. And then once you get it, they're out the door and everything.
[00:15:23] Shannon Putman: And that has never once happened with you guys. And so thank you. For that and sticking true to that word.
[00:15:29] Chris Madsen: Yeah, well, we assign the customer success person to every contract that we sign which who's always there to help and assist. I mean, this is a new technology. People need that support and that help. We like to identify champions within the organization that we're working hand in hand with, and then they in turn can share their knowledge to other teachers and students.
[00:15:49] Chris Madsen: Yeah, it's important.
[00:15:51] Shannon Putman: and you also mentioned another thing that is unique too, is that engage is now available on any platform. And I think that is so critical because yes, the end goal is the headset. We know that's where the magic happens and everything, but it doesn't have to be a deal breaker. And a lot of software is either just VR only or some, or, you know, desktop, whatever and you guys are accessible and.
[00:16:13] Shannon Putman: Any platform,
[00:16:15] Chris Madsen: Yeah, that's right. It's important.
[00:16:16] Shannon Putman: Because especially too, if you have a student, you know, who doesn't want to do it, or doesn't want to put the headset on, or isn't comfortable or things like that. And I always tell people, they're like, well, we don't have enough money to get a class set of headsets. And I'm like, you can start with 1 headset.
[00:16:30] Shannon Putman: Like, that's okay. To start with 1 and get in there. Do you agree? Or do you think it needs to be more of that? The initial, I think happened with, you know, like, I love Google expeditions. It was fantastic, but it kind of set up this false narrative that teachers think educators think that all the kids have to be on at the same time.
[00:16:49] Chris Madsen: Right.
[00:16:50] Shannon Putman: And I don't think it has to be that way anymore.
[00:16:53] Chris Madsen: That's true. I mean, my concern is I just want people to experience what it's like to have experiential education, right? That's gonna re require a headset of some point. So if it's one headset that's being shared amongst the students, at least people of the students and the teachers are getting that experience so that will open their mind to what else is possible.
[00:17:16] Shannon Putman: Well said, sir. Are there any specific projects or things that you guys have been working on that you really wanted to kind of highlight as a, you know, as a success story or anything that you're truly excited about?
[00:17:32] Chris Madsen: I am really excited about A. I. We've been utilizing it now for two years. It's finally in that state where anytime someone does a contract with us, they're getting the full A. I. Build your worst where teachers can build their own A. I. Agents to do whatever they need to do. That's super powerful. And when I look forward to this coming year, the things that we're gonna be able to do with A.
[00:17:56] Chris Madsen: I. Are just I didn't think that would be possible five years ago. So very excited about that. I'm very excited about incorporating mixed reality into experiences so that you can bring your physical space to life with digital digital assets and experiences. I think that's going to be very important, especially as the headset gets better at being able to scan your environment in real time.
[00:18:22] Chris Madsen: So, you know, like. I'll be able to just step into your space. I mean, that's kind of like teleportation, right? And we've got a ways to go there, but we're already seeing the basic foundations of that playing out. So that's very exciting to me. We're seeing some really fun instruments come into play as well.
[00:18:39] Chris Madsen: Like Logitech just released their pen with our next update. We have some really cool ways that we're going to be supporting that Logitech MX ink pen. So get ready for that, Shannon. I think you're going to get a kick out of that.
[00:18:52] Shannon Putman: Exciting, because I've got
[00:18:53] Chris Madsen: Oh, you're ready to go. I
[00:18:56] Shannon Putman: I am yes,
[00:18:57] Chris Madsen: I love it. So we're gonna have some fun with that.
[00:19:00] Chris Madsen: We've got a whole new whiteboarding system that's going to be utilizing that pen. So, those are some things I'm really looking forward to some updates in the avatars. Avatars are going to be a never ending work in progress for decades to come, right? That's of all things.
[00:19:16] Chris Madsen: Avatars are probably changing As quick as anything else in the field. So that's ongoing, but we've got some fun avatar initiatives that are coming out and just more and more tools that are being added to the Swiss army knife.
[00:19:31] Shannon Putman: And you mentioned AI and I love it as well. But 1 thing that I don't think we've specifically mentioned, which is incredibly fascinating is the actual school of AI. And I saw this in real time. The other day I was at a school and she, the educator was talking to Harriet Tubman and as somebody who was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, Harriet Tubman actually ended up residing in Auburn, New York.
[00:19:54] Shannon Putman: And so every year we used to go to the Seward home and the Harriet Tubman home. And so I said to her the teacher, the educator that was in the headset, I said, ask Harriet Tubman if she ever lived in Auburn, New York, because I wanted to test it and it did. And she talked all about Auburn and all these things she did.
[00:20:11] Shannon Putman: And I was like. Yes, so give us a little bit more insight into the school of
[00:20:15] Chris Madsen: Yeah, so this is an example of a way we've used the A. I. Builder that everybody has access to is we brought historical characters to life so that students and educators can have full on conversations. And in a lot of these spaces, we also added some extracurricular type things like, with Shakespeare, for example, you can actually hop on stage with Shakespeare and perform various plays and you have like the the script gets laid out in front of you.
[00:20:43] Chris Madsen: It's invisible to everybody else, but each individual has a script. And when you get on stage, your clothing changes. They, you know, got the cauldron and you've got the witches there and you know, we've got the skull that you could talk to and all these things come to life on stage. And, but it's so exciting.
[00:21:00] Chris Madsen: We keep getting so many reports from people that are saying they're spending dozens of hours interrogating these historical figures to learn. About these nuances and things that would require a lot of research to, to find these sorts of things that they're learning from just having these awesome interactions with folks.
[00:21:21] Chris Madsen: Yeah, it's a, it's very powerful. We've got about 20. 20 AI, historical AI characters, and we're going to be bringing more to the equation as well. But that's super low hanging fruit for educators, right? It's like fire up Engage. Let's go talk to 20 historical characters.
[00:21:37] Shannon Putman: right? Exactly. And I always tell teachers, like, I always tell educators, I'm like, look, they've done the work because a lot of people don't quite understand that AI has to actually be trained.
[00:21:45] Shannon Putman: So there's all these safety features as well, that are built into engage that are incredible, because I know people get worried when you do have an open source environment, that there could be people, you know, that might try to do things and access kids and things like that.
[00:22:01] Shannon Putman: But engage has thought that through incredibly, and you have a robust security system that you've built in for these students.
[00:22:08] Chris Madsen: and you have to really, you know, I think every educator, you know, my wife's an educator, fourth grade, right? We have to be teaching students how to interact appropriately with AI. I don't care what the AI is telling you. It's a great idea. To go and fact check, post your experience and do additional research on what you're learning.
[00:22:27] Chris Madsen: Because you just never know if an AI might hallucinate. I mean, it's certainly getting better and better, but we've still got a long ways to go. We're all on this pioneering journey and we need to be aware of some of the cautions involved in AI as well as these amazing benefits and balance that out.
[00:22:45] Chris Madsen: But we should learn how to appropriately interact with AI.
[00:22:49] Shannon Putman: And just with other, you know, people in the virtual space in general, you know, because it is kind of like the Wild West in some ways. And so teaching students how to you know, remain safe and, you know, and people, I don't even think it's on their radar to think of it, but you have done things where you can.
[00:23:06] Shannon Putman: Make it so other avatars can't get too close to you. Things like that, that would happen in the physical world that now, Yes, these are things that happen in the virtual world and how we actually teach our students to be safe in a whole new environment.
[00:23:20] Chris Madsen: Absolutely. So many different safety features. And you know, it's been an ongoing process. We've worked very closely with educators in the trenches to come up with various types of hosting tools to be able to control a classroom of 70 people, right? That can, you know, just like in a real classroom, it could be difficult to control a classroom of 50 students out there.
[00:23:43] Chris Madsen: Same holds true in virtual reality, except we do have these nice Special tools that you don't have in the physical world of I'm going to mute John over there or I'm going to teleport this person to this location and maybe lock them in that seat and mute them. So we're not getting rid of them.
[00:24:01] Chris Madsen: We're just going to quiet them down and they can watch and learn how a class should behave. There's so many different ways you can operate. 3D audio, all of these different things you can control on the fly and just make that session. We call them sessions. Make that session what you want it to be.
[00:24:20] Shannon Putman: Absolutely, and educators and things that are interested in engage. It is a part of the, you know, put minutes are consulting product bundles. It's a major part of it. So they can always, you know, reach out to me and things like that. But if they're interested in trying anything else out on their own, where do you suggest they go?
[00:24:38] Chris Madsen: Well, I want to reiterate how important it is to involve folks like you for people that are coming into this space. It's like, I want to do VR. What does that mean? It means choosing the right hardware. It means getting a multi device management system to easily manage all of those. It's learning the very basics on how to interact within a virtual space.
[00:25:01] Chris Madsen: How do you set the I. P. D. settings on your eyes for a comfortable experience? How do you learn? That it's so important to use teleportation rather than smooth locomotion because it might make people sick if you're not following proper protocol, all of these things that folks like yourself have spent a decade learning the best practices.
[00:25:22] Chris Madsen: This is why it's important to reach out to a consultant such as yourself to be able to go through all of these variables to have the best experience possible and to be able to scale that out appropriately.
[00:25:32] Shannon Putman: Absolutely. Thank you. Because I bet you people that are especially potentially 1st time listeners don't even know half of those words that you just said, which again is why it's important to talk to somebody so that you know what you're getting
[00:25:44] Chris Madsen: is making the right choices and just doing this logically and effectively. You are definitely a champion and if we didn't have champions, we wouldn't be making the progress that we're making. It's all new, it's new to everybody and we need some guidance and some assistance in that,
[00:26:02] Shannon Putman: Absolutely. And there's no 1 size fits all like, that's what I keep saying. There isn't anything like what works here might not work here and getting something that will work for your location, your project and your current skill level. You know, it is incredibly important, especially because, you know, all the uncertainty around funding and just education in general right now, you know, we need to make sure that we're taking every step.
[00:26:25] Shannon Putman: We can to be as efficient as possible, even though I don't want to use that word necessarily, but that, you know, that we're just providing the best opportunities for our students.
[00:26:37] Chris Madsen: It's incredible technology, and it's only getting better and better. I can't imagine my life without VR now, it's just brought in so much joy and learning to my life personally.
[00:26:49] Shannon Putman: absolutely and I found that, like, you know, because a lot of people, they, oh, they want games, whatever. And I'm like, I've, I find myself just getting lost and engage
[00:26:56] Chris Madsen: This is so true.
[00:26:58] Shannon Putman: you know, it doesn't have to be this, like, you know, because we're not to where I do not think that we're to where. Console gaming is going to be overtaken by VR, honestly, anytime soon.
[00:27:08] Shannon Putman: I really don't, I know a lot of people wanted that to happen, but we're just, I don't think we're there yet. I think it's just a whole different medium and it doesn't have to be like, it's so fun. I mean, I can go to France. I can go to the cafe. I can go to Pompeii, you know, I can go all these places that the physical constraints were always on me before.
[00:27:26] Shannon Putman: And now they're not.
[00:27:27] Chris Madsen: Yeah. I think honestly, one of my favorite things to do in VR is start on a blank slate inside of engage with other people and just start brainstorming and bring that space to life in an experience that we've imagined. And now we can take it from our imagination and make it into an interactive experience.
[00:27:49] Chris Madsen: That's
[00:27:49] Shannon Putman: is. I love that. Well, that sounds like a perfect kind of closing point. I did just want to say that, and I say this on almost every episode, because I Feel like I've been fortunate enough to meet the right people, but you, sir, truly have been there since the very beginning.
[00:28:07] Shannon Putman: You were there supporting me before anybody else back when it was an oculus go. And I just want to thank you for being just an amazing person and a dear and cherished friend and somebody who I know for a fact, I would not be where I am today without you. So thank you for being who you are.
[00:28:25] Shannon Putman: And just being just wonderful and continuing to keep me going. So thank you.