#19 Jul 02, 25

Let's Chat about Lobaki with Zack Davenport!

Shannon Putman: Yellow and welcome on into the pop.

Putins podcast pops here for you and bringing you all the best information about education and spatial learning.

We have the most wonderful Mr. Zach Davenport, and he is the director of production at Leba.

And instead of just listening to me, I'm gonna let him introduce himself.

Welcome, Zach.

Zack Davenport: Hey, thanks.

Great to be here.

Shannon Putman: Excited

Zack Davenport: to have

Shannon Putman: you.

Zack Davenport: Awesome.

You want me to jump right in?

Shannon Putman: Yeah, just go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and why you're here.

Zack Davenport: Absolutely.

So, yeah, thanks for the introduction.

I am Zach Davenport, the director of production at Le Baki.

And Le Baki is a virtual reality company specializing in education and training.

And as the director of production, that means that I get to do a little bit of everything and wear.

So many hats.

All the hats.

I feel like we work in a hat factory sometimes.

But you know, I lead our development team.

I make sure that we work closely with teachers and educators and trainers to represent the content that they need and expect and.

Figure out how to translate that into effective vr.

I work with our sales and marketing to make sure they know how to get it out there in the world.

And then I get to meet with amazing people out in the VR and education community like yourself.

So I'm so happy to be here and having this conversation with you.

Shannon Putman: Well, thank you.

Flattery will always work on me and I appreciate that.

So thank You you mentioned you wear a lot of caps that makes me think of one of my favorite books from childhood caps for sale and it was this dude who like had caps and they were stacked on his head anyways.

Being that you are that gentleman how did you even get started in virtual reality?

Zack Davenport: Yeah, it's kind of a crazy story.

So, my background is actually in engineering, mechanical engineering.

I went to Olin College of Engineering in the Boston area and, you know, avoided software development, avoided electrical engineering, and found myself really into design and education and technology and the overlap of all of those things.

And there was this project that I was doing as sort of a senior capstone project that was all about bringing education to underserved areas in the country.

And that area in particular for this project was Clarksdale, Mississippi.

The Mississippi Delta is a tech desert.

When I was a senior in college, we developed an afterschool program for the Mississippi Delta where we were developing technology, entrepreneurship, and art curriculum for students in this area.

And that was right around the same time that Le Baki had popped up as a little startup.

Teaching students in an afterschool program in Clarksdale, how to do VR development.

That was the original mission of Le Baki, is let's teach students in this tech desert how to engage their artistic talents and their interest in technology that they don't really have an outlet for and make cool stuff in vr.

So I remember meeting the founder.

Of Leba on a trip down to Clarksdale for that project, and we bonded over a love of design and technology I had all these cool virtual spaces that I'd designed just, you know, not with VR in mind, but he said, okay, bring your computer over here.

Just upload that file right here and then put on this headset, and now you are inside this building that you just designed.

And I was hooked immediately.

So that was the first introduction and then we started to have conversations of how this can actually tie into education and the opportunities there.

And then lo and behold, they hired me after I graduated Peak Pandemic 2020.

So moved down to, at this point the company was in Jackson, Mississippi moved down to Jackson, and I've been here ever since.

Shannon Putman: That's an incredible story and it has that aha, like I was hooked moment that I feel like a lot of us in the VR industry kind of experience and you know, rural and underserved.

Populations.

Rural education is definitely something that we believe in and we get behind.

So I love that.

And, you know, you mentioned you created this space and then you put the headset on and you were instantly like, in that space.

So one of the things I always talk about is why spatial learning is so effective, you know, consuming a 3D content in a 3D format.

So tell me a little bit more about like, kind of the power of that and why you're seeing Le Baki use that and why it's so successful.

Zack Davenport: I'll tell you this too.

I was super close to going to school for architecture.

My mom went to school for architecture.

My dad went to school for engineering, and so I've always been kind of this weird hybrid, but you know, I've always had a love for.

Designing these spaces that maybe could or couldn't exist in the real world.

And I realized, you know, I don't have to go be an engineer and live in a world where everything has to work perfectly.

If I'm doing it in vr, I can push the limit as far as I want.

I can use VR to its maximum potential to take you places that you'd never be able to go or you know, even if I'm just teaching you.

A lesson about physics and Newton's laws of motion.

Let's do it in a cool place.

You know, let's go to the different planets.

Let's experiment with gravity.

Let's play some games.

Let's go bowling.

Let's have all of these different amazing interactive activities crammed into one space that could never exist in the real world.

So the context.

And the virtual environment in which you're learning has such a big effect on how you consume that media, how you interact with that content.

And it's so important to me that you are not only comfortable and maybe comfortable is the wrong word.

I don't want you to get too comfortable.

I don't want it to feel familiar.

I want it to feel like something that you've never seen before and is gonna keep you on your toes just enough to make you say, whoa, this is amazing and unlike anything I've ever seen or done before.

And that's where the real learning and the magic happens.

Shannon Putman: Yeah, that's so profound and so true.

My father-in-law is a civil engineer, and so he worked for the architects a lot.

And I would always see him talk about, well, architects would have these grand ideas and we would tell 'em what would actually be possible.

And so like, not having those restrictions, you know, you're, I always say you're only limited by your imagination, so I never even thought about it like that.

Coming from that pragmatic.

Lens, but being able to break free from that's

Zack Davenport: Yeah, thankfully I've got a big imagination.

Shannon Putman: Which I think we all have to have, you know,

Zack Davenport: gotta.

it,

Shannon Putman: right?

Like what fun is there in the, you know, the every day.

Like I can get that every day.

So.

You know, you mentioned your experience with in Jackson and in the Mississippi Delta.

How are you seeing that, you know, immersive experiences and especially, you know, Leba is actually bridging that gap in opportunities for some of our students that are in those rural settings or those technology deserts, as you've seen, as you said.

Zack Davenport: Yeah, it's such an important question because really.

Some of the core principles that guide us on what we do are all about, you know, using VR for equity and empowerment and VR is a great equalizer.

One of the things that first struck me about vrs potential is you can walk a mile in someone's shoes, like almost quite literally.

You know, let me take you on a journey and show you this individual story and show you what it felt like to go through this experience.

So there's the power of VR for building empathy and making connections there, which is powerful in and of itself, but specifically in terms of bridging gaps that you see in rural and underserved communities that are unfortunately so prevalent throughout Mississippi.

You know, like I said earlier, a lot of these places are tech deserts, and then we get to come into a school district that, you know, barely has computer access, maybe they've got some Chromebooks here and there, and suddenly they've got VR of all things.

Holy cow.

It's amazing.

It's a game changer.

2021, we deployed 553 headsets into Kemper County, Mississippi.

Very rural school district.

And you know, it was the first time that, you know, even a lot of the teachers had seen technology like this.

And I remember, you know, you've got these teachers who joined this school as a part of Teach for America.

And they're like, you know, I never thought that a Teach for America School would end up having something like this that just rolls up and completely changes the game.

You know, Jackson Public Schools, we literally share a parking lot with the administrative offices of Jackson Public Schools.

We've got over a thousand headsets in there.

And really just seeing.

The trajectory of learning and the enthusiasm about using technology to integrate into learning experiences the excitement it builds and the, you know, it makes people feel like I'm actually going to a school that's in the 21st century now.

Shannon Putman: A

Zack Davenport: novel yeah, so many technologies that we use in education are so painfully outdated and we are working really hard to overcome a lot of those challenges.

Shannon Putman: you mentioned all of the, you know, the exciting things that I've always been, you know, preaching about VR and xr, you know, especially in education and training.

What is like one misconception though, that you have heard from people that you kind of are trying to get people to understand?

That they have about xr.

Zack Davenport: Yeah.

So especially in education we've encountered a lot of schools and a lot of teachers who You know, they will see this technology and they'll get really excited about it, and they'll say, that's cool.

And I'll, I'm sure the kids would love this, but I just can't wrap my head around it.

It's not for me.

It doesn't need to be for you.

You know, it's, at the end of the day, it's not really for you.

It is for your students.

At the end of the day, it is for the benefit of the students to enhance their learning experience.

And if teachers can.

Start to wrap their heads around that, that I don't need you to be an expert on this technology to effectively use it in the classroom.

All I need you to do is know what it can do, because I guarantee the second you put that headset on a student's head, they're already a light year ahead of you.

They've got it figured out, it speaks their language.

This is what they do at home all day, every day when they're not at school.

And so.

You know, the the conception, the misconception potentially of feeling like you have to fully understand this technology and be an expert to use it effectively for training and education is something that we are constantly trying to push back against.

Shannon Putman: I hear that.

I literally was at a college class last night talking to pre-service teachers getting their degrees, and one of 'em was like, well, I don't really like tech, and I'm, and I literally looked at her and I said, well, it's not about you.

So, you know, I couldn't agree more, and everybody says that every step of the way, they're like, you know, the overhead, well, I'm not using that smart board.

And then, well, I'm not using, I'm not checking my email every day.

And then it was, I'm not using that Chromebook.

And look where we are, it's just like every new progression and so I couldn't agree more with that.

Just a shot.

Zack Davenport: yeah, absolutely.

And it's the same sort of thing where if they see it being used enough, if they see other people using it and they see the potential.

I read a really interesting statistic recently that said that over 60% of teachers use chat GPT in their classroom or to help with teaching and lesson planning.

If you had told those same teachers, Three to five years ago that they were going to be using ai, artificial intelligence in their classroom on a daily basis.

Like, no, I'm not, come on, get real.

It's a technology that was well designed to be familiar and approachable and serve a very specific need.

And they pulled it off.

And I think VR can be the same if people can overcome those initial hesitations.

Shannon Putman: I love that example too.

'cause they thought, oh, the AI's coming to replace us.

Nope.

It's, just like vr, it's not replacing you, it's

Zack Davenport: enhancing.

It's augmenting.

Shannon Putman: exactly.

You still, the stage where de, despite what doomsdayers think that, you actually have to input what you need into Chad GBT.

It's not just, it doesn't just give you stuff so.

Zack Davenport: Yeah.

Shannon Putman: Yeah, exactly.

I love that.

And, our students aren't as impressed because they grew up with technology, so you've gotta do new things to keep them, like a smart board or, like sliding an image across a touchscreen TV is not impressive to them.

Like, it's just not.

So in keeping with that, can you kind of just give us a little rundown about like what Leki, actually is what, what's a part of your program, what type of materials do you guys have?

Zack Davenport: Absolutely.

So our primary offering is what we like to call the Immersive Institute.

And the Immersive Institute is a huge catalog of educational content that we've been developing over the past.

Five years or so.

huge focus on K 12 education at the beginning.

lots of content that we have on stem and I like to tell people we can go full magic school bus, right?

Everybody knows and remembers and loves the Magic School bus.

We can shrink you down to the microscopic level and take you inside a plant and animal cell and you can witness Cellular respiration, all of these different processes tour outer space fly up through the layers of Earth's atmosphere.

actually look at the progression of the rock cycle.

lots of things that you can do in stem lots that we can do in history as well.

We bring historical figures to life and you get to hear their story from their perspective in their environment.

We can take you to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Independence Hall and meet the founding fathers and read the Declaration of Independence.

we've done a huge amount with career and technical education, CTE in recent years as well.

And so a lot of the content that we make has been driven by, schools and training centers coming to us and saying, okay, this is really cool.

These departments could use it for X, Y, Z, but I wanna be selfish and ask for A, B, C.

And it's like, okay, yeah, we've heard that a few times.

There's some real interest here.

Let's consider it, let's make it happen.

So we are constantly expanding.

I'm constantly having to learn.

New things and all this stuff that I learned about maybe last time I heard it brought up was in high school.

It's like, okay, now we're gonna really take a deep dive and revisit all this.

But we work directly with teachers.

We look at their lesson plans, we look at their curriculum and the state standards.

And put all those pieces together to make compelling and highly immersive and engaging interactive VR experiences In one big catalog that we call the Immersive Institute,

Shannon Putman: I absolutely cherish that, especially because you said we actually work and listen to educators like.

Zack Davenport: you have to.

Shannon Putman: Thank you.

That's your customer base you know, like, so the fact that you involved them in the process is what stood out to me, you know, with Leki as well, because you can tell when as a former educator, you know, I can tell when a software was designed by, you know, educators or not, or whether there's educator input.

And that's so critical because, you know, we can be a finicky group, you know?

So, I love that you do that and are you seeing, you know, you mentioned CTE and I'm seeing a big you know, trend in industry and workforce development.

Are there any other, you know, kind of trends that you're seeing where you're getting a higher demand in for some VR experiences?

Zack Davenport: Absolutely.

Yeah.

One huge demand that we're seeing right now and are responding to.

Probably stronger than we've responded to any other demand is diesel and automotive.

So, you know, especially in the south, there is a huge industry for trucking and repair on these big diesel trucks and heavy equipment and machinery and.

There is a little bit of competition out in the marketplace of folks doing diesel and career and technical education in that regard.

But we looked at what they were teaching and how they were teaching it, and we realized that there was a missing emphasis on actually troubleshooting.

So building up the problem solving mindset of.

Here's a problem on a truck.

What tools do we have at our disposal?

How can we put these tools together and actually, you know, use our critical thinking skills and get to the bottom of this?

Because that, at the end of the day, is an employable skill, right?

I can show you a hammer at all day long.

I can show you all these tools and you can identify them and name them and know basically how to use them.

That's great, but can I actually give you a problem that you can jump into and dissect and start to solve on your own?

We wanna try to address that.

Shannon Putman: I absolutely love that you mentioned that because a lot of these simulations and training scenarios, because we have the ability, they tend to be very, you know, self guide.

Overly supportive.

So you know, whether you're in the scenario and the next thing you have to do is match your hand to the virtual hand to put it in that space or put it in this space.

And so there is a lack of critical thinking.

And so I love that you mentioned that because you know, like you said in the south, maybe they're they're at a garage that doesn't have that certain tool.

And so what are you going to do?

How going to think about it and problem solve?

Zack Davenport: Yeah, and I like to think about, you know, the.

Chronology of learning as well.

If we have some lessons at the very beginning that teach you the basics, right?

If I'm making sure that you go through these experiences in sequence, then I don't have to hold your hand every single time for subsequent things that I'm pretty sure that you've learned in a past experience.

I trust that you can.

Grab this multimeter and know how to set it to a specific setting, and we can move a little bit faster and dive a little bit deeper in subsequent experiences.

Shannon Putman: Absolutely.

I love that.

It's like releasing the range, you know, and

that's the goal of what we wanna do for education anyway, you know, and progress down that, that learning journey as we say.

So, everything that you've been saying is all like it, I've been in this industry since 2016 and everything, like every day, it still blows my mind.

So, I absolutely love the message.

I love what you guys do and I'm really excited to hopefully be, you know, working with Leba more in the future.

And, you know, how is it that you guys have been able to sustain yourself for so long?

Because this is an industry too that we see companies come and go quickly and you know, the ones that tend to stay have certain things that, you know, they do well.

And what do you guys think Leba offers that's a little bit different.

Zack Davenport: Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.

It's a tough industry and you know, a conversation that I have.

Weekly is I'll have folks come to me and say, Hey, you know what, if we had this additional thing that we added to our content catalog, what if we had a whole suite on hvac?

What if we had a whole suite on aviation?

And the question that I need to ask myself and get other people to investigate as well is.

Look at the marketplace.

You know, there is a company out there who has spent the last five years, and this is all hypothetical, but I'm sure it exists on just doing HVAC or just doing aviation in vr.

And they probably have some amazing experts on their team and they've probably spent a huge amount of time and resources doing just that.

So why would anybody pick us?

Over them.

You know, a company that doesn't have anything built out yet.

But at the end of the day, the flip side of that is by expanding our content catalog so much by listening to the market and finding.

You know, these niches that haven't yet been tapped or haven't been tapped in a specific way, like diesel and troubleshooting specifically, we can sneak in there and we can add a little bit of value.

And our biggest competitive edge is our breadth of content, right?

We have.

You know, everything from basic math and measurement to, oh my gosh, you just did an inspection on this giant 18 wheeler truck.

Okay.

Yeah.

We cover that full span.

And so we can go to schools and training centers and CTE centers and say, Hey, you know.

With us.

You get this and this.

You can support all these departments and being able to adapt and identify how can we say yes to your existing needs and challenges without trying to reinvent the wheel.

Shannon Putman: That's critical too, because we all know budgets and even just with current climate, how it is.

You know, it's like, all right, well I got this.

Now do I have to buy another software for this?

Do I have to buy another for this?

And so, you know, being able to get Everything in one package as opposed to individually can help, you know, include that cross-disciplinary so that it isn't, you know, inequity even in the school.

Because if, you know, the science teacher uses the headsets and is really advanced, but no other teacher does, well, if you're not science class, you don't get it.

So ensuring that even at the school level, there's equity.

Zack Davenport: And it makes it so there's, you know, one point of support.

You have cohesion in terms of how the content is deployed and from my perspective, how it's generally developed, right?

Having the same set of tools that you use for.

All experiences, whether it's, you know, a history lesson or a diesel lesson, right?

We can use the same kind of core sets of tools and adapt them to wildly different applications.

And that ends up being, of course, to our benefit.

We can make content more efficiently and more usable for the end user, and it makes far more sense on how to get anybody up and running if they've.

Never touched it before.

Shannon Putman: Absolutely.

And I, like I said, I love everything that you guys are doing.

And is there anything that you wanted to, you know, as we're kind of getting towards the close, is there anything that you wanted to share that, you know, we haven't covered or, you know, a lasting impression about laki or anything like that?

Zack Davenport: That's a good question.

You know, it's like we were saying earlier it's been a challenge every step of the way, but it's been an amazing challenge.

And so much of being in a space like this is trying to, Adopt the mindset that we try to foster in those who use our technology is, you know, learn something new, change your perspective, adapt you know, look at this in a new lens.

VR is a great way to do that.

But of course we have had to do that to get as far as we have.

I was just thinking about this the other day.

I was working on an electrical experience teaching about circuits on vehicles like actually making circuit diagrams and setting up interactive circuit stations.

And it's like, well, dang, I tried to avoid electrical engineering and software engineering when I was in college, and now I'm doing both of those things and hardly any mechanical engineering at all.

If I could show day one, Zach at Leba, all the stuff that we've accomplished you know, I didn't know how to do any of this VR development stuff when I first started.

But I believe in everybody's ability to learn.

I believe in everybody's ability to take a step back and look at the bigger picture and say, okay, what is the one thing that I can do right now in this moment to.

Take a step forward to improve my situation or the world around me.

And that's critical for everybody.

Shannon Putman: Those are inspiring and wise words and words that I think are needed, especially right now with so much uncertainty and just everything that's going on, you know?

Like, gotta try to find the light where we can.

And I think Loki does that and I think VR does that.

And I'm so thrilled that you joined me today.

Is there, they say you're supposed to like, like, and subscribe or smash that lick button, whatever all the say.

But is there anything if anybody wanted, if they wanted more information about Le Baki or reach out to somebody, where would you suggest they go?

Zack Davenport: lechy.com.

That is our site.

We actually did a brand new website refresh last year.

We are posting a lot more on social media.

You can find us on all the major platforms.