?Favourite innovation that isn’t yours?
The mobile phone, but more specifically the iPhone. It’s pretty slick and I love it when design and tech merge perfectly.
Favourite innovation that is yours?
Can I have two? We’ve just launched an augmented reality tourism app for Ng?ti Wh?tua Or?kei and we think it’s definitely the way forward for tourism, and a very unique experience. More on this to come soon.
The Future of You VR Personality Profiler that we created for Torrens Universities is also in my list of top innovations from our team. It’s proving to be a very fun and successful tool for Torrens in recruiting students.
Most interesting launch/trend/idea/building/product of the year?
Magic Leap.
Lamest launch/trend/idea/brand/building/product of the year?
Magic Leap.
Most promising New Zealand company/companies?
GirlBoss
Nanogirl
Rocket Lab
Techemy
Anyone playing in the AI space and doing it properly
Can I say us?!
Heroes?
Wonder women…#metoo women of the world, Jacinda, Alexia Hilbertidou, Michelle Dickinson, Gal Gadot, Princess Leia.
My partner and son for putting up with my constant travel this year.
Villains?
Bad men…Trump, Weinstein, Travis Kalanick.
Your own biggest success?
The collab with James Hurman for The Boy and the Lemon where we created augmented and virtual reality versions of the story. We were lucky enough to be invited to The Future of Storytelling in New York in October, and have just been given the awesome news that The Brooklyn Academy of Music also want to showcase it at their Tecknopolis event. It’s been incredibly rewarding to be able to work on something that brings some of my favourite things together – books, technology, and kids. Watching kids’ (and adults’!) faces light up when they see the story come to life never gets boring.
Also, getting early development funding from the NZ Film Commission for our VR time travel adventure game – Wanderer. Both of these projects have opened up some fantastic international opportunities for us.
What’s the biggest mistake innovators/businesses will make in 2018?
Continuing to do things like they’ve always done, change is the only constant right?
What do you expect to see in the next five years?
Some more grey hairs.
What will be dead in the next five years?
My brand new phone. Manual cars… if not already. Sky TV.
What should be invented and/or un-invented?
Ability to add more time to your day. But you only get a limited amount per month, once you’ve used it you have to wait for the next month. Like a phone plan.
Favourite book/TV show/podcast/album/website/magazine/story/performance enhancing drug of the year?
Books – Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, The Girl with all the Gifts by M R Carey – I love reading but have been seriously lacking in time the last few years so to get through some good ones this year feels like an achievement.
TV Shows – Stranger Things, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Black Mirror, Glow.
Magazines – Idealog (not just saying that!) PaperBoy (pleasantly surprised by this one)
PED – Berocca (how have I just discovered this?!)
What’s the one piece of tech would you have on a desert island?
A hovercraft to get me off that island!
Will the robots become sentient and kill us all? (asking for a friend)
I would hope that anything that is sentient wouldn’t go straight to killing us…
How long before we have:
Driverless cars – mainstream probably five years.
Flying cars – 10-15 years.
Immortality – never ever… please!
Cities that all look like Venice – depends which part of Venice.
No planet to live on – hopefully never, I’m sure we can start to turn things around.
No animals farmed or eaten – ever? Probably still 10 years away but I’d hope we could get their earlier.
Non-human lovers – already starting. Heard about the VR marriages?
No cash – 10+ years.
Fusion energy – no idea…not my area of expertise.
Universal basic income – I’m not sure that this will ever happen but I’d loved to be proven wrong.
Chips implanted in our brains – never, they’ll be in our wrists.
Colonies on Mars – can Matt Damon move there?
