your word association is the metaverse. So Kyle, why don't you start us off?
Well, I think metaverse, I think of the Oculus. So I go right to meta the old Facebook group.
So I'd have it so virtual reality. Ready Player One if you want a movie.
You're on the side of it. That's where I go. I'm Todd Sorg. I am CIT's Chief Operations Officer and CISO.
Kyle used more than one word, so mine was going to be Ready Player One and I have no backup.
Hi there everybody. My name is Tara. I am our Marketing and Business Development Manager for CIT and I have two words with my word association would be endless possibilities.
Hey guys, I'm Nate. I'm our Director of Cybersecurity. You'll hear my opinion real quick because my word is going to be a joke.
So we'll come back to that later.
Good morning. My name is Scott Patsy. I'm the Manager of Strategic Engagement and my word association is Horses.
And the reason why I say horses is because when the first Model T rolled off the line, everybody said, what are we going to do with all these horses?
And they poo-pooed the Model T. And of course, look where we are today.
We still have horses.
You saw horses. They're just not pulling our vehicles around.
Hi everyone. My name is Rob Pramer. I am the Director of Services at CIT.
I guess when I think of the metaverse, the word that comes to my mind is the Matrix.
I think back to the old movie, The Matrix, and people living inside of a virtual world.
That is so good. And obviously you're joined as always by Kelsey and myself, Ariel.
Your marketing, what was it? Marketing Masters?
Marvelous Marketing Masters.
Marketing Masters. I love it. Awesome.
And today on our Tech for Business podcast, we're doing something a little bit different.
We're giving you an inside look to our leadership meeting discussing the metaverse, maybe at CIT.
So before we jump in, I'd like to give us a chance to just level set.
And I'm going to throw this to Rob and ask, what is the metaverse?
So in the simplest terms I can put it in, the metaverse is a way to interact virtually with your coworkers, your peers, using avatars.
So you get a sense of people can have a custom avatar. You can model it after yourself if you want.
It gives you a way to interact with people kind of like we used to in the old days before the pandemic,
where you actually physically met in person and got to shake hands and say hi to people.
In the metaverse, you can be in a room. You can see individuals as you turn around with your virtual reality goggles on or whatever.
You can see the different aspects of the room. You can see the individuals where they're sitting, who they're talking to, what's going on.
So it gives you the sense that you're together in one place, even though you're geographically dispersed.
And so as we're opening up our environments, our businesses, to teams that are all over the world, it gives you the opportunity to still interact on a little bit more personal basis.
Thanks. Thank you for that.
I just really want to get a quick, almost like a temperature check. How many of you are for this?
Who's in it? Scott's like, yes, I'm jumping in. Kyle's like, for sure. Tara, that's it. Are we pretty split?
Yeah, I'm on the fence. There are pros and cons to it. I like the idea of having that as an option.
I think it opens up a new world of possibilities for us.
But as somebody who is naturally a bit of an introvert, I don't necessarily like being around people a lot. I get burnt out when I'm in a lot of personal interactions.
But at the same time, I feel that we have missed some of that team building, some of the camaraderie that comes with being in person.
And I feel like it's harder to pull teams together in a cohesive manner and build that sense of community.
I'm hopeful that the metaverse can help correct that, but I'm taking a wait and see attitude.
So Todd and Nate, you seem like you're on the no side. And I'm curious a little bit why and maybe you can go into what would have to change for you to say yes?
Go ahead, Nate.
I guess for me, some of the biggest things is while I don't necessarily disagree with things like virtual reality, augmented reality, stuff like that, for me personally, the last thing I want to do is strap something over my face and sit in a meeting all day.
I love working at home, but there is a disconnection already to some of the teams in that component. I would never force anyone back into the office, but to then take that even a step further and start throwing goggles over my face.
I just only see it exasperating the disconnect that I would have with my team. And then a couple other things. I have some privacy concerns. I have concerns about the company that's running it.
I'm not a big social media guy in the first place, but so I've got a lot of different reasons, but I love the concept of using technology to supplement some of this kind of stuff. So I just, again, the full metaverse is not appealing to me personally.
And to tail off of that, I'll kind of try to bridge the gap a little bit. I'm kind of completely in the middle. I see a lot of possibilities for the future. My possibilities for the future would be less metaverse, but more conceptual of what virtual reality is as a whole.
But then I do have some negatives where I think there are some significant barriers to entry, like Nate said, is what that looks like, right? We already have individuals that don't like being on camera. So when you're using video as an example, what is going to make that individual be like, oh, that's fine.
I'll just use an avatar. So now I'm comfortable. I would guess that line is probably blurred at best and probably still the same as I don't really want to do that.
And then again, I did Nate's point is I think the equipment currently is a little cumbersome. So I don't look at that and go, boy, I'd really love to wear an Oculus for several hours.
You know, one of the things actually that came to mind is I don't think this is really a new concept either. So we're hearing a lot about this term.
But now that you said the word avatar, it actually makes me go think of the actual movie, the avatar, right, where they're sitting there, you know, they're humans are sitting there in these little containers and whatnot, and they're wearing all this big suit or whatever.
And they're interacting with these avatar, this alternate world, right?
And then that was, gosh, when did that come out, you know, almost 15 years ago or something like that now. So, um, you could get Kyle on a rant about the avatar.
I can actually relate it a little bit differently. I've been playing EverQuest for, well, since 2001. And I have an avatar in that game, right?
And I run around as a different character, but I'm still talking and chatting and interacting with other people. And mostly, you know, people I know, I tend to play with friends or coworkers that I've had over the years.
And so taking that step further and putting that into a goggle where I can actually look around rather than seeing it on a screen, it's kind of the next natural step and making that avatar more personalized, looking more like me and then interacting with other people in a work environment.
To me, it's a natural progression and it does provide some interesting opportunities for the future. Again, though, I am just concerned that as a society, we're disconnecting from each other and we're losing that sense of interaction.
And people think that I'm behind the screen. I can say anything I want. I have this kind of this buffer that in reality, if they were face to face, they would never do certain things because they feel more personal responsibility, I think.
Did you buy some real estate in EverQuest, Rob?
I did not. I never will.
It's so interesting bringing up the video games and this natural progression. So I know that Scott and Teret, Kyle kind of mentioned, like, yes, I'm all for it.
So for a business, for a business, what could the metaverse mean? How would you implement it? I mean, what do you three see this going into?
I can start with that. I mean, again, to kind of qualify. So again, I look at it and say, okay, virtual reality side of it, I mean, I'm not going to focus on meta the company side of it.
I can definitely do they got some of their own privacy challenges going on there. But in the conceptual side of it, should it be something that should be considered to go through?
I think absolutely yes, because there's a lot of use cases, not for every meeting, but certain meetings where it's conducive on, say, a product demonstration side of that.
Think of a workspace now that you could be virtually transported into the conceptual design itself of a business layout, for example, of a, say, a new conference room design, or, you know, the new layout of your office space that you could actually virtually walk through that.
So I think depending on, usually, maybe you're a manufacturer and you want to virtually have them be able to see and hold, you know, through that interaction, the actual part that you would manufacture or to sit into the car that you potentially would be purchasing in a virtual manner.
So you're more engulfed into the experience side of that without actually having to drive or be transported there. Sometimes you could be, you know, an airplane away that you wouldn't have to have to. Maybe you tour a conference center that you're looking to hold a conference in, but you don't have to make the trip.
I know people did this with homes, you know, home sellers, certainly doing that, the virtual tour sites. So there's a lot of ways, but having, getting that level of engagement side of it are the ways that I think it's very powerful.
And augmented reality, I think, is the other side of it. And, Nate, you mentioned that, I think bringing, I think that has, you know, even more potential than actually getting into the full VR and a lot of cases side of it. I know it's being leveraged and auto repair.
And I think that's the right thread on those where they're using goggles that actually show them the engine and give them the exact part and, you know, speed those up by, you know, an hour and a half repairs down to 20 minutes, you know, some ridiculous efficiencies gains with that through augmented reality.
Those are things that I think are just starting to come as they get better with the glasses and those fit side of it. I think there's some tremendous use cases for where these technologies go. I have an immediate to shake and do an avatar.
No, that I don't necessarily think, but I think there's to go use cases where it comes in there.
I just want to to hear a little bit. I know that we have a couple people who are chomping at the bit to share, but we have some who have not yet and I'm, you know, I'm so curious Tara, maybe your, your world being in marketing and and what that might mean for business or a company.
I'm so curious to so what your thoughts are.
I was just thinking about that when I mentioned the word association of endless possibilities. So us in marketing, we're always like the creative like, oh my gosh, how can we brand this virtual reality with our logos, maybe as our partners that we work with, you know, they're coming out with new products and services and what does that environment look like.
If we were to hold an event together. Kyle had mentioned for us to maybe like virtually see a space so we are planning our tech fair that we have coming up in 2023 and we're we've got to place down in Minneapolis like if we weren't able to travel down for that how could we have
to utilize that to see the space and be like, yep, that's perfect. We can set up tables here, so on and so forth. So I know sometimes we're we on the creative side are always like, yes, let's go. But we have learned just with our arm of cybersecurity of, okay, let's take a little bit back and I know this is where
we're going to be in Todd's passion comes in of great. We can put that in motion. But how do we make sure that we're keeping everything secure, but I'm super excited because like I mentioned with a lot of our partners there on some of the forefront to you know we have Microsoft or Cata with our physical security that
there's multitude of ways that we could showcase a lot of their technology.
So I think we should talk cybersecurity. No, no, I mean, Scott should have a chance to I the only thing that I was going to add was basically exactly what you mentioned I was going to say the events I think has got a great possibility where you currently are in person or you're
in person, and I think that's a great way to get through the video and most people when they come through video they typically don't have it on and they're not terribly engaged and I think this would be a potential area where you would get the augmentative sorry to use that word over again but somebody sent it so now it's stuck
there. But potentially that gets you a deeper engagement than you would get through video so I think there's a possibility that you'd get a big uptick there and then I think another area that potentially would be really neat would be where you could see onboarding Nate had mentioned how you could find ways to be remote
still but you could still get together if you were uncomfortable with being on video maybe something like an avatar would help bridge the gap there.
When I think about this I think about it.
Not so much in yes like I said day to day business operation my day to day business meetings are not going to involve any kind of a headset right.
And so in the near term and you know what what Facebook is doing and what early adopters are doing is exactly that right it's early adopters there's lots of concerns to try to address. I look at this through the lens of long term ubiquitous.
This is everywhere in a place where we can use computer modeling to ultimately make the world a better place right and so can is there are other health care applications where computer modeling can give us health care outcomes is there computer modeling where.
We can do testing in a computer model versus on an animal right those kinds of things are really interesting to me to look that far out where we can ultimately you know do some really great things with the ability to model like we've never been able to do before.
Yeah, sorry I'm gonna just click back before.
Callan Todd both called out that again while I'm against you know that what the kind of the true metaverse feel that you know is the title of this podcast or whatever but the.
Augmented reality I think is a wonderful thing I think there's tons of applications and.
You said something about for Kata and Microsoft you know that starts to bring a couple minds or items into my mind so for example I'm just thinking.
Hypothetically you know for Kata it has the ability to share out a map to a floor plan with all the cameras.
You know and you know I hate recent news right there's been some school shootings and whatnot imagine if now you had a police officer being able to wear some type of you know virtual reality with the floor plan being able to see.
I can see the camera I can see everything as I'm walking down you know hallways that could be really really powerful application of something like this.
You take it into you know manufacturing we've tape we've talked about how it going from a floor plan with measuring tapes to just look at the part and start working on it and.
Even then taking it into a technology standpoint right is oftentimes we have to take a call with a vendor while we're in a server room.
How powerful could it be to say you know we know that we need to take all this hardware part and the vendors on the other side just saying see these bolts here you know are these cables unplug them do it we need to do it better supports us.
But then it better supports you as well right it can be wildly powerful that's the stuff that I'm super excited for.
In the modeling can actually model the outcome.
That's the really cool part it's one thing to show you okay well here's the part but here's what happens if you put it in the.
You know in the piece of equipment here's what happens if you plug this in or unplug this right to me that's that's the next level of this right.
One of the timing.
Sorry I'll be going.
No, I was saying is one of the things I'm hearing kind of as a reoccurring thing is.
There are specific situations where we're all saying that we see an advantage and a potential for this technology, but I don't know that anybody's really said I see everybody walking around, you know all day with these headsets on spending you know eight 10 hours a day working with these things.
We see him in very specific situations being a benefit that's what that's kind of reoccurring theme I'm hearing here.
Yeah, yeah it's the right tool for the right job.
I mean I think you look at where online means fit when in person meetings are best I mean there's it kind of allows those bridge sides with it.
I know that.
Again, what we'll call it meta just the company side of it they do show kind of that use case in the school for example in a history lesson side where they bring the kids back and they're actually walking around will be mammoths on those types of things.
Side with it again I think that's another you know application base where not the whole class are they in there but at certain point you put the goggles on they could be transported to visually experience a time in history to maybe witness.
You know Normandy for example, I mean, if you took the graphics of all that and part of what you see and like say a prior I'm but you're on the beach and Normandy as a witness seen it.
You're going to have a whole new appreciation of that history versus was reading in the book.
Yeah, I mean, but you would remind you would definitely remember it.
You know, I think human beings are very visual and it's a you can learn so much through a visual experience side of it and you bring in all those other senses into those areas with the sound and the close visuals and being able to see and experience that in a more personal way.
I think there's a tremendous learning experience that could be had for all applications in all levels of training.
So I what I'm hearing is a lot of there's a lot of good that can come from this there's a lot of opportunities but I'm going to bring it back to see it and what what we do here.
I mean, are you all saying yes to this I mean how would you implement this with what we do or or you all swing into the other side of the fence and saying no I mean what does it look like for CIT.
I would actually love to have some of this technology in place as we're onboarding employees who are in you know geographically dispersed locations where you could walk through the office and show them the office of CIT and they could actually experience it through your your your
eyes your headset.
I think that'd be a cool application of it.
Give them a kind of a personal tour type of thing.
So just to kind of circle back to how that would go is what typically happens for CIT as we start to come up with new tools, new concepts, new whatever is it usually starts in kind of a brainstorming session.
We've started to do that a little bit in this meeting right so we're we're going I always got this vision.
It could be this it could be that Scott's going what if we did this over here and we're talking about potential areas of training and whatnot and all those are fantastic ideas.
The next step typically for us was we would we would test it so we would go this is what we think it looks like and now we're going to take a small subset of individuals and go all right.
Let's see if we can actually make that work and that could be something like let's see if we can make this work in a meeting.
I think we had a lot of conversations where we've already kind of overlapped a little bit of virtual a little bit of augmentative reality and I think that's a valid comment because I think we would potentially tweak it as we were going so we would jump in and we'd say
all right let's do augmentative reality in the training situation right and it mentioned it you go out to a customer site and we're working on something having a second set of eyes that would be able to look at exactly what you're looking at would be tremendous.
Or having a playbook come up right in front of your eyes as you're working on something I used to working manufacturing it was one of the dreams that I had was I could have a blueprint of something as I was making it and I could look down at the product and see exactly how it went together live.
I didn't need to reference anything with right at my fingertips and eyeballs.
But anyways getting back to it as we're going through the let's figure this out then of course the people like Nate and myself would go back and go all right whoa whoa whoa let's slow this down a little bit how are we protecting the data how are we gathering it what are we gathering it where are we going to store it what does it look like etc etc so all those things start to come together as you go what are we actually doing here and what does it look like.
And then the last step that I would add on there is if it goes really really well then we would come back and go hey this is really cool I've been our customers would love to know this to.
Yeah the one thing I would just kind of write off a Todd there about the privacy stuff is you know my main concerns there is just.
Are you working in somewhere that you know where you have the regulations like GDPR CCPA the healthcare industry right are you communicating.
Personally identify by personally identifiable information personally personal health info.
But are you taking that data and shipping into another company that you don't have control over that's the concern that I really have when you start getting into healthcare so.
But yeah otherwise for CIT.
I Rob I think a little office tour would be great right or maybe just meeting up with some of your other coworkers just for a.
You know whatever I know some of our teams like to do dungeons and dragons together right but just being able to get together and that would be a great use case for the avatars right you got a lot of.
Lot of it people here that love playing games together so.
You mean there's more of an application than just all putting our credit cards down on the smart table and having it figure out the power of the bill splits.
I like it.
Remember that right you kind of came in went to this novelty you know there's more applications here than that right.
I think that became Apple Google pay you know right then more.
Essentially kind of eliminated that but I mean I think as it stands today though it doesn't feel like we have the transcending application of it yet.
I mean again one meta has the Oculus and I think it's a nice product.
It does appear to be more of a consumer product to me.
You know requires a personal Facebook account and these other sides mean I it doesn't feel like something I would say bring it into the business environment.
I think we're still waiting on you know you know the Apple glasses the Microsoft glass is something that has you know something that you could federate into business cops and you have the controls and the other things that needs referencing can be set because it has more
you know corporate Federation and you can have then corporate governance and other rules and regulatory sides of it if we had everybody using their personal Facebook side of it it may never just be very.
I think awkward is the only thing I kind of come up with that.
There's we're right there on the cusp of that I think the processors and the technology side is really close I know that.
I've read like the Apple glasses are right there but their challenge I know Google went down there and Google said same thing that they felt it's close but not there.
So it's I think within the next number of years side of you're going to see you know be able to get your prescription glasses and be able to do things that will I think allow us to do a lot more and a lot more natural forms of what we're interacting with the phones and the other
sides of it I think it's close.
Yeah so you know we got a lot of like internal and onboarding and things like that and I know Tara you're working so much with vendors you had mentioned before.
I mean what does that look like for CIT to implement this or what happens when the vendors bring this idea you know how do how do we move forward with that.
Yeah no that's a great question. I mean with our top vendors it's kind of our due diligence as an IT provider is to kind of be on the cusp of this technology and vet it out before we bring this to our customers so I think that's one of the great things about CIT is that we have such
strong relationship with our partners that we can have those conversations and really determine like yep this is going to be a good fit let's make sure we've got kind of everything on board and then bring that to light to customers.
One of the things too we have at CIT as an advisory board so we do like to bring in customers on a yearly basis and kind of throw some stuff at them and just kind of get their reaction to say is this of interest to you what if there was these possibilities so we have that coming up that we're going to get that scheduled
and it's always intriguing just to kind of get their thoughts because we do have so many of our customers in different industries so this metaverse is going to be applicable to them maybe not as quickly as some of the other ones where we might have some slow adopters which is fine
because we're not here saying you have to do this today because we need to get in there and test it but I know us on the marketing team will raise our hand and be like I would love to try it can we do this we'll test it out and see it so if we're going to start this at CIT we're ready and we can do that.
I know you guys had mentioned kind of various things even with onboarding we do a lot too of communication not only to our customers but our employees at CIT so we have our state of the company meetings and what would that look like in the metaverse with all of us joining at that
hanging out you know maybe somebody put in the chat of like we're all on a nature walk we were all walking in nature and we're talking about our goals I don't know that's why I said like in possibilities you know I'm like how can I brand those this walk and I throw up some like quotes that we have maybe within a podcast like this is where I'm like my wheels are spinning and I'm like okay let's go so just super excited.
I have one last thing about marketing so.
As companies shifted to all their virtual expos or you know me you know customer engagements you know I attended one about two years ago that was a virtual expo you can go click on the stairs walk upstairs right that could be a great application I know CIT we have our tech fair every year.
You know invite customers and but for those that you know maybe live out of state and maybe can't get here that could be a great opportunity right come join us with all the rest of us.
I want to know who the individual is going to be that where's the camera hat that walks around for those people to see the full expo and in that three dimensional looking where you want type of mode.
Yeah.
I know I'm here right.
I love it.
Well I'm gonna I'm gonna open it up for just real quick you know your closing statements just anything that you want to share that you didn't get to share.
I think we definitely got some podcast ideas in the future I know I'm interested I hope our listeners are interested this was a great conversation but anything anyone wants to share.
Here at the end.
I last thing I have is in the near term here that if these environments of this early stage of things can focus on usability versus how it looks right because it's this cartoony kind of world right now and I think that turns everybody off and so if it can functionality can increase and all of that other stuff can take it back see it I think it will get start to gain more traction.
Yeah I'll tell you off of that as we're wrapping up again going back to the security compliance concerns that come with it as it will be interesting to see how.
The world the laws try to keep up with this so as Scott just mentioned and alluded to is as you start looking at people that look like real people if you will the matrix he kind of stuff there is compliance concerns that comes with it because as Nate mentioned the PHI level the health information the identifiable information.
That is information that suddenly becomes available to everybody and is that what you're really looking for so that those will be concerns that just naturally come through it.
Things will catch up it just takes a little bit of time law tends to lag a little bit behind technology as we've seen throughout the years.
And I think technologies like said it's on the cusp was supposed to we're going to see some products coming out in the next upcoming years I think that are going to really I think bring some of the ultimate promises to where this is that.
I mean right now I think it's it's it's pretty niche.
Definitely in the in the business environment for sure.
But consumer products tend to drive ultimately business side with it and I think it's I'm glad there's been a lot of advancements.
I had some early stuff. I mean my office that quest to is far far better than the first.
As I saw I'm very impressed with capabilities where that's gone that's encouraging. So I think there's.
Great things to come.
I think of a scene from a recent movie that that kind of brings us together for me and that's in Avengers in game when they're meeting and you see the actual people even though they're they're all over the universe.
But their actual images of them interacting in real time through through a conference.
And when we can get to something like that where you can actually have that type of real time interaction with what you know what otherwise would appear to be the actual individual.
I think that's where it kind of brings us back home to the idea of face to face meetings and you start to reconnect a little bit more than than you do to these cartoony looking at the towers.
Great. Well gosh this has brought up so many interesting things interesting questions.
I imagine sparked a lot of thoughts for me for our listeners and I'm curious if our listeners would be interested in meeting in the metaverse or interested in learning more about how to implement this.
If you have any questions comments please feel free to reach out to us at CIT.net.com slash podcast or send us an email at info at CIT.net.com.
Thank you Kyle, Todd, Tara, Nate, Scott and Rob for joining Kelsey and myself today and we'll be back next week with an all new episode.