Exploring the Future of VR & AR

Speaker A: Hello, world.

Speaker B: This is Better Tech, a podcast where we chat with some of the most successful leaders about the latest industry developments. So join us as we explore the world reliance on tech.

Speaker C: Hello, I'm Jocelyn Houle, uh, here for Better Tech Today, and we are interviewing Mark Nguyen, who is the founder of Slide Factory. Welcome, Mark.

Speaker A: Hi, nice to be here.

Speaker C: It's great to see you. I'm super excited for this interview because you work on so many really interesting hard problems, uh, that I, um, have a million questions. So this. You may not get to talk that much is what I'm trying to tell you. No, just kidding. Um, first of all, tell us a little bit of it. You're the founder and CEO, Just give us the bullet. What is Slide Factory?

Speaker A: Uh, Slide Factory is, um, a digital agency. We've been around for about seven years. Um, about 50% of our work is in emerging technologies. We work in AR VR and a lot of AI work. And the other half is very traditional marketing and um, apps and technology work.

Speaker C: Okay, so, um, how would you describe the kind of customers or clients that you take on? Your ideal clients?

Speaker A: Uh, it's a mix, I think. Um, some of our more interesting clients are in the startup field. So there are people who are, um, starting a company, looking at new technologies, usually have an idea where they're trying to build something that's just a little bit different, a little bit new.

Speaker C: Mhm mhm. Um, and so when you're focused on emerging technologies, where would you say your focus is right now?

Speaker A: Right now it's a mix between, um, virtual reality and a lot of AI work. So we're doing a lot of agentic development. Um, we're doing a lot of work in the training field around VR, especially in the semiconductor space. Mhm mhm.

Speaker C: Um, well, it's interesting because it's such a intersectional, uh, work on virtual reality. Right. Because you've got hardware, you've got design work, you've got totally different, um, user UX situation. Um, how did you, like, how do you kind of put together the right team for that work if it's starting from the whiteboard, you know, give us a sense of like, what your process is at Slide Factory for engaging with a VR client and getting them to like an MVP level?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it really depends on the client and what they're looking for. Um, some products are very technical, which means that you're actually going into the facilities, you're recording the procedures, actually breaking down, you know, in very specific detail exactly what's happening, um, doing A lot of measurements. So you're looking for people who are very um, I guess mixed discipline, you know, people who have a very good attention to detail but also still understand the creative side, still understand how to break whatever they're, they're seeing down in those very technical situations and something that we can actually build visually. Um, when it comes to VR because you are dealing with kind uh, of taking those real world situations, usually working with some very heavy CAD models and some very specific uh, machinery. Yeah, the hardest part is kind of transitioning that into that VR space, into something that can work with the headsets, can work with the technology and still look and feel like, like they're in the actual space. Um, so team wise it's always going to be, you know, um, uh, a technologist who understands how to get the most out of the hardware and a creative who understands how to take the realism of what's there and move it into something that can work in VR.

Speaker C: Yeah, I don't know if our listeners know this but it's such a specialized thing to do. That kind of real world user experience that's handshaking with a software experience. It's a special, very special thing. I'm a software person and anytime hardware gets involved I kind of break out in hives. So I think uh, I definitely want to talk more about that. And I know that's not the only technology that you work on as a cutting edge new technology. But um, you know, I forgot to ask you a little bit about how long you've been around and why you started this firm.

Speaker A: I've been around for a while. Um, I got into the industry uh, maybe almost 30 years ago, kind um of in the early days of, I guess the new Internet, um, before mobile was really on the stage.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm with you.

Speaker A: Yeah. Because of that, uh, I was lucky enough to actually work through that. So I started in software development, actually working for a um, company that was doing a lot of government work around um, building like network surveillance software. And then from there I uh, was a designer developer because everybody was, you know, a mix of things back then. Uh, moved into the agency space where I just, I really had the opportunity to kind of dig in and work with a really interesting client. So I was one of the designers on the early BlackBerry sites. I worked with Apple for a number of years. Um, we got to work through the emergence of mobile as, you know, with the companies that were actually creating it and changing it. So we had to see that world just go from that, from that old Internet, uh, to what it eventually became and we got to be a part of that. Um, and through that whole experience I kind of moved from design to development to taking over the studio space at the agency that I was at, building it out into a nationwide group and kind of running the 3D and motion graphics and emerging technology side of what we were doing across the nation. Um, which kind of led me into what I do today because we were already um, building out the components of everything that was 3D and animation and emerging tech for the company.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: We got to take that knowledge and apply it to things like virtual reality as virtual reality was becoming a thing, um, and working with just a lot of really interesting clients. So we took that knowledge. Um, eventually when I moved up to Oregon, I met my co founder and we just decided to see where it led and we started side factory.

Speaker C: Well, I want to talk to you a lot more about that. I've been talking to more um, service providers like you who are kind of doing more custom work and I think that makes sense. In the world of artificial intelligence and having so many, so much happening right now, it does remind me of the early days of mobile. Um, and so um, that's really interesting background but let's kind of back up. I do like to just kind of set the stage for myself and all the listeners. Um, when you're talking about the. Well first of all is the Metaverse. What's the metaverse? Is that still happening?

Speaker A: I don't know if it's actually still happening. Um, I mean a version of it's still happening. The metaverse itself I think was the idea that uh, Facebook at the time came up with. Decided to rebrand something that was already there. Um, the core idea was just that it was going to be an interconnected virtual space. Everyone's seen Ready Player One at this point. Um, that was the idea. Uh, the reality is it's a very slow moving large, um, object that will get there eventually. I mean it's only a matter of time before a lot of the technologies we're seeing are going to converge and actually build that space. But it's not going to be tomorrow. I mean I think we'll be lucky if it'll be within the next five years. Um, because the biggest issue we have right now is just that the hardware has to catch up with the ideas that people have. Um, and everyone's seen this amazing world on, in the movies about what they want and that's, that's just not there yet. It disillusions A lot of people. Um, so, um, the metaverse. Yeah.

Speaker C: So still think, still chugging along, still thing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and, you know, the reason I'm asking that is like, what has to be true for the metaverse to kind of really get elevated into the con, where consumers are going to be really engaging with it. Like, what are the big things you just mentioned one computer.

Speaker A: Yeah. Hardware is going to have to get smaller, um, smaller and more comfortable. I mean, the average consumer today, um, we're already seeing, like when phones first came out, right. When I was younger, they were big, I had one. Um, Yeah, I mean they were bricks back then. Um, and over time they got smaller and smaller and people are used to that form factor. And while they like the fidelity of larger screens, they want something light and they don't want to be burdened with it. Um, mobile is the same thing, right. When you're strapping something large to your face and, uh, you're trying to walk around with it, people don't want to look stupid, they don't want to wear the big clunky glasses. Um, so as those things shrink, as they get smaller, as they get more fashionable, people will start to adopt. But, um, the other side is that they have to keep up with what people are already used to. They're already used to high fidelity phones, they're already used to, um, AI that can create images in seconds. They want that in these devices as well. And as that hardware gets smaller, the technology again has to keep up. So it has to give people that, that visual fidelity that they see everywhere else. And until those two things kind of merge together, I think you're a hard time getting people to adopt.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's right. Everybody has, uh, too high expectations, uh, I think me included, uh, for all of the tech we use. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I was thinking about when talking to you, like, Faith Ali's work in world building. Right. Is also part of the metaverse space because it's going to, you know, how do we have like a space that's evolving as you're thinking about it, as you're prompting it? I think people want to have a metaverse space that they're creating as they're going.

Speaker A: Uh, I mean, Mid Journey just released their new model, um, for, for video creation from their imagery. I don't know if you've taken a look at it yet, but the, the whole premise of that specific model is not for entertainment purposes. It isn't for film the way that, you know, VO2 or any of the other platforms are using. Their uh, stated purpose was that they eventually want to be able to create virtual worlds with it. Right. Immersive worlds, uh, using AI and prompts. So I mean and the fidelity of the model is amazing. Right. Actually the videos that it can create and the speed that it can create is awesome. And this was just a few days ago where they're already starting to adopt AI and those prompting to create uh, in the future virtual worlds that will

Speaker C: be, I think that's what people are going to want. They're going eventually it'll get there. Yeah, yeah. And you see the, one of the big blockers is this sort of end user form factor uh, which really isn't there yet. Uh, and definitely need some design applied to it. Um, the other kind of terminology I wanted you to help me understand is um, VR, AR and XR. Uh, why do we use these terms and how do they relate to each other?

Speaker A: Honestly I think it's just trying to find a way to get um, the consumers to understand it a little bit better. Uh, virtual reality is fully immersive, it's wrapped around you, there's no pass through and so it is your confined virtual world. Augmented reality is applying or augmenting your environment and applying visuals on top of that environment. But augmented reality had been seen as kind of like looking through your phones. And when people think of augmented reality they kind of think of that Extended reality is an extension of augmented reality where it's basically um, pulling the world, uh, the virtual world into the physical space a little bit more deeply. So you'll see extended reality applied to things like um, uh, the Magic Leap or the Vision Pro. And Vision Pro has even changed the name again um, to their own version of it.

Speaker C: They're struggling a little bit with that. Uh, it's unfortunate, uh, they should have won with that. But it's a little bit of a struggle.

Speaker A: Um, it's an amazing tool, it's ahead of its time and it's going to take a while.

Speaker C: Um, so I always felt like because I come from the enterprise software world that uh, augmented reality would probably get traction first uh, in specific use cases. Can you share some examples of uh, real companies that you've built for or examples of uh, AR versus VR applications?

Speaker A: Sure. A lot of the air that we're doing are more in the entertainment space. Um, well you're absolutely right. Um, there are um, industrial uses for AR where we're having conversations around those things where they're basically wanting to use AR as a heads up display as technicians who are out in the field, um, can use AR to basically, um, walk them through how to go through specific procedures. Um, but a lot of the things that we're doing right now with that are more discussions, right? They want to apply those types of things. They're interested in those types of things. Uh, but the actual, uh, getting their people actually out in the field and using those things are always a risk. Um, and so they're always stuck in the discussion. Why is that? Uh, uh, I think it's because again, the hardware isn't the best. I mean the US military spent millions of dollars on the HoloLens to get out the field and the soldiers refused to wear it. So there's, there's things like that that are definitely hurting.

Speaker C: It gets tricky in real life. It gets tricky. That's right, yeah.

Speaker A: And it, um, obstructs your view. Um, there are just problems. Right? So actually putting your person out there, having them hold up their phone while they're trying to do work, have them wearing glasses, at least the, you know, the older glasses while they're trying to do things, it was just hard. Um, so right now when we're doing augmented reality, it's a lot of entertainment, it's games, um, we're doing some political campaigns for it. So people can actually uh, uh, get messages out there in different ways so they can interact with kids, that kind of thing. But yeah, the uh, AR in the industrial space is, at least for us,

Speaker C: has been slow moving, interesting. Um, and so would you say, um, I don't know if you can categorize most of the work that you're seeing from customers, uh, in this space. Uh, and you also, I'm sorry, you also mentioned the 3D space. Is that part of this AR VR or something else that.

Speaker A: Oh yeah. I mean the 3D space is always going to be part of AR VR only because, um, in order to actually build those virtual worlds or build the virtual items that are existing and that are being augmented onto the real world or pulling into the virtual spaces, those are all developed in 3D. Um, so again that, that was kind of like my early background working in 3D, working with other tools. Um, and that understanding that spatial environment really helps a developer and helps anybody who's working in it and also helps you to actually build the things. Because you can't build a 3D VR environment if you don't apply 3D. So it's definitely a requirement.

Speaker C: One thing, maybe I'm going to bundle the answer in the question. It's interesting because you have this perspective, this long view. And you came from the design side as well. You did both development and design. It's just a different type of, or is it a different type of product, um, design process when you're working in 3D space? Yeah. Can you tell me kind of how that works in the innovation cycle, starting from, you know, we're sitting at the whiteboard day one? Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean early on that was, that was one of our biggest problems was, um, as, ah. So like, I was lucky enough that very early on, when Magic Leap was kind of still in its infancy, uh, to be one of the teams that was pulled in to kind of help out with the, um, visuals. Like what, what would it be, the Magic Leap? Uh, yeah. Now, um, it's grown since then, so it's changed a lot. But this is it.

Speaker C: I don't know what it is.

Speaker A: Uh, it's an augmented reality, um, headset. It's kind of like the Hololens or kind of like the Vision Pro.

Speaker C: Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: It was one of the ones that, uh, have a lot of. Yeah. And um, there's so many different flavors of Hololens. There's, there's lots of different headsets out there, but I think this is one of them. And they've gotten bigger over the last couple years. Uh, but early on, maybe, um, uh, 12, 15 years ago, this point I lose track. It's probably even longer than that, uh, when they were.

Speaker C: I don't understand time anymore. That's a different podcast in which we'll cover the physics of time, which no, no longer applies to me.

Speaker A: So they, they pull this in, um, at my, my last agency and they asked, basically trying to figure out the question you're asking, right? How do you build, um, interfaces in this different, this new virtual world that's coming and how do you visualize those things? Are they, uh, 3D interfaces that, that are kind of like, um, you know, people have to use their hands, they have to interact. Are they flat interfaces that float in front of you? So we got to explore that a lot. And one of the things that we found were that traditional designers have a really hard time, uh, visualizing interfaces in a 3D space. You'd think it would be easy because, you know, you're in, ah, a 3D world all the time, right? You're working in a spatial environment, you have things in front of you, you have a computer, you have, um, buttons that you press. So you would, you would think that it would be something that a lot of people Just immediately grasp. But I think a lot of people who work in hardware or are building interfaces for cars or other things already realize that it's a very hard problem to solve. And it compounds when you're dealing with the idea that, um, there's nothing physical right now. So when you're driving a car, um, you have the steering wheel, your arms can rest on the steering wheel and it can support the weight. And there are things there that help that interface. Mhm. When you're dealing with virtual reality or augmented reality, those don't exist.

Speaker C: It's a whole new thing. Maybe you're on another planet. You're not driving a car. It's kind of interesting because if you were to drive a car, you could observe me driving a car and understand what I'm doing. But in a new, new product, there's

Speaker A: no and how do you visualize that? Right. You're at a whiteboard. The whiteboard is flat. Um, you're trying to build for an environment that is definitely not flat. So the first thing designers tend to do is draw boxes. Right? So they draw boxes on the screen. They say, well, this is, this is the interface. These are the buttons and they start to cram everything into the small space because it's floating directly in front of you. Um, and again, the issue is that that doesn't work. I mean, like, yes, maybe a floating button and here or there would work. Um, but the minority Report interface, you know, where things are floating all around you, it's, it's unrealistic. People get tired and you can't wave your arms around and actually interact with that many things.

Speaker C: Um, and it's not better, it's not better than what we have today. It's not fun to. That's the interesting part of it. I mean, the whole category is better. But like what you just described, uh, of like just having, you know, a wraparound screen in virtual space. I agree. Um, why would that be better? It just seems more exhausting and, and

Speaker A: so they, they tend to go back to old tropes. Right? Like a keyboard or, um, again, just, just a windowed interface, but it's floating in front of you. And so they, they tend to lean towards that. Um, and that's, that's usually the biggest problem when, when you're just discussing, like, how do you designers approach it?

Speaker C: Why. So that's out of curiosity. And by the way, thanks for using the word trope. That's one of my favorites. Um, but why do you like just cognitive. Is it a cognitive thing or. We Just haven't built that muscle as designers. I'm just curious you have an opinion on that? Why is it harder for designers to make the switch?

Speaker A: I think it's a, it's a training thing.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: I, I don't know if you're around, like, when, when in the early days when print designers were transitioning over to the web. Right. Uh, you'd find people that are like, I've been a designer for years, I've been designing for print. I can definitely design a website. Then you'd see these websites and they were atrocious. Right. They were the most horrible things that you'd ever see. And it's because, uh, they were trained in a way that made sense when they were in the medium that they were in. Um, just like UX designers today, or, um, not all of them today. I mean, there are a lot of really good ones, of course. Right. But most of them are still approaching as if it's a, it's a web page. Right. They've, they've been doing this for five to 10 years. They've been working in this space. Uh, that's what they know. They know the confines of the browser, they know they need to work with mobile, they understand these things. Um, but they take that knowledge and they take that experience and they apply it to a 3D space. And I think it's just, it's their go to, it's what they know, it's what they've been trained. They feel like it's short, you know, it's a really.

Speaker C: Actually, you shouldn't, uh, have hubris about this because it can get any of us. I felt that way when I started really working with cloud architectures. I still couldn't get out of the stack in my mind and to really, even though I thought I did, there would just be um, times when I would do something, I would think, oh, this is really the old thinking. It sneaks up on you.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it gets you in trouble. Right. Like when you, when you do something the way you believe it should be done, because that's what you've always done it and it's always historically worked. Um, and then it doesn't. It throws you off and then suddenly you're wondering, why is my interface broken? Why is my site going down every five minutes? You know, what is actually going on? And you basically have to reset and rethink it. Yeah.

Speaker C: It's interesting. Um, I'm curious. In the, like, let's take the web design world, there's like some principles, some known Knowns of what's going to work, what people are going to like, what they're going to click on next for the most part of how to kind of um, you know, not only be esthetically pleasing but you know, functional. For most users I could probably list like 10 things that I know about that but ah, are there no knowns? Have we learned something about the AR and VR world that are no absolute, no nos or like you absolutely must have this experience uh, in order to be successful with that interface.

Speaker A: I'd say the no nos are um, you know, don't, don't throw windows everywhere to solve a problem. Um, stay away from the, the you know, uh, uh, the folder under folder and the infinitely scrolling um, uh, interfaces. I think we've, we've learned that um, as people are interacting, understanding spatial distance matters like how far someone has to reach, um, how far a button is and if you're using buttons, understanding again that, that a person has to support the own weight of their hands, which, which sounds stupid but it's true. Right. You have to lift your hand up and if you're standing in your virtual space there's effort involved with that. Um, so you have to be able to reach uh, the things that you want to interact with without having to move too far, especially if you are confined or if you're in a chair. So it's interesting.

Speaker C: I would expect that would like build trust too with the experience.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah. And it's, I think the um, the best gauge is that someone can, you can drop someone into a virtual world and they can just immediately start interacting. They understand it, they just start walking around and they're not fumbling for buttons or menus or things. I think that's how you know you're at least getting to a successful point.

Speaker C: So how do you collect uh, information on whether you're, you know, you're working on this cutting edge type of technologies. You're working in spaces like entertainment, gaming that are changing so fast. Um, how do you measure the success of the work you've given to your customers and clients?

Speaker A: Ah, usually through testing for us. So if it's a training application, it's um, we do a lot of testing to make sure. Like are, are people getting sick? Are they getting nauseous? How long can they be in the headsets? Are they able to actually go through the different interactions? You know, is it breaking every five steps? So it is a ah, lot of user testing and just a lot of qa. Just um, like anything else you can apply metrics to it. Right. So you can put analytics on things. You can test buttons, you can test interactions. Uh, you can see how long someone's in an experience and what's going on. Um, but it's that, at least for us, it's still very traditional. It's a lot of analytics, it's a lot of qa and it's a lot of just monitoring, making sure things going to what you expect.

Speaker C: That's interesting. And you're also building a lot of agents for customers.

Speaker A: We are, yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah. Um, can you share some use cases or some customer stories with us about what types of agents people want you to build for them?

Speaker A: Uh, sure. Um, um, so right now we're dealing with. I'll speak in broad terms.

Speaker C: Um, does this all their 10Ks? No.

Speaker A: So we're doing a lot of work with, um, agentic systems where we're building profiles on individuals, basically. Uh, um, building, uh, systems that they connect their services to, call it LinkedIn or Blue sky or their website, uh, will then, um, grab the information from those different sources, analyze, uh, the person, how they write, uh, how they speak, who they are, build an agentic profile of that person, and then, um, from that agentic profile be able to, um, interact with those different tools. So for you, for instance, um, we might connect your LinkedIn profile to it. It would ingest your profile. It would build, uh, a, uh, profile on you that the agent could then reference and use. Uh, we could then if you connected your website or anything else to it, we then grab that, we'd analyze your writing style, who you are, and then from there we can actually, uh, interface with that tool and post for you. Um, so it can. Yeah, exactly. Um, maybe not as advanced as like, like the 3D version. Um, there are clients doing that as well, where they're building out actual, like who could actually be on this podcast and they can answer questions and you would see their, their video and they would talk to you. Um, so those also exist. Um, but, um, those are, those are much more complicated and they're still early M and C. And those are things well talk about some other time. Um, but M, the ones we're doing now are more interacting with, um, um, the actual websites. Like they're creating blog entries for the user. They're uh, allowing you to connect your analytics and then you can speak to the data as if it's an actual person. So you can ask it like, what's going on with my site? Uh, what's happening? Can you show me this report? Can you do this for me.

Speaker C: Everybody wants that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And then take that data and write a blog post for me about it as if you were me. Or, um, if someone writes to my site, go, uh, to my website, look at all the information, answer their questions as if you're a QA person or as if you're me, and, you know, go from there.

Speaker C: One of the questions I had for you is, you know, in the investment world, in the software world, I feel like, um, everyone says, well, just build it yourself. You, you want a digital twin, just build it yourself. Why can't people build it themselves yet? Why should they come to you?

Speaker A: I mean, they can, um, if you're, if you're an infrastructure, if you're a cloud person. Yeah, it's like saying, yeah, you could, you could totally throw something up in AWS and just work. It'll work great, right? Like, you could. EBS is amazing. You could get something spun up. Um, in most cases, it'll probably work. Um, but when you're dealing with, um, agentic tools, like, uh, there are, there are a lot of great workflow tools that you can use that you could build yourself and you could actually build some, some really amazing, um, just your own personal tools that even, even agentic tools that do things, uh, the downside is as they start to get bigger, as they start to, um, interact more with your tools or represent you, um, having some control and understanding what they're actually doing is important, especially if you're letting them in your systems and you're letting them actually make changes. Not just, not just talk to you about what's there, but, um, do something right, like, um, add to your database or add to your website.

Speaker C: Take an action on your behalf.

Speaker A: Yeah, you definitely want to have some kind of control and understanding what's going on. Um, but people can, they can go to lovable, they can go to these different places and they can build these tools very quickly. Um, and there's nothing wrong with that, especially for MVP tools. Um, but I would say understand what the code is that you're making. Um, if you connect, you know, if you're experimenting with cursor and you're a client, you connect it to your systems and you're like, hey, add this button to my website. It may definitely add a button. It may destroy your entire website and remove all your code, but the button will be there and it'll be amazing. Um, so there's just things you want to make sure that they're actually going to work and you're going to check Them.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of folks, actually, I will date myself and I sort of remember when everybody, you know, the web happened. Uh, we had the Internet and then the web happened. Um, and everyone's like, well, you know, my, my nephew can build a website overnight. Well, I know.

Speaker A: And then that comes every generation, right. It was like, my nephew can build a website. My nephew can. Has a video camera. He can shoot a video. Yeah, they, they can. They, they definitely can. Is it going to be good? Is it, you know, is it going to work?

Speaker C: It looks good for a single use or a small company or, you know, but then it gets tricky. And I think, especially in the cloud world, if you're, uh, if you want to be an entrepreneur, this is an idea. Like, anybody's listening out there and like, I'm going to call Mark. I got my killer idea, right. And I want him to build it. I think one thing to consider is it's good to have, um, experienced builders because of the cloud costs that can coincide here. It can be some really nasty surprises into, like, the thousands of dollars.

Speaker A: Yeah. And the same is true with, with agents you're connecting to. You're connecting them to systems that are charging you incrementally as you use them. If you have an agentic system that goes insane, right. And just starts making millions of requests, you're going to pay for those requests, just like you're going to pay for anything else.

Speaker C: There's no backseats.

Speaker A: Yeah. Definitely understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. And it's not to say that, that people shouldn't jump in and try to build these things themselves, because they definitely can. It's fun to experiment and it's very easy now to do that.

Speaker C: Um, but just like, imagine that's helpful for you, too. It's like prototyping.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And we do it all the time. It's. It's so much easier today, um, even within the last six months. Right. To throw together a prototype and get something working very quickly, where historically maybe it would have taken you three weeks, four weeks to actually just get that roughing done. But the reality is, like, you can sit down and maybe in an afternoon or a day, you can actually get something rough working and it'll work well. Um, and so, like, it definitely helps us. We don't discourage our clients from doing it again. We just really want them to make sure they understand what it is they did, why they did it. Are they adding any security vulnerabilities? You know, is there a Reason. Um, or have they really looked through the code to make sure that whatever they did is doing what they expected to do and, you know, isn't going to cause a problem life.

Speaker C: And how about in your own internal processes? Um, we talked a little bit about your building agents and you, uh, are doing that for your customers. Have you started or like, I'm sure you have. What agents and tools do you use to make Slide Factory more effective?

Speaker A: Um, we use, um, for our development processes, we're using Cursor. I mean, everyone's using Cursor. Um, we're exploring some. My CTO would answer the Deep Protect tools better, but outside of Cursor for our ide, we, um, are trying to integrate other tools from Visual Studio. Um, we're using things like N8N to build the workflows in the background for people. Make, um.com is another really simple tool. Uh, we don't necessarily use Lovable that much, but our clients do. And so we're working with them around that. Um, then there's your standard tools, right? Like, we're using, um, Gemini, uh, a lot in terms of like, generating large content types. Um, we're always using the OpenAI framework or the APIs and the backends. Um, we haven't been using CLAUDE as much recently, um, unless it's around our own Cursor and those tools. But, uh, there's always a good, a

Speaker C: good mix of different models, different tools for different things. Right? It depends on what you're doing. Uh, it's still really true. Like, I use perplexity Claude and ChatGPT in totally different ways, uh, because they have just different outcomes. And of course then the models change, you get different.

Speaker A: And M. That's what they're for, right? To use them in different ways. Like, some of them are great for deep research, some of them are great for coding, and some of them are going to be better for just writing content. So that, I guess that's another important thing. It just. If you're going to play with the tools, understand what the tools actually do and which ones you should use best. Right? It's like setting when you use After Effects versus Premiere, Just, just use the right one and things will go a lot smoother.

Speaker C: That's a great. That's a great analogy. I'm going to steal that. Um, is there anything coming up? We're kind of coming to the End of Time, and as you, um, uh, our producers may have shared with you, we like to do like Rapid Fire at the end where you give me Some one word answers. Is there anything coming up for Slide Factory in terms of uh, like announce or um, I know you do some speaking occasionally. Anything else do you want to make sure that we talk about for Slide Factory?

Speaker A: Uh, we just did our last speaking engagement down in um, Medford a few weeks ago. Um, nothing planned at the moment other than just kind of standard day to day. We had some fun projects coming up but again those are uh, future projects that we can't really talk too much about right now.

Speaker C: Okay, so if you have a crazy hard leading, not bleeding, but leading edge idea in the uh, 3D or virtual uh, reality space or in the agentic space, you're the person to call, right?

Speaker A: Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Reach out. We love, we love the interesting ones. The old joke used to be if, if it was weird and you're trying to figure it out, um, you know, call Slide back between those guys to help you. So it's, it's been a, it's worked for us over the past and I

Speaker C: think that's actually very special. I think that's very special. A lot of people are trying to just really, it's good to routinize and standardize innovation, but also you kind of can't like real innovation.

Speaker A: And the thing is like, um, you don't, you don't really know what it's going to take to do a weird problem until you actually jump in and do a weird problem. Like I still think, uh, and I don't know how much time we have, but one of my favorite projects that came to us over the last few years was a project where we had a client reach out and they had told us they had worked with another company and it hadn't gone well. And they had told them that what they were trying to do was impossible and it was just a lot of quaternion data that they had that need that they needed to just take all this random quaternion data with absolutely ah, no insight into what it was doing and then turn it into a human avatar. We're like, okay, so you have random rotational data that you have no idea which way things are pointing, what they're connected to or what they are, and you need to turn that into a person. They're like, yeah, we're like, cool, let's try this.

Speaker C: You're like, I don't know the answer either, but we'll get there.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, but we, yeah, it took a few months and it was like one of those uh, 4:00am Epiphanies where suddenly you're playing with uh, different sensors and suddenly you start to see a person turn into a thing and it's amazing. It just, it's a great feeling.

Speaker C: Yeah. No, making new, truly new things is a special kind of, uh, it's an art and a science, I think. And I feel like if you're an entrepreneur and you're engaging with uh, uh, agencies or organizations like yours to do a build, it's worth thinking about. If your idea is really out there, you may need some special type of innovation sources and it doesn't really fit into the factory model for innovation. Like, oh, we're just going to MVP this thing and you know, um, it's important to spend time with an organization like yours that is not intimidated by hard problems.

Speaker A: Yeah, you know, we like those. Yeah.

Speaker C: And weirdly likes them. Well, listen, um, just a few quick, and it doesn't have to be one word answers, but um, just a few quick items. Uh, you know, in your life. Ah, as you think about your heroes in the tech world and it could be like past or current. Like who are some people you follow and think are, you know, the. Who. Who's your Bill Gates?

Speaker A: Uh, I, it's hard recently I follow so many. Yeah, I follow one.

Speaker C: It doesn't have to be, it doesn't. Um, like who is a tech leader you think about as an inspiration?

Speaker A: Historically, just, just because of my age group, like I'm going to go back to the older guy. Uh, right. Like I'm always going to say, I'm always going to say Steve Jobs just because of what he did. I mean, um, man, uh, aside, uh, the things that he actually did during my lifetime, the things that he changed and the hole he left in the industry and technology and you can still feel that to this day. Um, I think that's something someone I'm always going to admire.

Speaker C: That's a good answer. Um, is there a particular. What industry do you think is going to be the most transformed by AI?

Speaker A: Uh, honestly I think it's going to be development. I think you're already starting to see, um, AI starting to step in to do what traditional developers would have done, um, especially around the MVP stage. And I think over the next five years it's going to be a huge shift. Um, that's not to say that developers are going to disappear, it's just that their roles are going to change and how they approach things are going to have to change, uh, because clients are going to have more access and more ability to um, do things right. Whether it's whether they're good things or, um, you know, whether it's, it's at least getting things started. So how you approach a problem, how you fix a problem, and even the things you're looking for are going to be different. Um, so definitely develop them.

Speaker C: What do you think is like an underrated leadership quality?

Speaker A: Uh, an underrated leadership quality. Um, I think it's just talking to your people. Um, you know, it's, you're never going to, um, you know, be able to spend hours and hours with everybody, but I think just, just walking around saying hello, trying to figure out what's going on and, you know, figuring, um, out what's going on with their life is important. I think a lot of people just ignore that.

Speaker C: Just out of curiosity, how do you stay informed and up to speed on these very, like, leading edge technologies?

Speaker A: A lot of reading a lot of YouTube and a lot of just scrolling LinkedIn to see what's out there.

Speaker C: Do you have any influencers or, um, industry experts you follow that you would recommend to the audience? Newsletters.

Speaker A: I am horrible with names, honestly.

Speaker C: Me too, Me too. I'm the worst. So it's fine. Uh, I deal with people all day. I'm kind of a people focused job and I wish I were better with names, to be honest with you. Um, it's really, um, great to talk with you. I have a special place in my heart for the service business where you're kind of creating the magic trick of getting off the whiteboard and into, uh, real reality or virtual reality. Uh, so it's been great to speak with you. Uh, we'll add some more links in the show notes, uh, for those of who may want to engage with you further, uh, to build their new hard idea. Mark Nguyen, uh, from Slide Factory. It was great to chat with you.

Speaker A: It's great to meet you also.

Speaker B: We look forward to bringing the latest industry news in our next episode. In the meantime, check our other episodes@techcell.com podcast and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you never miss an episode.