Code is a big part of what makes XR work, of course. But for most businesses, knowing the DNA of the technology will be less important than knowing how to best use it. XR Bootcamp co-founder Ferhan Ozkan is enabling businesses interested in XR to enable themselves.
Alan: Welcome to the XR for
Business podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today, we’re speaking
with Ferhan Ozkan, the co-founder of XR Bootcamp, a platform to teach
professionals how to create VR and AR applications, and support
companies to bridge their skills gap in XR development through an
intensive onsite program, cutting edge curriculum, and industry
renowned lecturers with a focus on industry portfolio projects. I am
personally very, very honored to be on the advisory board of XR
Bootcamp and helping them really develop the future of how
organizations will train their staff on how to build XR technologies.
And so with that, I’d love to welcome Ferhan to the show. Ferhan,
welcome to the show, my friend.
Ferhan: Hi, Alan. Pleasure to be
here. Thanks for inviting.
Alan: It’s absolutely my
pleasure. I just want to give you a little bit of history about you.
XR Bootcamp started from VR First, which was an organization bringing
VR labs into universities and colleges around the world. Is that
correct?
Ferhan: Yes. Yes. Back then —
almost four years ago — we started as VR First. The main mission was
to democratize VR and AR around the world. And you also supported us
on these times, because it was hard to find headsets as a developer,
as a startup. And we actually tried to tackle this problem with the
help of major headset manufacturers – Oculus, HTC, Leap Motion, Intel
— and they supported us to create VR/AR labs around the world. And
we are quite happy with the impact being created now, these labs are
actually really become big and creating amazing projects. And we are
actually proud to have this network and enable this network. Yeah, we
are now actually around 800 university that we can reach and over 400
startup clusters. But as a lab that we have supported and seeded —
as in equipment and other support — we reach to almost 52 labs. And
now we see that these labs become actually quite impactful in their
own region to create a regional VR/AR development scene, and VR/AR
startup and clusters, and they are even creating VR/AR programs —
academic programs — and industrial based trainings.
Alan: Ferhan, when did you guys
realize that bringing this type of knowledge into the enterprise was
the next step?
Ferhan: It is quite interesting,
because we talk with institutions not only in educational, but
government institutions. They reach to us after hearing about VR/AR.
“Can we educate the people in our health institutions? Can we
train the people, the employees that is actually working in the–
airport workers, like on the aviation industry?” And we
understood that there is actually already an initiative happening on
different parts of the world, on different industries based on each
government’s or each region’s industry focus. And then we decided,
“OK, what we can do first of all to start the VR/AR innovation
in each key destination?” So as I mentioned, seeding the
equipment was the first one. I remember in the beginning of 2017, we
had some kind of survey, and unfortunately for every 51 developer,
there was only one headset in any institution or in a startup
cluster. So think of like you want to create something, but you
cannot even access the VR headset, which is a shame for this region.
So we first of all started this seed equipment program, and then
training programs come afterwards. And the biggest supporters or
beneficiaries were actually the top enterprises in this local area,
from manufacturing to automotive, from aviation to defense industry.
An...
