TCP079: Next-Gen Hospitality: Embracing XR with John Cunningham

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This is John Cunningham, President of Virtualware USA and you are listening to Skip on the Tech Chef Podcast.

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Welcome to another episode of the Tech Chef.

This is your host, Skip Kimple and we have an exciting show lined up for you today featuring a very good friend of mine, John Cunningham to talk about the part of the technology stack you are more than likely overlooking. Intrigued? Well, more on that a little bit later.

Many of you are currently at Restaurant Finance and Development Conference out in Las Vegas while I'm here back at an event in Orlando. I hope you are all surviving Vegas and have a very productive conference.

I can't wait to hear all of the great things that come out of the show and I'm watching each and every one of you on LinkedIn.

As I mentioned in the episode last Tuesday, I would like to thank Growth Advisors International Network, otherwise known as gain, for sponsoring this show. More on that in the next episode.

First time listeners, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to listen to this episode and make sure that you subscribe to this show through your favorite podcast platform. We're on them all so it is not hard to miss us. Just look for the Tech Chef or click on the link in the show notes to easily plug into the show.

For the thousands of you that listen in over 100 countries, welcome back.

By the way, make sure you listen all the way to the end of the show for a special announcement that you as faithful listeners will have first dibs on. Today I have a very special guest. Mr.

John Cunningham is here to talk about how XR, otherwise known as Extended Reality, is shaping the enterprise marketplace and how hospitality can benefit from all of the years of research and money spent and the success in other industries.

John currently serves as a President and Board Advisor to virtualware, CEO of Spatial Synergy, COO of the Global VR AR association, and serves as the Director of Special Programs at the Space Force Association.

Throughout his 30 year career in high tech, John has helped companies create new lines of revenue and grow existing revenues through new product development and global market expansion.

He has built high performing direct and indirect sales organizations for leading technology companies such as Unity Technologies, Aruba Networks, Motorola, HP and Verizon. As a pioneer in the XR and AI industry, John has helped organizations such as the U.S.

department of Defense, Army Corps of Engineering, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Siemens Energy and the City of Orlando implement XR and AI into their operations.

He led the business to win many large direct programs to develop transformational xr, AI and digital twin solutions as well as building a large ecosystem of integrators, independent software developers and device manufacturers. Nearly 90% of all XR solutions across the public sector are made with unity.

John is also helping the rapidly growing space industry to take advantage of the new technologies such Americas XR and AI and serves as a Director at the Space Force association where he co founded and helps to lead the Space Force Association's Creator League which is a technology skills development program to help develop the United States Space Force's digital capabilities.

Yesterday was Veterans Day, so I would like to mention that John also served in the US army as a communications and special operations officer and served in three different overseas campaigns. John, thank you for your service. Well, with a resume like that you can tell John knows what he's talking about.

We are lucky enough to have him spend the next 30 minutes with us to share his background knowledge, existing technology opportunities and future facing technologies as it relates to xr. Enjoy the show. John, you have an impressive journey across the tech and XR space.

From your background in the military to UNITY to your current roles with the VR AR Association. Virtual Wear, Spatial synergy. Goodness gracious. I'll look at your bio and I don't know where to begin.

Could you share a little bit about yourself and how you first got involved with XR and what really drew you to this space?

Yeah. Hey, thanks a lot Skip.

Well, I've been very fortunate to have been working in technology for well over 35 years and as you mentioned, I started my career as a military signal officer and I never thought then that I would be doing the things that I'm doing now. I just, I knew that I love technology. I had a degree in computer science.

I had a great time as a communications office officer in the military and got exposed to the latest newest technologies, such as deploying the first Internet network in combat during Operation Desert Storm. And I just fell in love with technology and knew that that's where I wanted my career to be.

And I first got into XR when I was working at Carnegie Mellon University.

I was not on the, not on the academic side by any means, I'm not an academic, but on the business side where we were helping a lot of the companies that Carnegie Mellon had invested in to exp. And one of those had been working in the area of virtual reality.

Okay, so we've used the term XR already at the top of the show a couple of times. I'm pretty sure that there are some people in this audience that have no idea what XR is.

Now if they've been hanging around me at all, they certainly know what it is. But let's assume for a moment that they are not familiar with the term. Can you expand upon that a little bit?

Yeah, you know, XR has just become a general term that stands for extended reality.

And the simplest way to think, think of it is anytime that you're using digital data to augment the real world or you're using digital environments with headsets, that's really in the area of xr. So day to day users, Pokemon Go. People know what Pokemon Go is. That's an example of using augmented reality on your phone.

You've seen the flight simulators with the headsets that I mentioned. That's virtual reality, but it's really just the combining of virtual worlds in real worlds in many different ways.

Given your diverse roles and experience, how would you describe the XR landscape today? I mean, are there certain sectors that you feel are really leading the way?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, this, this, this, this technology has been in development for 30, 40 years. So it's not anything that's really new.

It's just in the last five to seven years that the technology has become affordable enough for businesses to use the software. Tools have become easier to be able to create content.

But the first industry that really started adopting XR was the military primarily for pilot training, training people how to fix aircraft, training people just how to do normal tasks. And they, they dumped massive amounts of research and development dollars into that.

And then other industries like energy and manufacturing and oil and gas saw the success the military was having and started their own initiatives. And so we're now, you know, you asked me to where we're at in the landscape.

And you know, I think the industries where things are really hard, difficult or expensive, think nuclear power plants, building large construction equipment, those are the areas where the technology has been adopted the quickest because the savings and the benefits are so huge.

However, you know, we're looking at new industries like hospitality where organizations need to train workers on everything from working in restaurants and setting up hotel rooms and training people on facilities, equipment all the way through. How do you handle guests, you know, soft skills.

And so I think we're just, you know, the landscape is rapidly evolving and I think all industries are using this technology in different ways.

So you opened the door there for me automatically. Thank you. I really wanted to talk about XR in training and development. Training and onboarding are often cited as major use cases for xr.

I almost consider it the gateway drug for a company into XR just because it's the low lying fruit. I mean it really makes sense when you start looking at the ROI of it.

What makes XR such a powerful tool for training and how does it compare to traditional methods?

Okay, let's start with the traditional. What is the traditional method for training today? It's really two ways.

Either you go into classroom and somebody stands up in front of the classroom and goes through PowerPoint slides or animations and talks about something, or you sit down at your computer and you go through wonderful computer based training.

Now normally when you're doing computer based training, you kind of have something running on the side, you have a phone call going and you know, I'm guilty of this as well, just kind of flipping through the training and answering the questions. So you're not really 100% in the training, you're kind of watching it and it's not you know, it's interactive, but a little bit, well, XR technology.

And specifically in this area of virtual reality where you're actually inside of a headset, you know, you are completely immersed, there is no looking, you know, at your phone or other devices because you're really in that experience and you're fully engaged. And that is where organizations are seeing tremendous amounts of knowledge retention, learning new skills. And the other thing is it can be fun.

It doesn't have to be boring, it doesn't have to be just watching videos or going through computer based training. You can actually gamify it and make it engaging.

Well, from the restaurant side, I look at it from a couple different aspects. First of all, you know, not having to send teams across the country or across the world to train new employees is pretty impressive.

Also, you know, like you said, the gamification of the process, there are some pretty significant studies around the retention level around using VR training is like 60% higher than traditional training. Just because they are in the moment, they're creating muscle memory and they're reducing risk.

Now I know you and I sit on a lot of different committees and organizations that, you know, we are looking at enterprise applications of this and nuclear facilities where absolutely there are safety factors involved. But somebody sitting back is probably going, what's so dangerous in a restaurant?

Well, culinary skills training, somebody to use a fryer in the back of house, in the kitchen area. You know, you remove all of those dangers. And also from a restaurant perspective, you don't have all that food waste during the training process.

So I think of all industries, I think hospitality really has a great advantage to adopt this type of technology in their training aspect.

Oh, I would, I would absolutely agree.

And, and the fact now that, you know, the ability to create content, to create training content, the cost of those tools and the create content has just gone down tremendously. And so, you know, that just improves your return on investment.

But you said something really interesting, not having to fly people all around to go to a training location. You know, people think that virtual reality or extended reality is somebody sitting alone, you know, in a headset. And that is absolutely not true.

Some of the most effective training solutions involve putting a lot of people into a scenario together to have people teach them how to do things right or run courseware, or just keep doing a task repetitiously until they figure it out. So it's really just a complete whole new landscape. And, and I think you're right.

I think hospitality is ripe to use this technology to improve worker skills.

Well, to your point, just for clarification, having all these people in the headset doesn't mean you have to be in one location. You can have somebody on location, but you can be completely on opposite sides of the world as a group going through these training processes.

Oh my gosh.

The other day I was sitting in a training just because I was looking at one of the new products that we're building for one of our nuclear power plant customers.

And I was sitting in my office, I put the headset on and all of a sudden I was in a nuclear power plant with two other workers and we were literally working on moving nuclear fuel rods around. And I felt like I was there. It was, it was really, it was like I was, was, I want you to use the word an out of body experience.

But that's a, that's the simplest way I could explain it. I did not feel like I was sitting at my desk. I felt like I was there in the power plant working with these, these other operators.

Well, you've got a fun job.

I just have to say that with the rise of remote work, how is XR changing the way teams collaborate, especially in industries that rely on hands on or visual collaboration? And maybe you can talk a little bit about virtualware because I think this kind of plays into that.

Yeah. So we call it remote collaboration. Right. That is starting to become a big growth area for the use of the technology.

Okay, I'm going to use an example. Imagine you're designing a new product, like a new. This is. Imagine you're designing a new toy car. Okay. And an engineer designs it.

They're using tools on their computer, they build the CAD models. Well, now what? Right now what. How do you get that design into people's hands?

Well, the traditional way is that you build a prototype, a physical prototype, and then people go through it in a design review process. Well, more and more that's becoming digital. And now it's not just people logging in on a computer screen.

If they can go into a VR or XR headset, they can now collaboratively with a group of people, go through and review that prototype and actually even simulate the way it operates and different factors like that, which dramatically reduces the cost of developing products, gets products to market quicker and reduces errors.

John, do you think XR will become the core tool for remote workspaces in the future?

Yeah, I think it's going to be. It's like. I'm trying to think of an analogy. Think about your cell phone.

When cell phones first came out, they were just used as phones, and now we use them as an integrated tool in the way we work.

So some things I'll do on my phone, I'll open app, I'll check information, I might have a meeting or something, and there's some things that I'm going to go to my computer and work on. And I have two or three screens and one screen might be my graphic screen, another screen might be where I do my word documents.

Well, think of XR as just being another display device, another way to engage with content. So next to my computer, I have my XR headset.

And if there's something that I really want to collaborate with somebody on or, or, or have a more immersive meeting, you just switch over, pop the headset on, and now that becomes your display. Does that make sense?

It does. But how close do you think we are to that reality?

And what are some of the practical challenges companies face when implementing XR solutions for collaboration?

Well, I think we're getting there quicker than people realize.

I think that recently there's been a lot of consumer headsets that have come on the market that were originally intended for gaming, like the meta quests. People got into them, they're like, wow, that's pretty cool. And then they realize there's business productivity apps as well.

And so they're bringing them into their offices and using them. And then someone at a company has an idea of, hey, let's build an application that we can all collaborate together on.

Well, then the challenge becomes, we need to do this securely. We want to run behind our corporate firewall, we want all the data secure. So now you're getting into IT infrastructure. And so this is.

So the first step was getting the devices affordable enough that everybody could have them in their home. Now the next step is putting secure infrastructure and the ability to deliver content for companies.

So that separates the consumer from the enterprise applications.

Well, we had an interesting conversation the other day, and you just brought up enterprise as these enterprise organizations.

And I'm thinking, obviously from my perspective of hospitality, there are some security concerns and even some of the organizations that were on the call with us, I won't call them out, but some pretty large organizations, it's funny how they got all the way through the vetting process. And when it came down to legal at the very end, that was the one thing that killed the entire project.

So you had a good point about, you know, if you're looking at some of these projects to kind of bring legal up front in the beginning process, or at least, you know, the, you know, what are the qualifications and the needs of a headset in order to be sustainable for that organization?

Well, I think there's a couple, when you look at the legal implications, there's a couple of areas to look at. You know, in business, there's, there's the data security, you know, the security of the data on the headset. Right. Itself.

And that can be handled by IT policies. But then it gets into who owns the content.

So if you have somebody build training content for you, do you own that content as the business or are you licensing that content from someone else? And that's where some of the companies have different policies about how the user data is owned.

And that's where the legal departments and companies really are not comfortable.

But that's okay because every of these large headset manufacturers have different models, and I won't go and name them, but some of them, their business model is data. Others are their business models, they make really good products and they don't collect any data or own any data. And so that makes it easier.

So that, that's an important consideration when organizations are looking to embark on XR projects is, you know, what, what are our security and IT and legal requirements?

And as I've learned, you know, where is the chipset made that's in that headset? There is, you know, there's some Chinese headsets out there that certain organizations probably would not allow.

And, you know, if that is not part of your thought process in the beginning, that might get. It might shoot down the project at the very end.

Well, yeah, especially when it's a new technology. I mean, when new technologies or new processes are introduced to any organization, people are a little bit skeptical.

And anything that causes concern typically is a flag to get it thrown out or it doesn't move forward. It's not until these technologies become ubiquitous and everybody's comfortable with them that then they relax those standards.

And so, you know, yes, like for example, in the U.S. department of Defense, they have a requirement that devices have to be TAA compliant.

They have to be certified by the US government before they can be scaled on DoD networks. And some companies have a very similar policy.

But, you know, over time we'll see that commoditize and those, you know, and products will just conform and you can use it just like you would a cell phone.

Talk a little bit about product design, prototyping and visualization because I want to loop this back into hospitality at the end of this.

Many companies are using XR for design and prototype typing, obviously bringing a 3D model into the world and having designers work on it collaboratively wherever they are. Could you share how XR enhances the product development lifecycle from ideation to production?

Oh, my gosh. That could be a podcast in its own skip. But I mean, look, we are visual. You know, humans are very visual. We're very collaborative.

We want to see things in 3D in three dimensions. So the way things have been prototyped in the past was you build replicas. And I want to use an example. Holiday and hotels.

They were one of the first brands. I think it's. I think it's ihg. They were one of the first brands to design new hotel concepts in virtual reality.

So they design them in their CAD system or the building information management system, but then they'd put it in VR and they would. Would get all their prospective hotel buyers to go through their different designs in virtual reality before they built one of these models.

Because I guess these models can be somewhere 20, 30, 40, $50,000.

Sure.

And it was only until they got everybody in a room and they agreed. Yep. That's the design that we want for this property. Let's go ahead now and build a physical model.

Because they're still not comfortable yet trusting everything, you know, to digital. They still want to have something tactile. But, yeah, I mean, it's.

It's just, you know, you have to go through the experience once, and then people say that's. I don't want to go back to the old way. Right.

Well, I think they're the restaurants and the hospitality side of things, especially the restaurant.

I'm looking at the scenario of taking a digital twin and imagining a group of ops people sitting around the table trying to figure out how to reconfigure the kitchen in order to make it more efficient and effective.

And in today's day, you can run, if you have the data set, you can run AI simulations against that to determine if you've got a better throughput or not. Are you seeing that obviously used in other sectors?

Oh, absolutely.

And so, for example, we have these large logistics companies, and again, I won't name them, but there's the large logistics companies that ship packages. Well, they're starting to use AI algorithms to optimize how they pick a van, how they pack a van or pack a car.

Well, an algorithm is just going to give you put this package here, put that package there, but they still want to visually see it. What does it actually look like?

So then they can just take that data and pop it into virtual reality and be able, or pop it into augmented reality with a pair of glasses. And then the driver can actually see what that vehicle is going to look like when it's packed. Okay, so it's these technologies working together.

And so imagine going and designing a new restaurant in the layout using your AI tools to make recommendations on how the restaurant should be laid out, but then actually seeing it in, in 3D of what it's going to actually look like with the real, the actual colors, the fabrics, the materials. Right. Think about how, how much money can be saved during that process.

So we have talked a lot about using XR for internal operations. Beyond that, how do you see XR transforming customer facing experiences in the enterprise space?

Well, I'll give you an example.

You know, lately, like Warby Parker and some of these other glass manufacturers are giving customers the opportunity to see what they would look like with those glasses through a website or through their phone. Hold your camera phone up and then you can cycle through the different frame types.

Companies like Ikea and Amazon now also let you look at how a piece of furniture would look like in your actual house. So they're using XR data, you know, presented visually to transform the customer's buying experience. And so that's already happening.

I mean that's, that's, that's, that's really starting to scale.

But when you go into bigger things like buying a condominium or a house, and you really want to see it exactly as it's going to be when it's delivered and it's not even built yet, this becomes a great way of doing that.

So I would expect that the customer's buying experiences is going to, is going to improve dramatically over the next few years as this technology gets rolled out.

Now, in regards to some of the challenges of implementing XR in enterprises we've already talked about a little bit about, once again, that could be a longer conversation. Data privacy and security, it has to come with its own set of challenges.

What do you see as the biggest barriers to adoption and how can companies overcome those?

I think the biggest barrier to adoption is that a lot of senior leaders who own the budgets and can make the decisions don't really understand it yet. And so they're, they're not comfortable making large investment decisions.

And so a lot of times things get stuck in what we call pilot purgatory where they just, you know, innovation teams keep trying things, but they're not really scaling it yet.

So I think one of the biggest barriers is just education and willingness to accept this now, once you overcome that, now you're getting into more specific challenges, such as if you're going to be using virtual reality, for example, within a corporate network, how much more traffic does that put on the IT network? Can the IT network today handle all this additional traffic?

Because 3D traffic, 3D data is a lot more dense than emails and stuff like that that goes across a corporate network. Does that make sense?

It does. And so you talked about a couple different things in regards to the barriers.

Cost and scalability are often concerns with XR are the strategies or best practices for companies that want to start with XR but maybe have budget limitations?

Oh, absolutely. So, you know, my company, Virtual Rare, has this wonderful slogan.

They've been doing virtual reality XR for 20 years and they have this motto which is think big, start small and scale fast. And I think that's a good, simple way of thinking about figure out, okay, this technology can transform my business. How? Think really big, right?

Think from a customer perspective, from an internal perspective, and then find some very specific things that you can do to pilot the technology.

And it's not just the technology, it's also what kind of workflow, what business processes have to change or will need to change in order to take advantage of this technology. So do some small projects, validate it, and then once you found those ones that work for you, then scale them fast so that you can reap the benefit.

So not everybody listening to this show is in the enterprise world. Do you think smaller hotels or restaurant chains can realistically adopt XR in the near future? Or is it really limited to larger brands for now?

No.

I think in some cases smaller organizations might be able to leverage it even quicker and get more benefit out of it because there are so many, let's call them, platforms out on the market today that let people build and deliver content or have prepackaged content. By the way, we saw this exact same thing happen with the rise of mobile phone applications.

When platforms came out like OpenTable, for example, all of a sudden small businesses could, you know, saw their reservation rates go higher because OpenTable was now marketing their seats.

Let's talk about the future of XR as we wind things down here. Where do you see the most significant growth for XR over the next five to 10 years? And I know that's a big timeframe, but hey, let's think big here.

I think over five to 10 years, I think the biggest growth is going to be in augmented reality, meaning where people are wearing where the technology is incorporated into glasses or into Products that the user wears every day or goggles that are worn on a manufacturing line, where the data is now going with the user, the worker, the patient. Right. And I think that is where we're going to see the biggest adoption and that's going to be across all industries.

And you know, this is something that technologists have been envisioning for decades, that at some point, you know, it's kind of like having your hologram that goes with you. Right. Or you can talk to your hologram or someone can beam themselves into the space that you're at. It's going to happen.

If an organization is just beginning its XR journey, what would you recommend as the very first steps for exploring and implementing XR solutions?

If an organization just starting on the journey, my recommendation is find a good consulting partner, a company or consulting practice that has real experience, not technology, vendor experience, but actual experience implementing this technology in businesses. Because there's a lot of lessons learned that can be shared and can help accelerate those initiatives.

And so for a small investment and bringing in someone in that's got that experience, they can really capitalize on it and also potentially save themselves a lot of money in the long run.

And John, that is why we are friends. That is exactly the answer I was hoping for, by the way.

I've been on, I've been on both sides. I've been on the, I've been on three sides.

I've been on the end user side, I've been on the vendor, you know, technology side and I've been on the consulting side.

And so the projects that I've seen that have been most successful were ones that were well thought out, you know, had some, the benefit of other, other people's experience and then they could, they could make a good plan and execute the plan.

Finally, where can our listeners follow to learn more about XR developments? Doesn't matter if it's enterprise small business vra. Yeah, I'm just dropping a hint there.

Well, it's, it's like, it's like anything there. There's, there's various industry associations, right.

So, you know, every, every industry has its own association and we're starting to see those, those or those associations have more content around xr.

And then there's like the VRAR association, which is an association that's focused on XR and has different committees and, or, you know, working groups for different industries.

And you know, and then, and then vendors have their own, you know, there's a lot of vendors like Meta and HTC Vive and Apple, you know, they have a lot of good information also on their websites.

John, thank you so much.

I know we're on the phone like three, four or five times a week it seems like, but we could talk about this subject forever and I have a feeling I'm going to be having you back on the show as we, as we progress in the hospitality side because I'm really bullish on where this is headed and the opportunities that hospitality has to gain from these emerging technologies.

Well, and I think in closing, I think what I'd like to just tell everyone is folks like you and you and me, we're not technologists first looking for a place to apply the technology. We're coming to this with deep industry and business experience and can understand how that technology can completely transform industries.

And so I think that's the right way of looking at it.

I think when, when, when the technology is, is being for, you know, when you're trying to force technology into something just to see if it'll work, that's very different than saying I can really transform an industry with this. And that's what you and I both see, that this, this is transformative.

John, thank you again once more for your time here on the Tech Chef.

I know our audience enjoyed this conversation and if they have any follow up questions, I'll make sure I pass them along to you and we'll maybe jump on another show.

Absolutely. Thanks, Kip. Take care.

Wow, that was awesome stuff. And as you know, this is exactly what Magic Gate and Growth Advisors International Network is providing to the hospitality industry.

There are very few individuals and companies that know these two verticals. If this is of interest to you, please reach out so we can schedule a meeting and determine what your needs are.

I am not one for throwing technology at something for technology's sake.

However, many of you don't realize this technology is already being implemented by large enterprise restaurant chains and realize it or not, you are being left behind. Let's help you get in front of these technology opportunities.

If you would like to reach out to me or the show, you can do so via everything social@SkipKimple or Everythingagicgate Tech. This includes X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can also go to the website@SkipKimple.com for all of the archived shows and the show notes will be posted there too.

And you can also hear these new episodes on the Magic 8 website@magine.com and of course you can always email me@SkipAgicate.com so some of you been hanging around listening to the end of the show because I talked about a big announcement. So what is that big news? Well, Magic Gate will be launching an XR Boot Camp for industry professionals.

This is a low tech, no tech approach to guide you as business leaders with knowledgeable information to take new ideas to your company and your team members and be able to talk intelligently around the subject matter.

This is a five week course that will get you caught up on terminology, discuss business strategies, uncover devices and services to help you down your XR path, as well as how to manage this type of a project. Most importantly, you will be given research and tools to help you make a business case for including this in your technology strategy and roadmap.

For more information and to sign up, go to bootcamp.magicgate.com There are very limited seats available, so make sure you sign up today because you as the listeners of the Tech Chef are the first ones to hear about this.

That's enough exciting news for one week. So until next Tuesday, stay safe, stay healthy and and stay hungry, my friends.