On Sept.18th, InnoKOL has a fascinating conversation Oscar Cartagena Lagos, the CEO of Augmented Experiences, talking about his unique insights on developing immersive marketing experiences using cutting-edge XR technologies.
Jokia YIN: How would you describe yourself in three words? Can you please share more about your educational and professional background? And we’d love to hear what brought you to XR industry.
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
Passionate, Resilient and Adventurous.
I studied Computer Science back in Venezuela where I was born. This was back in 1996. By 1997 I was already selling my first website - back then, bleeding edge tech was just building a website in a way. By 1999 I was knee-deep in Macromedia Flash. And this changed it all. From then onwards I've always been in the convergence of Art, Code and Business.
By 2001 I started my first web agency and got into the business of building websites and Flash sites, which eventually led me to create CD-ROMs, videogames and other interactive content for advertising, marketing, education, etc. I was lucky to be a part of amazing award-winning teams while working for Sony International as a solution provider.
By 2003 I had moved to Chile for the first time. Didn't do well, so eventually I went back to Venezuela and then back to Chile in 2010. Created a digital marketing agency in Chile that didn't do bad at the beginning but eventually died, leaving me in a really tight spot by 2015.
So then everything changed again, I decided to close down the agency and start my passion project Posterity - high quality prints with augmented reality. We were the first ones in Latin America to create an augmented art product. as you can imagine, I was way ahead of my time so that business didn't do well.
But it did put me in the right direction within the XR ecosystem, which eventually led to Augmented Experiences an umbrella agency with many other companies beneath it and the trade union association, the first and only one in Chile dedicated to emerging tech. So, from then onwards I've been dedicated to the XR industry and its people. In a nutshell!
My first ever experience with AR was while working with Flash. Around 2007 I did a campaign for a global toothpaste brand that used the super famous FLARToolkit - but it wasn't until Posterity - done in Unity and Vuforia that I really dived into AR and XR.
I think that it's important for me to say that I've been for the most part a self-taught entrepreneur. Even though I did go to the University, I dropped out around the 7th semester as it didn't make any sense to keep going as I was never going to be a hardcore coder and I was already working selling websites. It’s kind of rained on me that "my thing" was an "in between" art, science, code and human behavior. And obviously at the time that wasn't a thing and didn't exist as an option, so I just worked A LOT. I did hundreds - if not thousands - of websites and interactive experiences. Both multimedia and web-based.
Jokia YIN: From your experience as a pioneering entrepreneur with more than 27 years of experience leading projects in tech-creative industries, why cool technologies sometimes flops?
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
This is a good question. I think that cool tech flops sometimes because cool tech is built by humans, and we are far from perfect. But what we lack in perfection, we make up in iterations. So, we iterate and get feedback and iterate again and eventually you find a sweet-spot for your product or invention. But we need human feedback to make cool tech not flop, and as you all know, emerging technologies is not a very "broad" thing so I think that the "big" Q&A processes take "longer" to test and iterate as there are not that many inputs. Also, the input you are getting will be from probably specialized people so this makes the marriage between the product or tech with the "regular people" harder.
As you can end up catering your product to specialists and not your end-users/consumers. But it's all about iteration and finding out how things work. It's also worth noting that this idea is tech-dependent, and what I mean by that is that for example, take AI as a very good example. We know "parts" of what AI does, but we don't control it entirely. So, this little fact makes the tech harder to stablish, hence the input you are getting from "end-users" can be slower than other technologies, making it "flop" more often.
Jokia YIN: How do you think innovative technologies are moving the world forward, and who should be the biggest actor on the market nowadays in order to push technology to the mass adoption?
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
I think we can all agree that "emerging tech" as in XR, AI, Robotics and Neural Implants are the main technologies driving the world towards new and innovative places today and in the near future. I have said that, who the biggest actor is - I think it's a trick question. I think the biggest actor in this, is us. There are many companies driving innovation, but it's up to us (and our governments, that should fight for the will of the people) that will eventually have the final word as to who gets where and who gets what. If I had to say which company is driving the most innovation today and looking for mass adoption... I'd say there are many, that are inter-connected.
For example, Meta, which has invested billions in pushing XR technologies couldn't push anything if weren't for Qualcomm and Snapdragon processors. They couldn't do much if it weren't for TSMC or NVIDIA chipset factories. So, it's a really long chain of companies that supply different parts of what we end up consuming as a product. So, who gets the prize? the "last link" of the chain of production or the first? so it is hard to say. Plus, you have certain countries that have their own ecosystems, like China.... or the EU regarding regulations. So, tech is being pushed forward but I believe that socially we're still trying to catch up.
But in the long run... when the credits are about to roll... it's all about us, people, using the tech. If it works there, on that domain, then the tech is good. But there are so many things happening "behind the curtains", that it makes the idea of "good tech" kind of shady. So, there's A LOT of pressure on "Big Tech" to do the right things. But it seems like they seldom do, don't they?
I was just talking about that a couple of days ago, it's not enough to have good useful tech, it's going to be human-centric and with ETHICS. I think that most of the big advancements in social technology (to set it apart from medical tech), are lacking in the ethics department. Because the system itself is complex to navigate.... but I believe that this is because the incentives for driving technology are not on the right path. We need to have a switch from EBITDA evaluation into a more social good evaluation. As long as everything is "powered by money and power-interests", We are in a tough spot. because in this spot, people’s well-being is not taken into consideration. And if it is, it's from a very "light ethics" point of view. So, things happening behind the curtain are an issue, not a well-known one, but a real issue!
Jokia YIN: Ensuring regulations keep pace with the rapid development of emerging technologies is critical to protecting public interests and facilitating innovation. What are the principles for regulating emerging technologies?
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
Safety, privacy, consumer and IP protection.
This is a very interesting topic and one that is being developed as we speak. There are MANY different ways to regulate. For example, in AI regulation we can see that the "risk assessment" methodology that the EU is using, is being replicated in many countries around the world. With different approaches. now, regulating emerging technologies is a problem. it's a problem because it's very difficult to find a sweet-spot between slowing down innovation and protecting people. take what's going on right now with AI regulation.
We have the USA with barely any regulations, betting on innovation and tech power. They do have some ideas as to where to regulate and maybe how, but I feel that they're just "waiting it out", push as much product in the market and possible and see where that goes.
Then we have the EU with solid and strict regulations "in place" (quotes because these will go in full effect in about 2 years) - which has effectively halted innovation in the European Union.
Australia, Africa and middle-east - well they're still trying to figure out what's going on in the world with these regulations and see if they can make some sort of "frankestein" out of other regulations that may have worked. Most of them based on the EU's experience and risk assessment.
Latin America, we are far from everyone, yet in Chile we're the first ones in the world to propose a Neuro-rights law to protect the Chilean citizen's psyche, from a state perspective.
We have a national policy on AI, that will also come into play in a couple of years. but in general, LATAM is looking a lot in EU's direction and trying to copy whatever could work.
China and Asia on the other hand are much like the US in the idea of not regulating and betting on advancements. As far as I know in China there's almost no regulation on AI, besides the IP protection laws that kind of "bleed into" the AI regulation. so that's another thing, in most countries’ other regulations "bleed into" AI, like data privacy acts, data sovereignty and other laws that literally clash with AI.
So, in a nutshell, we are dealing with a very "not regulated" AI, that's mostly based on "self-regulation" for Big Tech (and I think we all know how that goes). hence the idea that, regulating is a hard and difficult issue to solve as you have to take A LOT of things into consideration. Maybe a lot more things that politicians are used to have on their plate, which makes the matter even harder. because after all, it all boils down to politicians trying to policy laws of things that they don't understand.
Jokia YIN: With sufficient experience on developing immersive marketing experiences using cutting-edge XR technologies, how do you think immersive experiences and the metaverse can benefit customer experience and operations?
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
Massively. It will change how we do most things. in factories, hospitals, education, city planning, and a long list of etcetera. As we get more amplitude on the proper use of these technologies and our governments start to "catch a whiff" of just how useful these technologies are, we will start to properly use them in more places and reap the benefits and rewards of using them.
I think Singapore is a great example of emerging tech being used for city planning and urban studies. and within medicine there are so many things going on I could go on for days. XR and AI for medicine I think will become the most advanced thing we've done as a species besides thinking about moving to Mars. and it will completely change the way we mass-produce things. It seems unavoidable to have robots do mechanical and tedious jobs.
The thing that I think about the most is not just about how robotics and AI will rapidly change our whole production-system, but what are we going to do with all that time and people? if we recall the industrial revolution, came with a hefty price for A LOT of people worldwide. so we must figure out ways of implementing these advancements pro homine and not against our own.
Jokia YIN: How can you predict the impact of metaverse on the world and the future of technology?
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
by looking at our history, and how it’s been in the past. I think history is a great starting point to understanding us as humans and how we relate to "things", in this case is technology. When the industrial revolution came along, no one used factories or basically any type of automated processes. jump forward 200 years, it's ALL done on factories.
So, I believe that: the AI-powered metaverse will change everything. But it will take time. but it will change most things if not everything. How we connect, relate, work and how we keep our own body-systems in check, which will come with its own set of new problems that we are just catching a glimpse of now, like old age and lower births.
there are certain films that have managed to capture some of the things that I foresee in the future, most of which I don't like! but I do believe it'll get there in some shape or form. Films like Minority Report, The Lawnmower Man and even Demolition Man have taken glimpses at probable futures of technology. and most are not very comforting. Which is why regulation is such a tricky situation. We really need to set the "rules of the game", before the rules are set by use.
because then it'll be too late as things will have "hardened" in people's minds. Like social networks nowadays, the whole world is on a quest to try to control them and stop their bad consequences. But Millennials and some Gen-Xers are already hooked, so the notion of a life without social networks is not something we are willing to deal with.
Jokia YIN: The XR industry has witnessed remarkable growth in recent years, yet women remain a minority in the sector. Do you have any suggestions for bridging the gender gap from development and design to leadership positions?
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
As for Women in the industry. We are lacking big time, BUT! there is a but here.... when I was in Los Angeles at AWE USA a few months ago I was amazed by the number of women in C-level positions. now, I completely agree that we are still lagging behind regarding women in the industry, but I can say that there is more every day, and that makes me happy.
I think that there are a lot of powerful women out there doing great things and that certain initiatives like "Women of the Future" are incredible at fostering the idea that women in the industry are super needed and that their "set of tools" is very much aligned with what we need for the future of these technologies.
I'm part of the Board of Trustees for Women in the Future Latin-American, and it's been tough to find more trailblazing women that will empower other, younger women in pursuing what they want in the tech sector. But I think that it's something that is happening and that it's part of a larger social change. also, there are a lot of young girls that are seriously kicking a$$ in the tech industries, and that will drive change, in time.
Social changes take time. And this whole women in tech thing are a social change, as we turn from a male-driven workforce to a more gender equal one. It´s part of the beauty of using the brain instead of the muscles, right? I think that's a major change in how we do things as a species. we are transforming from "doing" into "thinking" and this is a major change that has a lot do with the future of AI.
Jokia YIN: How prepared is Augmented Experiences to play a leading role in converging, intertwining and connecting with the different realities of your clients?
Oscar Cartagena Lagos:
We are totally prepared. I see tech services a bit like being a therapist. You need to fully understand your client's perspective, vision and problems so you can act accordingly and offer the best solution. I think this approach is fool-proof worldwide.
Most of the time clients barely understand their own problems and how to solve them. It's our mission to "untie the knots", much like a therapist does, to get to their true pain and only then offer the solution your client needs. so, we are totally prepared to tackle any kind of project. We currently do work for many Universities, local and international clients, like Meta and Lenovo. We've done a lot of things since that reel but you'll get the idea. You can check our projects in our website!
https://augexp.com
https://oscarcartagena.com
https://live.arrival.space/augexp
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Oscar Cartagena Lagos is a pioneering entrepreneur with more than 27 years of experience leading projects in tech-creative industries, with a broad project vision and a diverse skill set that includes programming, design, art, audiovisuals, marketing and project management.
He is the founder and president of the Chilean Association of Immersive Experiences (ACHEX A.G.), the only non-profit organization in Chile dedicated to advancing the XR industry and its impact on Chilean society. He is an active member of the Artificial Intelligence, Neuro-Rights, Digital Platforms, and Metaverse Laboratory of Congreso Futuro, where he leads and collaborates with other key stakeholders from the government, academia, and the private sector to develop proposals for regulatory frameworks and legislation related to emerging technologies. Additionally, he serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Women of the Future Association for Latin America, where he actively contributes to the development of programs and initiatives that promote gender equality in the XR industry, and as a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for Technological Revolution for Creative Industries in Chile, a public-private partnership to promote the development of techno-creative industries in the country. Last but not least, He is the Regional Liaison for Latin America for X Reality Safety Intelligence (XRSI), a global non-profit organization dedicated to promoting a safer and more inclusive future Metaverse.
ABOUT THE HOST:
Ms. Jokia Yin is the Founder of Innoverview and InnoKOL. Jokia has over 12 years of marketing and management experience, much of which has been in the Asia Pacific Region within events and PR industry. She has held key leadership roles executing market research and entry, developing sales channels and revenue generation, building marketing, finance and Operations related infrastructure for a more than 20 events related to retail, tourism, energy storage, blockchain, cosmetics domains.
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