I’m happy to announce our new website is live at https://xrguild.org
Please let us know what you think of it, including if you find anything that needs improving. There’s plenty left to do. We need more testing on mobile devices and browsers for one thing.
Remember, the XR Guild is 100% volunteer, which means that we are all contributing our free time in-between other paying work and family time. As a result, it’s taken six months and about 150 hours of coding to get this new website and related back-end systems up. Special thanks to Zach and many others for early feedback and testing.
Now we need your help
For those who haven’t yet joined, here’s the best link: https://xrguild.org/Join
For existing members, please visit the member page at https://xrguild.org/Membership to verify and potentially enhance your membership. The process is familiar. You’ll ask for a membership key, sent by email, and then paste or “drag-and-drop” the key to unlock the page. LMK of any problems. Some browsers are pesky about using files like this, so we keep testing and tweaking. But it sure beats passwords.
There are a few new fields in the Membership form that you may want to fill out, such as your pronouns and a new visual Profile to hold your best image and mini-bio. If you mark that public we will eventually feature these on the website. Even if it’s set to members-only, it will be very helpful for matching mentors and mentees as part of that new program, launching soon.
If you are interested in being a Mentor, please explicitly sign up at https://xrguild.org/Mentoring. This will be one of the most helpful ways people who are established in the field can “pay it forward,” much the same the way we’ve all been helped in the past via 1:1 networking. We’re still testing the matchmaking using fake accounts so we don’t disturb people with stray emails. But having real people ready to go will help expedite opening it up to everyone as soon as it’s ready.
A number of you suggested and even worked on our Open Letter project back in the spring. It’s finally live at https://xrguild.org/Speak . Please sign the letter to help test that system before we publicize it more widely. It should be a good way for people to show their support even if they don’t join us.
We added an easier way for you to invite your colleagues to join the XR Guild. Visit https://xrguild.org/Invite to generate a template that you can edit and then send. You can also add the list of who originally invited you to join the XR Guild on your own membership page near the bottom, so they get credit.
Having doubts about the Guild?
We’re very aware that most of the attention this year has gone toward the benefits and risks of AI, where last year was so much “Metaverse” hype. Coupled with devastating mass layoffs, cutbacks in spending and/or delayed timelines, it may appear to some to dramatically reduce the urgency for improving the state of Spatial Computing right now. That would be a huge mistake IMO.
It helps a lot that Apple has finally shown the world their work on more user-centered and privacy-by-design HMDs and experiences. So we have some positive news that indicates that we are not alone in pushing for better ethics now. This isn’t the time to pause, but rather to double-down and accelerate.
AI has always been core to XR, even in the Holodeck imagination. No one thinks ChatGPT will remain at text prompts for very long. Within the next few years, we’ll be seeing more contextually-aware Spatial Computing devices as well as more 3D digital personas, both featuring massive machine learning back-ends and tight sensory-feedback loops. These things were always a big part of our concerns in making XR more ethical, less manipulative or exploitive.
If we wait until the next time the mainstream media focuses their gaze on us, we’ll be way too late to fix it. Now is the best time to grow our efforts and collectively improve things, especially while “things” are still relatively small. It’s going to take all of us pitching in together, so let’s get going!
Anyone disagree? Feel free to let me know your thoughts.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Avi Bar-Zeev
President, XR Guild
P.S.: Our next video chat is on October 19th at 9am PT if you want to discuss anything live. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87634117759?pwd=Q1hqOXJCYUVCM0d1SXF1aEdkVDVOUT09