How did XR convince you? 

At the start of the meeting, frontrunners started by introducing themselves by sharing an XR experience that had made an impact on them. To highlight two: Robert shared an example of how VR could help treat military veterans that suffer from PTSD which inspired him greatly. Thomas, shared Notes on Blindness, which uses VR to experience the world from the perspective of a blind person. 

XR ERA Community Update

Donna shared updates on the current status of the development of XR ERA. Explaining that wherever XR ERA might have been referred to as a ‘platform’, from now on we will refer to XR ERA as a community (supported by various platforms, such as the website and the MS Teams Channel). We believe it’s important to focus on the people instead of the technology and this reframing highlights that. Donna also showed the XR ERA website and gave a preview of updates to come. 

We made an inventory of the pertinent questions that members of the XR ERA community currently have. An overview of these questions is given here on a Miro board where the questions by participants are given on post it notes.

Hardware Hygiene

One of the questions that came up, relates to how to handle hygiene challenges that arise when working with non-personal augmented and virtual reality equipment. While this has been important always, it sometimes hasn’t got that much attention before. Obviously in the current times, we all realise the issue should be discussed seriously and tackled to be able to keep using hardware and allow for continuous innovation in the field. Interesting enough, Educators in VR is hosting a free workshop about this challenge on September 24th. Check it out if you are interested. Do you have any experience or expertise in this area? Please get in touch, we’d like to give you the stage to share your considerations and solutions.

The meetup ended with a quick tour through the XR ERA Microsoft Teams channel, which we are piloting as a community space for our members to get in touch with each other. 

Next meetup

On the 2nd of October we’ll organize a next session on the topic of failure projects. In this session, 2 – 4 members are invited to share a story of failure (e.g. a project not going as intended, collaborations not working out, getting stuck in an alternative reality…). The goal is to share experiences and learn from one another’s mistakes. Interested in the next meetup and our Microsoft Teams pilot? Send an email to xrcommunity@sea.leidenuniv.nl. 

Thanks to all that attended for your efforts and your participation. Hope to see you on MS Teams and at our next meetup!