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If you haven’t noticed, virtual reality (VR) is kind of a big deal.Ever since Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion back in March of 2014 we’ve seen an incredible explosion of the virtu-al reality hardware ecosystem, with technical giants like Sam-

sung, Google, HTC and Sony all throwing their hats in the ring to own the next dominant computing platform. The release this year of the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PSVR marked the official start of the consumer virtual reality era.

What we haven’t seen yet is the software that will give us a compelling reason to use this incredible hardware day after day. Despite the incredible ‘wow factor’ of VR, we’re still lacking that killer application. And while no one can say exactly what that will be, there’s one explanation as to why VR hasn’t quite taken off yet: Creating new virtual reality experiences is expensive, labor inten-sive and very problematically requires a relatively obscure skillset.

The Skills GapSo what exactly does it take to make a new VR experience?

The best way to think about it is that today every VR experience you build is like creating a custom video game from scratch. And there is a particular skillset required to do this:

● Use and operate a 3D game development engine such as Unity.

● Design, build and animate 3D models in a program such as Blender or Maya.

● Code the scripts to run the game in a traditional programming language such as C# or Javascript (a very different skillset from web development).

From the start, we begin to run into an issue. VR is a massively exciting medium with great implications, not just for gaming, but also for education, the enterprise, journalism and retail to name just a few. Yet the only people with the skillset to design VR ex-periences today are people who work in the videogame industry. To put it in perspective: What if the only way to build a mobile application today would be to find someone who is an expert at Adobe Photoshop and also a functional programmer in Perl? All of a sudden it would be much harder to start your new app company.

But the challenges don’t end there. Beyond the technical difficul-ties, there are also all of the user experience and interface issues. VR is a fundamentally new medium that we haven’t seen since the first graphical user interfaces (GUIs) began to appear decades ago. Now we need a whole new generation of Doug Englebart’s to help us define how we interact with this new virtual interface.

A Path ForwardWe will need a whole new generation of coders, designers

and thinkers to help us lay the foundation for the virtual reality

THE GREAT PLATFORM REVOLUTION

JASON GANZ

revolution. Where are they going to come from? When you need more work done faster, there are two common paths you can take:

1. Create more highly skilled and well trained workers.2. Improve the toolset that you’re utilizing.

The good news is that there is tremendous progress being made on both of these fronts. The coding boot camp and online education revolution has successfully retrained tens of thousands of people to become successful web and mobile developers over the last decade. And it’s beginning to take aim at the VR market-place. Very recently Udacity released their Virtual Reality Devel-oper Nano degree, which promises to turn anyone into a hot shot VR developer within a few short months.

But, we won’t just have more developers. They’ll also be using much better tools. Think about how web development has been sped up with the introduction of tools like Ruby on Rails, a pow-erful web development framework allowing developers to create sophisticated sites much more quickly. Or consider service sites such as Squarespace which allow non-technical users to build their own websites.

We’re already seeing close analogues to this in the VR space. Primerose JS is a framework which will allow VR developers to increase their output and production, while tools like those we’re creating at Agora VR will help non-technical users create their own VR experiences for their sales and marketing programs. In fact, there’s a trend today toward building virtual reality experienc-es within virtual reality, which is going to be a core feature of game development engines like Unity and Unreal.

The challenges we face today in creating compelling VR con-tent is very real. But so are the opportunities and the tools to en-able us to move more quickly. Expect to see the rise of VR content mirror that of web development over the past twenty years. There will be standardized user interactions, design patterns, and tools emerging to allow a newly deployed workforce of developers to build awesome applications more quickly than anyone would have thought possible.

Jason Ganz is the CEO of Agora VR, a company dedicated to spreading big ideas in virtual reality. He’s a technology optimist and startup junky who is thrilled to be living in the most excit-ing time in human history. You can reach him @jasnonaz and @agoraVR.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart

Creating new virtual reality experiences is expensive, labor intensive and most problematically requires a relatively obscure skillset.

SPECIAL EDITION

What do low to middle income urban African American and Hispanic teens and parents think about information technology jobs, col-lege and future careers? IT Futures Labs, a

signature initiative of the Creating IT Futures Foundation, sought out the answers to that question. In its research, three types of jobs in computer technology ranked in the top ten of teens’ career inter-ests, and teens believed that with hard work and/or innate talent, they could be successful in IT careers. This research will help par-ents and educators understand how to inform and motivate youth to choose a path toward well-paying tech careers.

The surveyed teens were all B and C students in good standing in their junior or senior year of high school. The teens overwhelm-ingly indicated college was a high priority and that they wanted a career they love — one that also allowed them to help their parents financially. Three types of jobs in computer technology ranked in the top ten of career interests. The teens believed that with hard work and/or innate talent they could be successful in IT careers. In terms of advice on college and careers, teens reportedly look to parents 2-to-1 over any other source. The survey results should help parents, schools, nonprofit STEM organizations, businesses, and government agencies better understand how to inform and motivate youth to choose a path toward well-paying tech careers.

BASED ON A STUDY BY THE CREATING IT FUTURES FOUNDATION:TEEN VIEWS ON TECH CAREERS

TEENS TALK TECHNOLOGY

In 2014, the number of job listings nationally for IT jobs stood at nearly 600,000, a number that included approximately 135,000 ads for software developer jobs1. The unemployment rate for computer occupations dipped to just 2.4 percent for December 20142. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate of youth ages 16 to 24 is more than twice the overall national average (14.3 percent3 compared to 6.2 percent4 as of July 2014) and the number of adults who live in economic insecurity has risen substantially since the Great Recession, from 37 percent to 45 percent5. Today’s youth need jobs that lead to careers, and com-panies need tech workers. How can more teens be steered in the direction of well-paying and secure tech jobs for their adult careers?

Programs that work to help youths succeed typically target at-risk youth in danger of dropping out of high school (the low-est achieving students), while STEM programs typically focus on enrolling the highest achieving youth into various high-level science, robotics and math efforts. Often left out of the equation are the students in the middle — those whose grades may not identify them as standouts for high-profile STEM tracks (e.g., engineer, physician, mathematician) but who can still achieve success in the practical, creative and hands-on world of infor-mation technology.

What Matters Most to Teens?We surveyed low to middle-income urban African American and Hispanic teens and found out that their goals aren’t focused on money. They want to work in technology to help their families, find jobs they love and gain independence in life.

Teens clearly rely on parents the most for advice on what to do after high school, the teen’s strengths and interests, and different types of jobs and careers.

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Subjects of the survey fell within the following demographics:

We focused on two populations under-represented in the IT field: African-Americans and Hispanics. Though the two ethnic groups together represent 27 percent of the working population, they only represent about 12 percent of the IT workforce6.

In addition, the study centered on individuals most in need of the opportunities offered by well-paying tech careers — that is, students and parents from families in the lower half of annual household income ($65,000 or less).

The survey of teens included similar numbers of boys and girls, but parents were not targeted with a 50/50 gender mix in mind. None of the students had ever been expelled from school, and they all self-reported as earning mostly Bs and/or Cs.

Finally, the Survey of Teen Views on Tech Careers polled youth and parents who live in urban areas across the U.S. as these are the places with the largest untapped talent pools as well as where the most IT jobs are likely to be available.

Before supporting or launching programs that target this vast middle group of teenagers (some estimates put the B and C students as 70 percent of the student population), Creating IT Futures wanted to know more about how the teens get their in-formation about careers, how college fits into their career plans, and what drives their specific job-field interests. Additionally, we wanted to know whether parents facilitate career thinking and to what extent teens invite parents into their decision-making pro-cess. Finally, we wanted to discover where an IT career ranked in the students’ list of options and why. General questions of college, jobs, and careers were explored in both the qualitative and quan-titative research. For the qualitative research, students and their parents were interviewed in their homes, in person and via Skype; for the online surveys, the parent and the student groups were recruited separately and were therefore unlikely to be related to one another.

What features of careers stand out as most attractive to urban minority teens? Across the board, the teens clearly value jobs that lead to careers, as well as jobs that afford them the opportunity for continual learning. Making a lot of money and helping other people also rank high, as does landing in a career field in which finding a job is not too difficult. Although leading and inspiring oth-ers at work ranks as important, that didn’t mean the teens felt they needed to be in positions of authority. For example, being the CEO, being a manager, or having authority/power over others ranked relatively low on the desirability scale of our survey. Work-ing in an office also landed near the bottom of desired features in a career. The fact that many IT professionals are out in the field or work from home could be important messages to share.

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Often left out of the equation are the students in the middle, those whose grades may not identify them as standouts for high-profile STEM tracks — engineer, physician, mathematician — but who can still achieve success in the practical, hands-on world of information technology.

No. 1 Goal: Having a Job I LoveTeens want a career —not just a clock to punch

“Having a job I love” was ranked number one by teens in terms of goals to accomplish over the next decade. Furthermore, it is interesting to learn what other qualities in a career are desirable to teens. Altruistic aspirations such as contributing money or housing to parents or “helping other people” tended to rank just as high as or even higher than, “having a lot of money,” “owning my own home,” or “moving into a better neighborhood.” It’s likely that motivational messaging targeted at urban minority teens have missed out on this altruism angle.

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TEENS ON TECH

The survey drilled further into specific careers and career cate-gories, giving the teens 60 careers from which to choose their top three. Somewhat surprisingly, the computers/technology catego-ry was at the very top of the teens’ interests, besting even such high-profile career categories as business & retail, law, music and sports. Furthermore, three of the top ten careers were computer- related (software programmer, computer technician and computer design engineer). Software programmer in particular won out over career paths that receive much more exposure in our media and culture, such as nurse/doctor, lawyer and architect. Clearly, urban minority teens have a strong affinity for technology and a desire to work directly with technology in a career. That said, what isn’t clear is how much young people are aware of their top career interests in terms of pathways to success and barriers they would have to overcome to reach their goals. For example, do the respondents really know what a civil engineer does or is there something ap-pealing about the title or perception of what that job might entail?

The high placement of “business owner” as an interest may be partly the result of high-profile entertainers and professional athletes who have parlayed their original careers (and dollars) into becoming business moguls.

What Are Some Important Aspects of Future Careers?The opportunity to travel, continue learning and inspire others are three of the top things teen told us that they’re looking for in their long-term careers.

Top 10 Careers of InterestBusiness Owner 18%Software Programmer 17%Nurse or Doctor 15%Civil Engineer 15%Lawyer 12%Computer Technician 11%Military Job 11%Computer Design Engineer 11%Architect 7%Engineer 7%

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How do youth currently get to know more about a career of in-terest? According to the teens, personal research on the Internet is the most popular single way (43 percent), but they also acquire career info in their high school classrooms, through career fairs, and through television. Interestingly, nearly 80 percent of youth report having at least one role model in their career(s) of interest — most likely someone they know (57 percent), but potentially also a famous person (22 percent) or a character from TV shows or movies (11 percent). What’s not clear, though, is how accurate or readily available that career information is.

How the teens matched their self-perceived skills to careers is another area the survey explored. When the teens were asked to rank the skills and subjects they thought they were good at, appearing at the top were customer-service skills — for exam-ple, being friendly, being creative, being a good listener, accept-ing responsibility, and listening to others. About a third consid-ered themselves good at math, thinking logically, working with technology, and solving problems. Also, a quarter of the teens considered themselves strong in computer science, while a fifth believed themselves to be strong in science in general. This pro-vided hope that a sizable number of urban minority students who earn passing, but not outstanding, grades could see careers in tech as open to them.

‘To Know IT Is to Like IT’The information technology field is typically referred to by its

acronym, IT. This may present an awareness problem for urban minority teens and their parents. As a matter of fact, only 21 per-cent of teens and 30 percent of parents surveyed felt they defi-nitely knew what IT stood for, although a majority of teens and adults thought they “might” know or were “pretty sure” what it meant.

Once it was explained to each group that IT stands for infor-mation technology, a significant proportion of each group rec-ognized people in their lives or in popular media who work in the field. It turns out that IT benefits from a number of positive perceptions. A lot of teens and parents viewed IT careers as pay-ing well, offering a way to help people, while providing fun and interesting work. A smaller number held negative attitudes of IT careers, such as feeling that a job in IT would mean working alone in front of a computer all day, be difficult and complicated, be too competitive, be “just for geeks”, or be boring. When the types of work that fall under IT were described in more detail, there was a huge jump in enthusiasm, with 70 percent of the teens denoting at least some interest in IT. Specific IT jobs draw-ing the most interest were writing software (83 percent), com-puter build-install-repair (78 percent), and technology consulting (78 percent). Because the IT function is present in virtually all companies in every industry, the survey asked if the possibility of obtaining an IT job within another chosen field would make

TEENS ON TECH

Learning the Way Forwardthe teen more eager to work in IT. Four out of five teens said they would be somewhat or a lot more interested in IT if the job aligned with another area of focus.

Some of the top draws to the IT field for those who specified an interest were good pay, enjoyment of working with technology, the opportunity to constantly learn new things, and a goal of us-ing technology to help people. More than a fifth of the surveyed teens also selected reasons such as having a career that allows them to grow, getting to solve logic problems, and high demand for workers in the IT field. Refreshingly, most teens and almost all parents were unaffected by several of the popular misconceptions surrounding IT, such as the myth that most IT jobs are being off-shored.

The 30 percent who specified a lack of interest in the IT field gave several reasons why. Unfortunately, most teens and more than a third of parents mistakenly indicated that IT jobs require a four-year degree or more; nearly all the teens and parents (again, inaccurately) believed that being successful at an IT job necessar-ily required doing really well in math and science courses. Lack of knowledge about IT jobs, lack of math and science talent, and lack of a personality fit were the top reasons given by the teens who did not feel drawn to an IT career. Those reasons were followed by distaste for desk jobs and the perception that IT jobs were too boring or too difficult.

Parents seem to support teens in their efforts. Overwhelming-ly, parents in the survey said they want their child to have a more successful job or career than they did, to make more money than they did, and to have the ability to do things the parents didn’t get a chance to do. The question becomes: Do parents have enough information and knowledge to be good career guides for their children?

What Draws You To Technology?

SPECIAL EDITION

Parents aren’t sharing their expectations for high-school grad-uation — or kids just aren’t hearing the message. More than 25 percent of the teens said their parents would feel it was “OK” if they dropped out of high school (especially if they got a decent job instead), but in actuality, only 4 percent of parents thought it was okay if their child didn’t finish high school.

In addition, parents are much more likely than teens to say that they and their child talk “a lot” about jobs/careers and future plans. Even if conversations about college and careers may be happening, according to teens those conversations aren’t hap-pening enough.

Reality Crashes Into College Aspirations

According to Pew Research Center, just over half of low-in-come high school graduates attend a 2 or 4 year college or uni-versity7. The Survey of Teen Views on Tech Careers revealed that the vast majority of low to middle income high school students desire and/or intend to do so. Nearly all report that going to col-lege would make them feel proud, including those who would be the first generation to attend college. Parents are somewhat more hopeful than teens that their student will attend a 4-year institution (74 percent of parents versus 57 percent of teens). At the same time, more than half of parents agree that cost is a barrier to their teen attending college. As reported by the Washington Post, of students in the bottom quarter of income who were born in the 1980s, only 29 percent enrolled in college by age 19. Of those, only 32 percent graduated by age 25 with a bachelor’s degree.8

Strictly speaking, college is not a requirement for an IT career,

TEENS ON TECH

FOR ALL THE IMPORTANCE THAT TEENS PLACE ON HEARING THEIR PARENTS’ CAREER ADVICE, THERE EXIST A COUPLE OF IMPORTANT AREAS

IN WHICH PARENTS AND CHILDREN ARE CLEARLY NOT COMMUNICATING.

as the IT field is more hospitable to non-institutional learning than some other fields. Though many companies continue to list col-lege degrees in their employment want-ads as non-negotiables, other hiring organizations focus entirely on acquired skills and rel-evant experience. In fact, most youth (and a third of parents) mis-takenly think that a college degree is a requirement for success in the tech field. So it is no surprise that college specifically and general post-high-school education and training rank very high (3rd and 2nd respectively) in terms of what teens want to obtain and accomplish over the next five to ten years.

Countering Feelings of Discouragement

The survey of parents made it clear that they would over-whelmingly encourage their child toward a career in IT, and vir-tually none said they would discourage it. However, half of teens reported being told by a parent and/ or a teacher that they are not good at math, science, engineering, or information technolo-gy. Despite feeling discouraged on some fronts, about a third of the teens felt they would be naturals at IT work, and — including those who believe they could achieve more through hard work than innate talent — the vast majority thought they could succeed in the field. Parents, according to the survey, feel the same way. In fact, a large portion of teens reported being encouraged by a parent (41 percent) or by a teacher (39 percent). Students who knew about the IT field reported learning about IT in a number of ways, including elective classes, regular classes, extracurricular activities, and career-exploration programs. Some had completed an internship that gave them some exposure to IT or had visited at least one company or job site where they saw IT professionals at work.

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN

According to our survey, teens clearly rely on parents the most for advice on what to do after high school, the teen’s strengths and interests, and different types of jobs and careers. Teens in the survey clocked parents as their most significant influencers by a factor of 2-to-1 or greater compared to teachers, guidance counselors, peers, and coaches.

WHO HAS THE MOST INFLUENCE

WHEN IT COMES TO CAREER AND

COLLEGE ADVICE? ?

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TEENS ON TECH

One of the concerns of STEM proponents is that not enough schools offer the right courses. A majority of the surveyed teens (62 percent) report access to IT or computer science classes at school, though that figure skews well above the 10 percent of schools that are thought to have such courses nationally.9 About 39 percent of students report taking a class where they learned about IT (a full 30 percent specifically in either computer science or IT), while 26 percent report being involved in an after-school ac-tivity where they learned about IT. Of those who became involved in IT-related courses or activities, nearly two-thirds report becom-ing more interested in IT as a result. Though courses increase

interest, urban minority teens report greater preference for other methods of learning about IT. Job shadowing for up to a week, on-line career exploration, or working an internship are the students’ preferred ways of learning about the field. In addition, there are a few extrinsic factors that could motivate young people to develop IT skills. About half of teens — which certainly included a number of those who expressed low interest in IT to begin with — reported that they would be very interested in developing IT skills if they got paid, if they were awarded course credits, or if learning IT helped them get into college. And, almost all teens expressed at least some interest in these options.

African-American youth were more likely than their Hispanic counterparts to say that their parents wouldn’t mind if they didn’t go to college, to rely on family members to talk about jobs and careers, to have an interest in science careers, and to see IT as a field that pays well. In addition, they were more likely to have an interest in business and retail careers, including owning a busi-ness.

African-American boys surveyed were more likely than other groups to know what IT is; to value earning money; to look toward the military after high school; to rely on teachers to help them explore academic talents; and to cite regular classes as having sparked their interest in IT.

Compared to the other groups, African-American girls were more likely to cite friends and community programs outside of school as helping them explore career interests, including IT. In addition, this group was more likely to value being able to work independently in their future job or career.

Hispanic teens were more likely than their African-American counterparts to learn about jobs through TV or movies; to see IT as fun and interesting work; and to cite visits to schools/colleges as having sparked their interest in IT.

Of all the groups, Hispanic boys reported the highest interest in IT careers and were more likely to say that IT classes sparked their IT interest. This group also reported stronger than average interest in law/military careers and highly valued being a manager or having power and authority. More so than the other groups,

they reported that getting married and having a family is important to them.

Hispanic girls stood out in a number of ways, including want-ing to have a job that they love; wanting to help parents with mon-ey or housing; reporting that their parents insist they finish high school; and feeling that parents are less involved in giving feed-back on their academic strengths and what colleges or programs they should attend. Hispanic girls are as a rule less interested in IT careers than the other groups, being more likely to cite poor personality fit. They were more likely than the other groups to want to learn about careers through mentors, internships, or site visits.

Looking strictly at gender, the boys were more likely than girls to have an interest in careers that involve building and fixing things (engineers, architects, mechanics, carpenters, and electri-cians). Meanwhile, girls were more likely to cite the importance of attending higher education; to express an interest in traveling to new cities or countries; to have an interest in helping profes-sions (nurse, doctor, teacher, childcare worker, social worker) and in music, art, or writing. They were also more likely to learn about specific jobs or what they might be good at through their friends or through personal Internet research; view IT as sitting alone in front of a computer all day; and more likely to say that they would struggle with IT or to state that they are just not interested in com-puters or technology.

Note that the differences between the groups were relatively small and don’t negate the overall direction of the trends. For ex-ample, just because the girls surveyed were more likely than the boys to view IT as sitting alone in front of a computer all day isn’t meant to imply that most of the girls felt this way.

What Different Subgroups Say About Careers in Technology

Are Schools Offering Enough Suppport?

Up to this point we’ve been talking about overall trends for all the groups surveyed. Diving deeper into the demographics, it’s possible to find a few (small, but still statistically significant) differences between some of the surveyed sub-groups:

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TEENS ON TECH

ParentsRecognize and capitalize on influence. Even if parents are

already talking about college and careers with their teen, they should not assume that messages about college and career are getting through. Parents should work to educate themselves more about college and career options and intentionally set aside more time than they are doing now to discuss these topics with their high-school-age child.

Educate yourselves about IT careers. Teens clearly look to their parents more so than other adults to gather information about careers. If your student indicates that a tech career is of in-terest, educate yourself so you can point your student in the right direction. Learn more about IT careers at CompTIA.org/Roadmap.

Disavow yourself of career myths. A four-year degree, while potentially beneficial in the long run, is not the only way to get started in an IT career. Neither does a student have to be a top achiever in math and science to be successful. Many adults with successful IT careers self-identify as one-time average students who managed to turn their computer interest into a livelihood. Explore the IT training options at 2-year-degree institutions, non-profit training programs (such as IT-Ready), as well as on-the-job training opportunities with local employers. Become familiar with IT certifications offered by CompTIA, Cisco, Microsoft, and other certifying bodies. Certifications assure employers that a candidate has attained a particular skill level.

Nonprofits, Schools & CorporationsMarket tech careers differently. Promoting tech as a way to

make a high salary or to attain a high position of authority may not be the right messages to lead with. Students also want to make an impact on their families and the greater world. Leverage their sense of responsibility and altruism with material goals.

Develop and promote hands-on tech learning programs. Programs that help a young person learn about IT careers and that compensate the teen in some way could be the most promis-ing for bringing more urban minority youth into the field. Focus on hands-on approaches that get students learning about tech by do-ing the work of IT. Promote programs that don’t require a college degree to get a foothold in a career. Teens clearly like job shad-owing and “real-world” approaches to learning about tech careers.

Help the primary influencers of teens to provide career guidance. Our survey says it loud and clear: Parents are teens’ most trusted source for college and career guidance. Emphasize to parents that they have permission from their teens to talk about college and careers more often than they are already doing. Find ways to put relevant information in the hands of parents, so they can give informed advice.

Clarify what IT means. Information technology is attractive as a career path — once that path is recognized. First, teens and parents need help picturing IT in their minds. Only then can they have a visible path to follow.

Important TakeawaysUrban minority youth are attracted to IT careers, believe they can be successful, and have parents who believe they can be successful. For organizations that want to interest more youth in IT careers — especially youth most in need of opportunity — this should be encouraging news.

IT careers rank high in attractiveness compared to other fields.

Myths about the necessity of 4-year degrees and proficiency in high-level math and science still exist. Those misconceptions need to continue to be combatted by organizations that promote tech careers to the average student.

Leverage the Internet to inform about tech careers. The top place for urban minority youth to obtain information about ca-reers is the Web, including YouTube. More good career resources (especially videos) need to be deployed to catch the attention of these teens and their parents.

Emphasize that entrepreneurs often started out as tech-nologists. Teens who indicated “business owner” as a top career interest should be aware of the high number of technologists who go on to start their own businesses in everything from tech service to cybersecurity to software design and app development.

Put math and science in their proper perspective, depend-ing on the student. A future mathematician would find AP Cal-culus in high school indispensable, but it’s rare that a network administrator, for example, would need high-level math to pass a crucial certification exam. Schools should take this wide variety of tech careers into account and not discourage a student from a technologist career pathway just because he or she isn’t taking the most advanced math and science courses.

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1) Burning Glass Technologies Labor Insights.

2) Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey.

3) “Employment and Unemployment Among Youth Summary.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Depart-ment of Labor.

4) “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Department of Labor.

5) “Living Below the Line: Economic Insecurity and America’s Families: 2013.” A Project of Wider Opportu-nities for Women’s Family Economic Security Program. On the Internet at: http://www.wowonline.org/wp-con-tent/uploads/2013/09/Living-Below-the-Line- Economic-Insecurity-and-Americas-Families-Fall-2013.pdf (visited 1/5/15)

6) Swift, Mike. “Blacks, Latinos and Women Lose Ground at Silicon Valley Tech Companies.” San Jose Mercury News, 13 Feb 2010. On the Internet at http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_14383730 (visited 1/8/15)

7) Desilver, Drew. “College enrollment among low-in-come students still trails richer groups.” Pew Research Center, 15 Jan 2014.

8) “Why poor kids don’t stay in college.” Washington Post, 20 Oct 2014.

9) “A Push To Boost Computer Science Learning, Even At An Early Age” NPR, February 17, 2014. On the Internet at http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/17/271151462/a-push-to-boost- computer-sciencelearning-even-at-an-early-age.

Raw Data on Teen Responses http://www.creatingitfutures.org/docs/default-sour-cePDFs/citff-survey-of-teens---2014-03-13.pdf?s-fvrsn=2

Raw Data on How California Teens Answered the Survey Questions:http://www.creatingitfutures.org/docs/default-sour-cepdfs/citffsurveyofteenscaliforniabreakouts.pdf?s-fvrsn=2

Raw Data on How Parents of Teens Answered the Survey Questions:http://www.creatingitfutures.org/docs/default-sour-cePDFs/citff-survey-of-parents---2014-03-14.pdf? sfvrsn=2

Additional Graphs from the Study on Teen Views on Tech Careers:http://www.creatingitfutures.org/docs/default-source/pdfs/teentechcareerpptextradata.pdf?sfvrsn=2

Endnotes

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The way we in which we interact today has changed dramatically in the last decade. Today, most social interactions are done online rather than in person. But what will our social connections and experiences

look like during the next ten years?

I believe that Virtual Reality (VR) will provide many more so-cial opportunities than exist today. A head mounted display (HMD) and headphones will open up your senses to whole new worlds. Within seconds of seeing and hearing your virtual world you no longer know which direction the real world is facing. Where is my computer desk that was just in front of me? Where is the sofa I was just sitting on? You have been completely transported to your new virtual world.

Whatever that new world is, be it an underwater adventure in The Blu, a wave shooter game like Space Pirate Trainer, or creat-ing new art in Google’s Tilt Brush, most virtual reality experiences to date have been independent, on your own experiences. But hu-mans are social creatures. And the real power in VR is understood when a social element is added. That’s why we created Sports-BarVR. But more on that later.

In the non-virtual or real world on a Friday night when I want to change my reality and not stay at home by myself all night, I might choose to walk down to the neighborhood bar and play pool and have a conversation over a drink or two. Maybe I invite a friend to come with me, or maybe I just meet new people. Your local bar is not an empty space. It’s an establishment that offers experiences. Maybe it’s billiards. Maybe its darts. Maybe it’s as simple as the opportunity to meet others while having a drink.

A month ago, I flew home from Seattle and arrived just after midnight. It had been a long week of development and I just want-ed to relax before going to bed. I would not have gone to a bar at that hour, and did not want to stay up too much longer. What I did do was jumped into our new application SportBarVR and selected a multiplayer match. Within seconds I was playing pool against another person.

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, as we played a couple games of eight-ball, I got to know him. He was a police officer from Florida who had just finished his shift (it was 4 a.m. his time), and we were sharing some time together, getting to know each other, while trying to hit some balls into their corner pockets. Quite an experience. We’ve recently added the ability to have up to six people in your bar, so it can be even more social.

But maybe the pool game and bar scene is not your cup of tea. What about virtual tourism where you can visit a country you’ve never been to? Interesting by yourself. But what if you could go

VIRTUAL REALITY IS THE NEXT SOCIAL PLATFORM

travelling with a friend? How about sharing a virtual concert or a virtual sporting event with a friend who lives across the country? Who’s going to be making all of these experiences that we haven’t even dreamed of yet? Will it be Google’s DayDream team? Will it be Facebook’s Oculus team? Or will it be a band of small startups we’ve never heard of? Either way, it’s going to take a lot of techni-cal minds to come up with these new worlds.

About 20 years ago I was working in the visual effects indus-try in Hollywood developing photorealistic virtual worlds for films like Titanic and The Matrix. It was a very specialized field and we needed top talent to invent the future technology. We had the fastest computers in the world and the brightest minds, but we needed more minds to solve the problems more quickly.

Computers can’t invent the future, only people programming and using them can. At that time, Dr. John Lombardi, then Presi-dent of the University of Florida and I discussed this need. He and I worked together to start the Digital Arts and Sciences program, and the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida to help train the minds that are needed to create these new virtual worlds.

Now that VR is finally here for the masses, there are endless possibilities that lie ahead. But we’re going to need many new creative and technical minds to join us and make it happen.

Richard Kidd is the CEO of Perilous Orbit. Having pioneered many new digital technologies such as motion capture, computer generated people, cyber scanning, digital water and virtual sets, Richard has built a career toward developing solutions to previ-ously unsolved problems in the digital entertainment industry.

1) http://digitalworlds.ufl.edu

RICHARD KIDD

SPECIAL EDITION

As we march into the tail end of 2016, “The Year of VR”, let’s take some stock in what has happened this year, look ahead at how the market will devel-op, and then drill down to see what this means for

employment and business prospects within the sector. The dawn of consumer VR happened this year, with three major premium headsets launched and we are now talking about millions of pre-mium VR customers for the first time.

Oculus Rift and HTC ViveIn the middle of summer 2016 we had two major VR headset

releases. At CES in January, Oculus Rift announced pre-orders for their headset that would include an XBOX 360 controller and basic positional tracking up to nine feet with a single camera. Around the time the Oculus Rift should have shipped, HTC Vive announced that their headset was shipping. The race was now on. Part short-ages and manufacturing delays from Oculus put some customers almost two months past their shipping window to receive their Rifts. Oculus was kind enough to refund the shipping costs to those who had to wait, but public sentiment suffered. What arrived by early summer was a lightweight high definition VR headset with built-in speakers, and a modest selection of games, including two exclu-sives for pre-order customers (Eve Online & Lucky’s Tale).

HTC Vive picked up the slack in the Oculus chain and had plenty of Vives to deliver in less than three weeks from the time of ordering. Unlike Oculus, the Vive came with robust positional tracking in the form of Lighthouse, complete with a “chaperone” system to keep players from running into walls. This enabled im-pressive walk around VR experiences which were hard to match on the Oculus. Also, HTC Vive came with two positional tracked six DOF (Degrees of Freedom) controllers at launch. Something Oculus has promised, but has yet to deliver. We also had some nice exclusives from HTC Vive available with pre-orders as well (Fantastic Contraption, Tiltbrush, and Job Simulator).

Sony Enters VRThe Playstation VR launched in the US in October to largely

positive results. It has the advantage of being a much cheaper solution that the premium HTC Vive or Oculus Rift headsets. An install base of over forty million Playstation 4 owners, and min-imally required additional $400-$500 investment to experience a very robust VR experience. Furthermore, Sony brought the games. The Sony library of complete game experiences has ri-valed both HTC Vive and Oculus right out of the gate. It’s still very early in this product’s release, but it looks promising, and while not the premium PC VR experience, it is a major step up from the mobile headsets and accessible to a very large market.

VR DevelopmentBoth Unity and Unreal game engines tried their hands at cre-

ating a development environment in VR. Between these two, the Unreal toolkit is a little further along, but both need a lot of design and improvement, and neither of these seem like it has surpassed

VR 2016 AND JOBS OF THE FUTURE

the productivity of a traditional development environment. None-theless, they both hold promise for the time being when we will prefer to develop with the headsets on.

The OpportunitiesHollywood: Directors like Steven Spielberg (Ready Player

One) and Jon Favreau (Gnomes and Goblins) are dipping their toes into full VR movie experiences and validating the medium. Hollywood is taking this very seriously. They recognize it as a new platform, one which evolves their current storytelling, venturing off into new areas in which the rules are not yet defined, and one rich with new experiences to be explored.

Construction: Architects, city planners, and anyone building anything can benefit from VR visualization of their proposed devel-opments. Stakeholders can walk around imagined spaces along-side their architects and builders to experience large developments long before the first shovel has hit the dirt. Allowing for very realistic presence in those environments and a real sense of what the fi-nal product will be, it’s a far cry from the conceptual drawings and physical models that have been the mainstay in this sector.

Real Estate: Visualization of existing spaces, like homes and commercial spaces are greatly serviced by VR. High reso-lution 360 photography as well as video allows for buyers to walk around homes that may be thousands of miles away, trying before they’re buying. This is really taking off and we will see this evolve into “the” method for home buying over the next few years.

Health: The health field has several areas that will benefit from VR in the near term: Diagnostic, Pain Management and Fear Man-agement. In health, a good distraction might be more effective than a sedative or painkiller. VR has been used to help with chemother-apy sessions and skin stretching for burn victims, proving as or more effective than painkiller counterparts. For fear management, the simulation and presence capability of VR allows for very real human reactions to virtual situations allowing people to approach their fears in a safe and controlled environment. This year we saw live streamed medical procedures in VR, and VR also being used to train surgeons with interactive elements. The health benefits of VR are just starting to be tapped, and the future here is very bright.

We are into our first year of VR, and there have been many stumbles, but those have been outshined by the successes, and ultimately the fervor of what is to come. We know that there will be better headsets and better experiences in the not too distant future, and anyone who has tried some of the premium offerings in VR already has a good sense of where we’re headed. So strap in, because it’s going to be a very fun ride.

Chris Wren comes from a background in AAA game develop-ment, working as an artist and producer for 12+ years at com-panies like EA/Maxis, Namco and Microprose. He’s worked on Falcon 4.0, the Sims franchise and Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.

CHRIS WREN

GRAPHIC DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION

JLAMBGRAPHIC.COM

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