Towards Metaverse: Insights By Bianca J. Jackson

Bianca J. Jackson (Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at BrickRose Exchange) shares her experience and insights about the challenges and future of Metaverse & immersive technologies.

To The Verge held a meeting with Bianca J. Jackson, founder, and CEO of BrickRose Exchange. The entrepreneur shared her work with immersive technologies and her plans to contribute to this virtual space. 

The company “BrickRose Exchange” engages audiences in art, business, and technology while democratizing activation space and resources access. Let’s get into this exciting discussion with Bianca J. Jackson to find out more.

What BrickRose Exchange all about? 

Bianca shared that “BrickRose Exchange” is a collaborative event space that leverages a membership sales model to engage in-person and online communities using virtual reality. She operates as a Chief Innovation Officer there.

Inspiring People To Pursue Metaverse Opportunities

Bianca shared that it was never straightforward about her work in immersive technology and her recognition in this field. She strived for “The Wall” VR project as she was not even sure the government would fund it or not. She put all her efforts into collecting stories related to the advancement of this immersive technology. 

The Wall project was awarded the esteemed Pulitzer Prize in 2018. She was a technology project manager with the development team and was involved with the project from inception. Her work has also been featured in Forbes, Washington Post, and the Tech Republic.

Ethical Utilization Of Immersive Technology

As per Bianca, “The ethical utilization of immersive technology in business transactions is at the boom right now. However, it has a lot of good and bad aspects involved too. Utilizing Immersive technology is a great thing for business leaders as it unlocks many new opportunities, for example, in this covid situation where people are trapped in their homes and facing numerous problems. Therefore by working in this technology, businesses can bring more and more people together“. 

She thinks that it’s really incredible what Fortnight has done with the massive concerts. With this platform, you can bring people together virtually. Nonetheless, there are some negative aspects too, but it’s on us how we take it and work upon it.

Bianca shared, “Various good things are coming. For example, Facebook (now META) invests lots of money in this technology. They are changing how they do business as they transform from a social media company to a multiverse company. And as a result, many other companies are also eying on investing in this technology“.

She believes that we may see a positive change in the next 5 or 10 years since several Industry experts and scientists are trying to infuse ethics. In addition, emerging technologies such as VR, AR, MR, and more may become more ethical and accessible.

Her Approach for business

She stated that if we are working on Metaverse, we should focus on making the experiences much like real-life experiences. It should be a unique and memorable experience that people really enjoy.

Bianca shared, “In reality, you cannot ride a dragon because dragons don’t exist. Right? However, in a virtual world or Metaverse, you are able to see a dragon or ride on him. What’s really cool about Virtual Reality Metaverse is that you can experience each other or engage with each other in a fun, playful, and imaginative way.”

What is Metaverse and its Future Prospects?

As per Bianca, “Metaverse is kind of a Mystery part. It is something like going into the virtual world, which is VR. Brings any type of virtual item into the real world, which is AR. And there is some combination of these two, which is something like Mixed Reality. If anyone who has experienced any of these phases or all three at the same time experienced the Metaverse“.

Talking about the companies or partnerships with which she wants to work with. She shared, “ I came across one cool headset from HP with a superb feature of biometric data capturing, so I feel really excited when I see something like this or the companies that are working on the immersive technologies so that I might be doing some projects with them.”

Why do these immersive technologies make her really exciting? Bianca shared that she wants to create a fantastic virtual experience for the users by utilizing these technologies. For example, having regular people stand in their regular spaces and turn that into a virtual experience into the Metaverse can be a lifetime experience for the people. Previously, it was challenging when it was costly and far from the reach of people.

She said, “Previously, it was tough to create a virtual environment. You have to find someone who knew unity to create a space like that. But with the advancement in technology, you do not need specialized people to build the environment. So it is going to stay and going to be bigger and bigger“.

Challenges that Metaverse brings, and how we can deal with it

Bianca shared, “Definitely, Metaverse brings many challenges! Take an example of Metaverse land. There are so many places in the virtual world where you can go. So many people are asking how I can buy land in the Metaverse”. 

She remarked that you need to research before investing since the future space has pros and cons. Many people are spending so much money purchasing land without any proper strategy. She thinks it’s all about the strategy you should think through before making any investment.

She said,  “Metaverse is here to stay. Due to Covid when the lives of the people were significantly impacted. That forces the business leader to take some initiative in creating something helpful for the people around. The Facebook shift towards the Metaverse will be a great move that claims to create around 10000 metaverse jobs that everybody is looking for”.

What is the future of Metaverse?

Bianca added, “Metaverse will continue to evolve, but how much I really don’t know. Because different companies are still testing market to find out what people are looking for or willing to pay for since it is in the early stages”. 

Talking about her planning to contribute to this virtual space, she expressed that she is building a community of people who really care about it and believe in the beneficial social impact of the virtual space.  According to her, the resources of such communities will be accessible to people needing them.

Conclusion

We don’t know what Metaverse would look like in the next five or six years, but it is evolving at a very high pace. As per Bianca – The Metaverse is here to stay and will become bigger and more prominent in the future. It may become a means of technological and economic transformation for companies that embrace it. Progressive organizations are already getting an edge by investing in fundamental building blocks such as AI, cloud computing, IoT, 5G connectivity, extended reality (AR, VR, and MR), and more. All we can do is, stay aligned with the developments and cherish the web 3.0 revolution.