We hear a lot about the importance of ethics in the metaverse on The AR Minute, but Emmy, of Emmy’s Black Box, doesn’t just talk about ethics, they “be” about it. “This guy (William Shakespeare) once said ‘All the world's a stage,’ and as a result, we are just actors. I want to be one of the good actors who makes the metaverse a place people want to visit.”
We met Emmy at AWE EU, in Lisbon, Portugal, supporting VR Workout by teaching people how to enjoy movement in both VR and their real-world. (Total sidebar, VR Workout was a blast to see on the AWE expo floor—anytime 2-3 people were exercising in VR headsets another 2-3 people, just walking the floor not in headsets, would join in, modeling their movements after their VR companions. A truly meta-experience! Learn more - https://www.youtube.com/c/VRWorkout. )
‘
As an experience designer and strategist Emmy does a lot of this kind of work—helping to onboard people into VR and building accessible on-ramps to welcoming metaverse experiences.
“We’re at this crucial building stage,” they note as they introduce this idea of a “foyer to the metaverse.” Nathan C is in love with this metaphor as the foyer. While the foyer is smaller and may not have all the comforts of the full house—it does a great job of introducing you to the space, the style, and the structures you’re about to encounter as you move deeper in. Shout out to Christopher Layfayette, Gatherverse, for a similar model they shared in an earlier interview.
Emmy sees so much potential in the metaverse for new modes of communication, connection, and creativity. We’re thankful they’ve dedicated their time and passions to advising and teaching others about making ethical choices—before it’s an expensive PR nightmare—and working to bring more people, and more diverse groups, to the table of opportunity the metaverse could be. To learn more about ethics and spatial computing, check out the XR Guild (https://www.xrguild.org/). Shout-out to XR ethics OG, Avi Bar-Zeev.
On a personal note, we celebrate an exciting representation milestone at the end of this episode as I (Nathan) realize that this was the first “all nonbinary” (all enby) episode of The AR Minute. As a trans nonbinary person it’s exciting for me to find community and other people who share their experience. I was not expecting a European B2B tech conference to be where I found this community, but I was thrilled at how many queer, nonbinary, and trans people of the metaverse I could meet at AWE EU.
Hopefully this is a sign that efforts from people like Emmy are indeed bringing more people to the table, and making metaverse tools and opportunities more accessible for all communities.