The Metaverse Standards Forum

Announcer: Today on Building The Open Metaverse.

Neil Trevett:

But we didn't want to be a standards organization — and this is probably the key point to understanding what the forum is and isn't — because if we were another standards organization, we’d just make the problem worse. Now there'll be twenty-five places to go to figure out what's going on. So the point of the forum is to be this coordination and discussion forum that anyone is welcome to join.

Announcer:

Welcome to Building The Open Metaverse, were technology experts discuss how the community is building the open metaverse together, hosted by Patrick Cozzi from Cesium and Marc Petit from Epic Games.

Marc Petit:

Hello everybody and welcome to our last episode of season two. And welcome to our show Building the Open Metaverse. As you know, were a podcast where technologists share their insight on how the community is building the open metaverse together. My name is Marc Petit. My co-host is Patrick Cozzi from Cesium. Patrick, how are you?

Patrick Cozzi:

Hi, Marc. I'm doing great. I've been looking forward to this episode since season one, episode two.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, it's been a lot of work. We'll talk about the podcast in a minute but I want to intro our guest today. And we're super happy to have Neil Trevett with us back to the show. Neil is Vice President, Developer Ecosystems at NVIDIA and President of The Khronos Group, an open standards organization which manages OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenCL but also WebGL, OpenXR, glTF... Neil, welcome to the show.

Neil Trevett:

I'm happy to be back. Not often I'm invited back to a place so I'm happy to be here.

Marc Petit:

We're delighted to have you and what a perfect way to conclude for us season two of the podcast. As you know we started this crazy adventure at SIGGRAPH last year – was it last year Patrick? Yes?

Marc Petit:

With the BOF and then with creating this podcast, we invited you because we felt that it was an important conversation around open standards and open source. And ever since that episode, we had a lot of conversations, which I think led to being the motivation to create the Metaverse Standards Forum. And so now the Metaverse Standards Forum exists and so I think it's a great moment of celebration. And we are going back to SIGGRAPH in Vancouver in a few weeks and Patrick and I are organizing a SIGGRAPH class on the open metaverse. So, Patrick, you want to give us an overview of what people can expect from that SIGGRAPH class?

Patrick Cozzi:

Sure Marc. So if you go back one year ago, we did a Birds of a Feather (BOF) at SIGGRAPH and it was two hours long and we realized that we just started a conversation on the open metaverse especially around open standards and interoperability. So then we started this podcast and now we're going back to SIGGRAPH in Vancouver, in person, and we're going to do a full day course on Wednesday, August 10. A morning and an afternoon session around what are folks doing? What's the state of the metaverse? What's the vision for the future and how do we build it together with interoperability and open standards? So many leaders are coming from companies as well as standard defining organizations. Many folks that we've had on the podcast before, like Neil and Nadine from OGC, Morgan McGuire from Roblox. So many great folks will be joining us, and also Neal Stephenson is going to join us as well.

Marc Petit:

Wow, the guy who invented the metaverse, right?

Patrick Cozzi:

This is true.  He coined the term as author of Snow Crash.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, we look forward to seeing everybody at SIGGRAPH. If you attend SIGGRAPH in person, don't be a stranger come and say hello. Patrick and I will be there and Neil will be there as well. And you know he's part of the family here on this podcast. 

Maybe we want to go back a little bit. So we will take a break for the summer, by the way, just for logistics. We will go to SIGGRAPH, do the class, take a break and we'll come back with season three of the podcast early in September. It's time to give us feedback — what you guys like, don't like.  We'll factor in this feedback and we'll set things up for a new year, a year where we actually have the Metaverse Standards Forum where we can openly discuss all of these topics. 

If you haven't listened to the second episode of the podcast called “Open Standards Governance”, you should. I think it was an interesting and fascinating conversation that, you know, highlights the differences between open standards versus open source and the importance of open standards to actually achieve interoperability — because that's really the goal. We'll create utility and value in the metaverse if we have interoperability. And if we want to have true interoperability, we need open standards. And then there's this other aspect of, you know, building trust and learning how to work together because just like we have one internet we would like to have one metaverse and we are going to have to build it together. And I think it's important, even though people will tell me it's early to standardize the metaverse because it does not even exist — that's actually a very fair comment. But if we start to discuss and to talk — if we can check our egos at the door, and our commercial interests at the door — I think we can have those conversations early in the process and build that trust that will lead us as an industry to create that interoperability. 

So Neil we want you to have you today because we have achieved a significant milestone, which is the announcement of the Metaverse Standards Forum. So tell us about the momentum behind it, which seems to be absolutely crazy. Let's start by giving us an update on the Metaverse Standards Forum.

Neil Trevett:

Yeah, absolutely. So the Metaverse Standards Forum was announced as a venue for coordination and cooperation, as you say, between the standards organizations and industry. And it was launched back just over three weeks ago, on June 21. We had a core set of founding organizations that were part of that launch and it included people like Meta, Google, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Sony and Epic of course, Cesium of course, and the tools vendors, Autodesk, Adobe; lots of good companes where we felt we had enough to launch the forum and invite any interested organizations in the industry to join us. And we thought perhaps we'll get a couple dozen more companies to join us so we can get going. And it's been three weeks and we've just passed the one thousand member mark. 

Marc Petit:

That's incredible — that's incredibly scary actually. How we make something you know... we want it to be pragmatic and actionable. I don't know how we do this with a thousand people. What have you done Neil Trevett!

Neil Trevett:

It's interesting, I'm not aware of anyone kind of doing this before, having this kind of coordination overlay over the standards community. It's with a thousand  companies; it's both an awesome opportunity but it is also a logistical challenge because we have to now organize ourselves to make sure that we can leverage all of this participation but also organize ourselves internally to have real discussions and real actions and not get too bogged down. But we have some good ideas on how we are going to do that.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, I agree. We knew that the forum would live and die by the participation of its members and, you know, orchestrating collaboration and participation of a thousand companies is going to be a challenge. So we will have to work as a group. The Metaverse Standards Forum is an open forum and I think everyone is welcome to participate, to volunteer ideas on how we should structure ourselves so we actually deliver on that action and we're not just talking the talk.

Neil Trevett:

That's right. With this level of participation, I think it speaks to the hunger for everyone working in the metaverse to get involved with standards. I think it shows the level of commitment and interest that the industry as a whole has to basing the metaverse on open standards. So it's a proof point that the industry wants to use open standards. And with this number of companies and organizations and standards organizations participating, it is a fantastic opportunity for the standardization community with this level of awareness and participation in the standardization process. I've never seen anything like it. So it is a real opportunity. It's an honor and a privilege to be handed this opportunity; we musn't mess it up. So to your point, how are we going to organize? We're planning to define domains within the membership where people want to focus and quickly organize into smaller groups where we can have meaningful discussions and actions.

Marc Petit:

And one thing you said during all of those conversations during the past few months is that it's not easy for standards defining organizations, for SDOs, to actually get the right input from the industry. It's something that I was not aware of and then having this layer of synchronization between open source and open standards is actually important. So that you know we work towards setting a common foundation across open source initiatives and open standards. There seems to be pent up demand for that collaboration.

Neil Trevett:

I really think there is and I think what we've discovered is that standards organizations have been always struggling, as you say, to get the real requirements from the industry to make sure we're doing something that's relevant. It's too easy for the industry to presume standards have always worked — it just happens by magic! But of course, if the standards organization aren't getting that real data, then there's always the danger of standards being designed in an ivory tower which does no one any good. And the larger community I think have kind of felt well, you know, they’re off doing their thing, there's no way to talk to them, they’re big organizations, which is normally not the case — kind of this disconnect between the larger community and standards community. With this level of participation, I'm really hopeful that the forum can really build bridges and enable meaningful participation in a much broader sense than we’ve ever had before.

Marc Petit:

So can you speak to the structure of the forum so people can understand that it's not another SDO. And, you know, what we expect from the members?

Neil Trevett:

Yes. So for the context, the Genesis story, was the realization that the metaverse is going to need a lot of interoperability. So there's a lot of standardization work to do. We need a lot of different technologies that have not worked together before, to come together in a coherent way to work towards this vision of what we have as the metaverse. That means suddenly that the standards organizations have a lot more interest and pressure to start creating standards, that not only are well designed within themselves but that need to work with other standards. And including standards from other organizations because there's no one standards organization that can possibly create all of the different interoperability specifications that we need to build the metaverse. So we put ourselves into the position… And in fact you guys were coming to us and saying this, “You've sold me on standards for the metaverse, where do I go?” …and there was nowhere to go. A company would have to literally go down the list, two dozen or more standards organizations saying, "What are you doing? And does it interface with that guy over there? And that other standards organization? Where are the gaps? Where are the overlaps? What's the roadmap?" … all in a coherent sense. So we figured that the standards community could do a better job. We had an opportunity to do a better job in coordinating between ourselves and reaching out to the industry. 

But we didn't want to be a standards organization – and this is probably the key point to understanding what the forum is and isn't – because if we were another standards organization, we’d just make the problem worse. Now there'll be twenty-fve places to go to figure out what's going on. So the point of the forum is to be this coordination and discussion forum that anyone is welcome to join.  The work products coming out of the forum would be things like guidelines. And we want to run plugfest-type projects, to actually test interoperability, not just talk about interoperability. And that data will be fed into the standards organizations. And requirements and use cases would be fed into the existing standards organizations. So, the standards organizations will continue to do the heavy lift of creating real specifications with conformance tests, under their governance policies and IP frameworks, that they have been working on for many years. So it's important that we have those standards organizations in the forum, and we do, we're getting a lot of them to join.

But as well as not conflicting with the existing standards organizations, it means the forum can be a much lighter weight organization, much easier to join. We don't need an IP framework, because we're not creating standards in the forum itself. We're feeding requirements to the existing standards organizations. We don't even need an NDA, and the costs are less so that it's free to join. So the barriers to joining are much lower than typically joining a standards organization.

Marc Petit:

And now we expect the members to self-organize. How is this going to happen if the audio people want to say, "Hey, we need to coordinate the standardization around spatial audio." So practically, how does this happen at the forum?

Neil Trevett:

So the process that we've set up is, we are spreading a wide net initially, to gather what are the areas of interest that the members want to work on. And this is another kind of governing principle — Khronos is hosting this and a lot of the standards organizations are there, but we don't want to dictate to the industry. We actually want the industry to tell us, that as a standards organization, what they need. That is really the crux of what we're trying to achieve. So we've cast a wide net and we are using online information gathering to get... Anyone who's a member is welcome to put down what their key topics? What are the key pain points? What are the key opportunities that they see for standardization? And we're doing that right now. We're three weeks old, we're gathering that long list as we speak, and over the next few weeks we're going to be gathering those topics together. People can upvote the topics that they particularly feel the passion for. And we are going to be collecting those topics into domains. And already, it's very interesting that those domains are beginning to appear. And we will structure what we're calling domain working groups, where the interested companies in that particular... And it may be a very focused domain, so we can actually do real work. But anyone is welcome to join those domain working groups and get involved in actually doing the real work and the discussions.

Patrick Cozzi:

Neil, is it too early to share, any of the most popular domains thus far?

Neil Trevett:

They're not final, obviously, because we're still collecting. And there are no decisions yet, but it is interesting. The groupings are beginning to appear. I would say, at a high level, there's really three main ones, groups of groups. Spatial computing, in all its various forms, there's no surprise there: 3D assets, avatars, 3D commerce, and apparel, which is kind of the cutting edge of 3D commerce right now. Geospatial, you'll be glad to hear. And UI in XR, that kind of user interface, that's definitely a strong interest But also a lot of interest in governance and advocacy. And I hesitate to use the word governance, because the forum is not going to govern anyone, but it's how the metaverse self-governs user identity, privacy, ethics, and concerns. It's very interesting. It's not just hardcore engineering, interoperability specs, there're things like ethical guidelines and guidance to the wider industry, seems to be a very strong interest point. And then the third one is even more interesting, and that is Web3. There are quite a few Web3 companies. And this is more of the finance, crypto, blockchain type of conversations, that there are some good domains beginning to appear in that whole space as well. 

And we're going to be member driven. So if the forum has a meaningful quorum of companies, enough companies are interested in the forum that we can do meaningful work, then the forum is, as Marc says, essentially self-organizing. So we'll enable those groups to go off and start having discussions.

Marc Petit:

Great. I'm going to enjoy the rest of this podcast because I get to ask you all the questions I received, and this time I can be the guy asking the tough questions. So one of the questions I received is, did you reach out enough to the Web3 guys? Because they’re there but it still feels underrepresented… Well, I'll provide my own answer. I think it's fair. I mean when we reached out we already had critical mass, a credible number of companies, as we went to the people that we've known for the past 30 years.  And we need to forge those new relationships with those new actors in the world of Web3. And I think it's an open invitation today on this podcast to say, "Guys, don't take it badly, but we just don't know each other just yet”. There is not the same amount of trust as there is between people who've been attending SIGGRAPH together and GDC, for the past 20 years. You know you build those relationships, you build that trust. And I think we need to build this with the new actors as well.

Neil Trevett:

Yes, I agree. I think just because who we are, Khronos is very engaged in 3D. So our naturally adjacent organizations that we know are Open Geospatial Consortium, the W3C ( the World Wide Web Consortium) and it kind of ripples out from 3D. So I think the message may take a little longer to reach the Web3. And frankly, it's less obvious that we will gather a meaningful quorum in that space, where as exactly as you say, we don't have the connections and the built trust over many years. But I'm hoping that if we can get a quorum, we can add value and we can start building that trust and relationships. And in the first meeting, I was very happy. Some folks from the Web3 community, sort of saying, "We're very glad to have this opportunity. We want to have a discussion here. We want it to be reality based. And we want to start building bridges to the other parts of the community." So it was a promising start and we'll see. 

But the other part of all of this is, if we find we don't get a quorum on a particular domain, whatever it is and there's actually another group already doing good work, we don't want to compete. Life’s too short. We have enough to do, we don't want to compete. If we discover other forums out there doing work in other domains, that's cool, we'll coordinate with them. But where we can add value, we're keen to let that Darwinian process occur and let the forum self-organize.

Marc Petit:

Great. Another question I get is, so where does the money come from, who are you the puppet of?

Neil Trevett:

No one is getting paid.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, there is no money.

Neil Trevett:

Which is actually important. I've heard that question too. And actually it is an important question though. Is there some kind of hidden agenda? Are large companies trying to do something? Is there a conspiracy theory? The answer is no, it's actually all above board. Khronos is hosting the logistics of the forum and Khronos is a nonprofit and Khronos is not getting paid for doing this. The Khronos board considers the formation of the forum to be within our nonprofit mission, which is to enable and encourage the use of spatial computing technologies throughout the industry. So we're happy and honored to have this opportunity to help bootstrap the forum. But Khronos is funding. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's not insignificant either. Onboarding a thousand companies takes some hours of work.

Marc Petit:

No, absolutely. And for having seen the sausage in the making, Neil, I want to thank you, because if you had not rallied the troops at Khronos to bring that minimum level of infrastructure that we needed to get this project off the ground, the three of us would still be talking about it. So kudos for all the work that you did yourself, but also for rallying the Khronos organization to leverage their infrastructure and lend infrastructure to this initiative, which it's not part of their mandate. The core mandate is never done before. Nobody has tried to coordinate SDOs and industries like we're trying to do here. So thank you on behalf of everybody. Thank you.

Neil Trevett:

Well, I appreciate that. But thank you to everyone in Khronos too, for the support. And particularly the Khronos team, who's been working around the clock to get everyone onboarded on time.

Marc Petit:

And I know the Epic guy on the Khronos board was like, "Marc, what is that thing?" You should support it, it's a good thing. But it was not obvious for the Khronos board, so I think you did a great job rallying them and convincing them that it was the right thing to do.

So another set of questions. What is it that the forum is not trying to do?

Neil Trevett:

That's a great question. So I think there are really three things that we're really, really not trying to do. One is, we're not a talking shop to debate the philosophical underpinnings of the metaverse or what the metaverse is going to be in twenty years time. We have Twitter for that. We don't need to duplicate that. And this…

Marc Petit:

Which is for sale, by the way, if somebody wants to pick it up off of Elon’s hands.

Neil Trevett:

I heard that, yeah. Going for a steal I heard. And this comes from you, directly, so kudos to you, Marc, who from the beginning has guided the formation of the forum to be action based and not just a talking shop. We want to focus on interoperability problems that exist right now today, and work on solving them today, so we can get benefits today and that will build the momentum. 

The other thing we've already mentioned, it's important that we are not an SDO, that is really important. And it's confusing to people, because we're called the Metaverse Standards Forum. So, "Hey, are you doing standards?" Actually, no. We're helping other organizations do standards, but that's important. 

And the other one is more tricky. And actually when we first launched, we went through some interesting discussions on Twitter saying, "Why are you not enabling individuals to join?” Because there's a good argument that the metaverse, to a large extent, is going to be powered by individual user creators. That they are in the last analysis, the lifeblood of what the metaverse is going to be, in many respects. So how come you have to be an organization to join the forum, why are you not enabling individuals to join?" And it was a tough decision, because of course, we absolutely love end users to create content and we want to enable that. But even just limiting ourselves to organizations, we have a thousand members. So if we open it up to individuals, we would be truly swamped and we wouldn't be able to function, I believe. But what I hope is going to happen is, there are end user groups out there and end user advocacy groups out there. We would encourage those groups to join so you can advocate for your end users and then what they need in the forum. I think that's kind of a good level of hierarchy. And we would love to have those kinds of organizations, to make sure that end users' views are being represented. But we're not going to be a user group organization. No organization can be everything to everyone, it'll just be impossible for us to do, I think.

Marc Petit:

So you referred a few times to a thousand people but — and I apologize to the journalist who wrote that because I forgot the publication title — but somebody wrote an article saying, "The Metaverse Standard Forum, without those five companies is a joke." I think the companies were Apple, Roblox, Niantic, The Sandbox, and Decentraland. So what would you tell to people about those missing organizations?

Neil Trevett:

Yes and it's interesting. We do need the right companies around the table, to be meaningful. So it's a good criticism. The first thing is, anyone is welcomed to join. And we have reached out to many of those companies that invited them, we hope they will join. Of course, joining any organization is up to the potential joiners. We can’t and wouldn't want to force anyone to join. We don't have that capability. So it's obviously a carrot, not a stick situation. I think the best thing that we can do is to prove that we can be an effective organization and execute actions and projects that add immediate value to the industry, and continue to be an open and welcoming organization. And then people will see the benefit of joining. And I think it's just the natural way of things that some people are a little bit more cautious. But once they see the benefits, I think it will be an easier decision to join. Particularly because when companies join, there's no minimum commitment, you're not signing up to engineering resources or money, and you're not being forced to use anything that the forum does. Again, it's very much a carrot situation. You can use the resulting work products directly from the forum or flowing through the SDOs, better standards. Use them if they're good for your business. And hey, even if you don't participate in the meetings, you can come and lurk to see what's going to be happening and find out more information. So hopefully, we can get the calculus to be a positive for pretty much everybody. And we would welcome their participation.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. I agree. Given the charter is to create requirements, we do need all of these important companies to hear their point of view on whether those requirements will work for them or not. So it's important.

Patrick Cozzi:

Yeah. Neil, I think you did a great job designing the forum to be a very low barrier to entry, with nothing but upside. I did want to circle back on the Web3 topic. So you mentioned that many of us are in the graphics and 3D community and we've been collaborating together for decades. But the Web3 community will likely play a big role, have a big impact in the metaverse. And is there anything else you think we can do to help build mutual trust and mutual collaboration with them?

Neil Trevett:

Well, in any collaborative endeavor like this — and in Khronos is actually the same, it's just a different level — is that the best way I found through experience to build trust, is to find beachhead agreement. Even if you're coming from different continents, find something you can agree on. And ideally, that's something you can agree on, turns into a project that you can work together on. So even though these two communities are coming from very different perspectives, and there's not a lot of overlap maybe yet, but I can see that the potential for overlap is going to get much more pretty quickly. But if you can find those first areas of agreement and projects that we can work together on, and show that we are all trustable partners and have interests of the industry at heart, that is the first step to building trust. “Insta-trust” doesn't exist, you have to build it over time.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. I think there is no fundamental disagreement between the two committees, I think we just don't quite know each other. I think we all want the same thing, like asset interoperability, and we talk about it, driving a car from one game to the next. We want to achieve that. Now, some of the Web3 companies have an opinion that the blockchain technology is the foundation for this; it is not a widely shared opinion. But I think, if we're able to talk about the requirements and decouple the conversation between what do you try to achieve like identity or ownership, and creating utility through interoperability, I think we could agree on a lot of principles. And now there is the good old centralized way of implementing them and there is probably a decentralized way of leveraging the blockchain technology for this. I don't think we should oppose those views. And I don't think it's going to be the blockchain for everything, or the blockchain for nothing. I think we will collectively learn what's the right solution to the right problem. But I think we should be able to agree on the problems to solve around creating utility. And I say like, driving cars across multiple games is a good example of something that, of course we want to do and would like to purchase a car independently and not having to purchase it over and over again, every game. So I look forward to actually having conversations, because I think we'd be in violent agreement on a lot of topics.

Neil Trevett:

Yeah. I think so too. And it comes back to, we have this opportunity, the broad participation. Already there are conversations ongoing that I don't think  would've happened without the forum. I personally have had a conversation. I know other people are having conversations with companies they hadn't known how to reach out to before, and now they have the opportunity to talk. And we've talked about requirements flowing into SDOs, which is one obvious information flow. But I think the requirements are going to be flowing in all directions. I think the spatial computing community will value the opportunity to filter some of the requirements that they have into the Web3 community. It's going to work both ways, and I hope it's going to be a productive conversation.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. And another thing is, this notion of a bit of cynicism. Like, you guys are trying to standardize something that does not exist, and we don't even know how to build this. I think it's fair, but as we said already, I think it's important to restate the conversation. It's all about the journey and not just the destination, it's about working together and everybody understanding also the issues of the other groups. We had this episode with Stephanie and Marc DeLoura, on trust and safety; it's not something that developers can ignore. So the earlier we get exposure and awareness of those issues, I think it can advance the awareness for everybody.

Neil Trevett:

Exactly. A journey of a thousand miles, starts with a single step. And now we have the opportunity to have those conversations. And actually, this is not just for Web3, but for the whole thing. A lot of people have asked, the other tricky question is, how can you possibly start defining standards when you don't know what the metaverse is going to be? And I think for Web3 and spatial computing too, I think there's enough we do know. We can bake the bricks that we're going to need to build the cathedral before we necessarily know the precise plans of what the cathedral shape is going to be. There are clear problems that we can start working on today.

Patrick Cozzi:

Neil, the internet evolved the same way. There were standards for the internet designed very early before folks knew of the internet, the way we know it today.

Neil Trevett:

That's true. And I think we mentioned on the last podcast, that there was more regulatory input into the internet to make sure it was open. We don't have that so much in this time around the wheel with the metaverse. So again, it raises the importance of the industry self-organizing, to make sure we have the right open standards at the right time.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. And in a previous episode, I discussed with the CTIO of Orange, the big European telecommunication company with 250 million customers. To some extent telcos are a model of interoperability because you can roam on everybody's network and they figure it out. But it's a government mandate, it's not something they woke up one morning, "Let's work together and figure it out." It doesn't take any of the merit away, but they had to work out as an industry because of the public mandate for interoperability. I think we need to start ourselves before a public mandate comes down on us. I think we have a much better chance of doing the right thing if we self-organize as an industry and say, "Hey, yes. We'll need to figure out how to exchange scenes or objects, and make sure they look and behave the same." As you say, those very basic bricks. I think it's upon us to really work out some differences in approaches that we currently have, and figure out one shared common foundation for those things. And then everybody can build up from there.

Neil Trevett:

Yeah, exactly. And it's very interesting. Getting the right standards at the right time. Getting them soon enough, so that we can fend off some of the chaos that will happen if we don't have the right standards at the right time. It's not just helping the engineering interoperability part of the whole metaverse equation, it is also helping that kind of the ethics and governance part too. If the foundation of the metaverse is built on open standards, it's a big step to ensuring that the metaverse too, like the web, is open and accessible and inclusive to everyone. So there is some urgency here, which I think is one of the ingredients to why we've had so many companies interested to participate.

Marc Petit:

Yeah. And I think the other thing that is important to call out is we do not know the economy of the metaverse. Are we going to still collect people's data and sell this data to do advertising? Well, maybe that's going to survive, maybe not. And are we going to live on a purely transactional basis, where all the economics are around transaction around content? Well, maybe, maybe not. We do not know that. But we don't need to know that right now to make things work and create that foundation. So we have to be very humble about the fact that, hey, we don't know what the metaverse is going to be.

Neil Trevett:

Yes, that's right. I think the business model considerations are going to be in some ways more intractable than the engineering.

Marc Petit:

Oh, yeah. I wouldn't want to be…

Neil Trevett:

But it's important that the Metaverse Standards Forum, it's not its place to insert itself, of course, into anyone's particular business model. All we are doing is trying to create interoperability standards so companies can build the business models that they think are going to be successful. That's always the role of standards. Standards don't dictate business models, they enable innovation in business models, if done correctly.

Patrick Cozzi: 

And the business models for the internet also evolved over decades as well.

Neil Trevett:

Yep. Exactly. We're definitely on a journey of a thousand miles here.

Marc Petit:

All right. So Neil, as you know, because you've been here before. We have two questions for the end. So the first question, is there anything that we should have discussed today, that we have not yet discussed?

Neil Trevett:

Well, I'm hoping you're going to ask me who you should invite next. Is that the next question? Because I think... And Marc, you have an inside track here, you need to get Tim Sweeney onto the podcast. Because, you look back to what he did at SIGGRAPH Spotlight back in 2019. He was almost prescient in what he was saying were going to be the issues. And here we are, three or four years later, and we're working on precisely what he said. It will be awesome to get Tim to give us a state to the union.

Marc Petit:

So for everybody, on soundcloud, you can find the recording of Tim Sweeney's 2019 presentation about the metaverse. And I think it's a good piece to keep aside and listen once in a while, because there was a lot of concepts there that even I've been referencing in this conversation, a lot of the things I'm here for is also because Tim, my boss, has been pushing me to do something about it for many years now. And he will come in due course. I think there is a project that's near and dear to his heart, and he told me he wants to come when he can speak about that project. Tim is the kind of guy that doesn't sell futures. He's going to come when he feels it's ready.

Neil Trevett:

Yes. That would be very cool.

Marc Petit:

So is there any person that's not Tim Sweeney, group of people or institution that you want to give a shout out to today?

Neil Trevett:

Actually, I'm glad you asked. I have a couple of people. I don't want to belabor it, but we've already mentioned the Khronos team, who've been doing a lot of work. I do want to give a shout out to the MetaTraversal community. As we were very early in figuring out, "Are people going to be interested in this kind of forum?", they had so much energy, so supportive, and a lot of networking that was instrumental to setting up the forum. So I want to give a shout out to Ben and Evo and all those guys, you helped this all come together, and we do appreciate it. I want to give a shout out to Christine Perry. Some people might know her, she's been a force of nature for fifteen years or more, connecting the dots for open standardization in AR. And now she's already playing a key role in the forum.  We wouldn't have had all the SDOs join in the first round, if it wasn't for Christine being her normal, awesome, tireless self. And I want to thank the founders, that founding thirty-five companies, particularly the SDOs. They had no idea what the forum was going to be really. We had no idea, but they put their trust in us, and that enabled us to do that launch. And last but not least, I want to thank Marc and Patrick, because you guys were the inspiration for this. That podcast was the inspiration for getting all this going, and you both have been instrumental in helping us set the right direction. So kudos to you two too.

Marc Petit:

Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure, right Patrick? It did not even feel like work. Let's take a note, and let's come back with the result of what we have done. We’ve always said, so far it has been the easy part, because it would be such a popular topic. So hopefully very, very soon we have some really pragmatic outcomes that we can talk about. And we'll keep ourselves honest on this podcast, right Patrick?

Neil Trevett:

Yes. And that's a good note to end on, because we should celebrate the launch and the participation, but the interesting and hard work is just starting. So we shouldn't get carried away. The launch is just the first step. So there's a lot of work coming. But as you say, it doesn't seem like work, it's awesome to be involved in this.

Marc Petit:

Patrick, you're ready for SIGGRAPH?

Patrick Cozzi:

Marc, we're really looking forward to SIGGRAPH. I think the in-person energy, after a few years of virtual, will be really great to get folks together. And also all the course materials we're going to do everything we can, to get all the slides online as well.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, fantastic. And I have to admit that Patrick is doing the heavy lifting on dealing with the logistics of creating a SIGGRAPH course that respects all the rules of SIGGRAPH. So it's a little bit more complex than getting on a microphone and talking on a podcast. So thank you, Patrick for all of that. We can't wait to be at SIGGRAPH, can't wait for this class to happen. And then we'll see everybody back in September, with season three of the podcast. So Neil Trevett, congratulations again, and thank you for everything. Both at Khronos and the Metaverse Standards Forum.

Neil Trevett:

Sure. No, thank you. It's a pleasure. Good to see you guys.

Marc Petit:

Patrick, we'll see each other for the first time in real life in Vancouver.

Patrick Cozzi:

Yes, I feel like I know you super well.

Marc Petit:

Yeah, same here. But we actually have never met.

Neil Trevett:

I'm not this pink in real life.

Marc Petit:

Neil I met in real life before, but I don't think I’ve met Patrick. All right Patrick, thank you so much.

Patrick Cozzi:

Yeah. Thank you, Marc. And thank you everyone for listening to this episode, and to this entire season.