Welcome aboard Revinsight, the podcast that helps you understand how organizations and individuals adopt, utilize, and track VR results.
Revinsight#21 – March 21st, 2024
Guest: Steve Mahaley, VR producer and co-founder of the Red Fern Group (USA)
Maxime Ros:
“Today, I’m super glad to receive Steve Mahaley. He’s from Greensboro, North Carolina. He’s a VR producer and co-founder at the Red Fern.
Hey, Steve, how and why did you first turn to VR in your professional environment?”
Steve Mahaley:
“Thanks, Maxime. It’s a pleasure to be here on Revinsight.
I got started with virtual reality back in, I think, 2016 or 2017, when I was interested and looking at the application of VR environments for leadership development.
I happened to be in Mumbai, India, and I had a camera with me. And I went around the city of Mumbai and left the camera to do its thing on sidewalks and cafes at particular sites.
And after that, put it together into an immersion, a VR immersion, that I then showed to or provided to business leaders.
There was one particular event in London, and I think it was 2017, 2018, and I watched as these business leaders had the VR headset on. And there’s a particular moment in that VR immersion where children come up to the camera and get really close to the camera.
I watched them all in unison back up in their seats. And I knew what was going on. They felt proximity to those people.
And at the end, they lifted the headsets. And some people even had tears in their eyes because it was so powerful. And one person even said that they could smell India. They felt like they were so immersed that it seemed to be triggering other of their senses.
And at that point, I really got deeply interested in the application of VR to help people better understand cultures and better understand the lived experience of other people.
So that’s my focus, VR for human understanding.“
