Virtual reality technology is going to change the game of conservation in a huge way.
I spend a lot of my time indulging in digital content and documentaries, both for my job and as a hobby. I work as a sub editor for Discovery Education UK by day* and blog, build websites and try my best at photography in my spare time. (*Disclaimer: all thoughts on this blog are strictly my own).
Having visited the BVE expo at the end of February with my good friends at Chiswell Studios, I have found a new excitement in all the potential opportunities of making virtual reality (digital worlds entirely created by people) and augmented reality (elements of the real world, but with digital graphics interspersed) media content for a more interactive audience experience.
I listened with particular interest to the seminar: ‘Creating a new broadcasting system with audience experience in mind’ by keynote speaker Jon Page, Head of Operations at BBC Research and Development (pictured above). Jon spoke of the way that audiences look for a personal, two-way experience to get the most of their media and positioned them as ‘explorers’ rather than ‘consumers’.
He showed us a video created by the BBC to demonstrate the type of audience experience they believe they will be catering for in the not-so-distant future:
Aside from some of this imagined technology potentially impacting the type of content I would make for schools at Discovery Education (see the child doing his homework at 1:58), the video interested me in the way that it made Autumnwatch an interactive game.
‘Gamification’ was one of the buzz words of the expo’s seminars this year, along with ‘immersive’ and ‘responsive’. Jon even described what was happening with the imagined new version of Autumnwatch as ‘citizen science’ – and seeing as ‘citizen journalism’ is now so embedded in our culture that we barely give it a second thought anymore, the idea of the whole nation becoming ‘scientists’ to a degree, doesn’t feel that far fetched.
It seems now that the first generation of Internet gamers has grown up, the requirements they demand from their media consumption is somewhat different to the generation before. And how fantastic that we have the technology to deliver it!
Enter vEcotours. With all this amazing technology and adapted content design, there must be a way we can use it for conservation education? …Exactly!
This World Wildlife Day, I posted about the live guided tour of Mount Elgon in Kenya that I would be taking — and I can say it was fascinating to share an online, immersive experience with people from all over the globe and various time zones; one where we could have a two-way conversation.
With Ian Redmond at the helm, guiding participants through the virtual world and into various portals of information (still images, videos, article clippings, etc.) and answering questions over his mic from the ‘explorers’ using the chat bar — and another member of vEcotours, Jay, responding to all other conversation in real-time via text on screen — that ‘personal, two-way experience’ that I heard about at BVE appears not to be just round the corner, but already here!
Never one to let an opportunity pass me by, I’ve decided to offer my web publishing and writing skills to vEcotourism and have joined the team as a blogger!
I’ll be sure to post info and updates of what I get up to with vEcotours on this site too, so please keep an eye out for those! But in the meantime, why not check out what all the excitement is about and take a virtual tour of one of their locations? Turn the volume up and enjoy!
You can follow vEcotourism on Facebook and Twitter for more info too.
Sounds really exciting and agree on how tailor made media is the way forward.
Thanks, I think there’s lots of exciting ways coming up to find and appeal to new audiences. For me that’s the big thing – to not just be preaching to the choir!
That’s very true, the choir are singing out together but reaching others is harder!