The end of another quarter and it was the summery one, so most of the studio, and many of our clients, have been on holiday for much of the period. So it’s a bit of a quieter quarter as a result but there’s still been activity to share.
We were delighted to discover that the studio and three of our client projects have been shortlisted as finalists in the following 2022 awards: AIXR VR Awards 2022 with CITB & Tunnelskills gets the ‘VR Solution for Enterprise’ ticket whilst SJP and 55e5 bag the ‘VR for Training’ category. The Learning Technologies Awards 2022 with CITB & Tunnelskills for ‘Virtual Environments and Simulations’ category and Lloyds Banking Group with Hear to Listen in the ‘Excellence of Learning Design’ category. The award ceremonies are back in-person this year. The AIXR VRAwards have moved to be part of VRDays / ITW event in Rotterdam, Netherlands on December 1st. Some of the team with client representatives will be flying out with everything crossed.
In other great news, the studio was selected for the 2nd-year running for the Training Industry – Top 20 Experiential Learning Technologies Companies list.
No new starters this quarter but we waved a sad goodbye to Sam Watts, Immersive Partnerships Director, who after 9+ years was approached with a dream opportunity in a new role, that will be a big step up for him. He’s written a farewell blog post looking back at some of the highlights of these past years with Make Real (as well as this final quarterly update scheduled to live today, writing about himself in the 3rd-person, weird). However this does mean that we will have a raft of new starters to onboard and introduce to you next quarter, as the management team were busy hiring suitable replacements to cover the roles and responsibilities required. Gazing into the crystal ball, we can see they are going to be awesome.
Elsewhere we continued to publish our monthly newsletter, ‘Reality Check‘ which you can read the July, August & September and all previous editions here. Be sure to sign-up if you haven’t to stay informed with the latest news, releases and happenings within the world of immersive learning technologies.
Summer is always a quiet time for events overall, at least mostly in the L&D sector. Starting off the Autumn run however is Learning Live 2022, by The LPI, which we attended as usual to meet the heads of L&D and to hear from great minds of learning.
We attended Develop: Brighton game developers conference, which is held every year just down the road from the studio hub at Hilton Metropole. Always a great event to boost the fun side of our work, meeting fellow developers and having discussions with potential publishers and partners about The Next Thing.
Our monthly studio speaker sessions continued and we’ve welcomed Sarah Ticho, immersive healthcare superstar and Rifa Thorpe-Tracey, mentoring and diversity powerhouse this quarter. With three months to go, we have our last speakers lined up for 2022. However if you are interested in speaking to the studio team in 2023, please get in touch.
Finally we got [most of] the gang together for the studio (late) summer social for an afternoon of food, drinks, chats and Aunt Sally.
Again with summer, with people being away, deployments drop off whilst we wait for reviews and sign-offs to occur but this quarter has seen a couple of projects go out the door.
Bounceback : Working with JV partners Keltbray, we deployed a three-day pilot for construction site training with VR for prisoners, as a way to gain skills for life post-release.
EDF Energy – Cannington Court Visitor Centre : Update and annual maintenance of the physical installation and interactive elements of the new education centre in Dorset.
St. James’ Place – VR Immersive Roleplay : Metrics update for the suite of three interpersonal soft-skills VR training applications on Quest 2.
Loco Dojo Unleashed : The next update to add the pass & play local multiplayer mode to the game, along with a raft of bug fixes, tweaks and polish went live on the Quest Store.
NoLi : The MVP of our internal immersive non-linear scripting tool was completed, ready for user testing and the next phases of development.
====================================
As promised, a short quarterly review this time around however now everyone is back from holidays, project work and development has ramped back up.
We’ll be at World of Learning on October 11th & 12th in Birmingham, where we are sponsoring and running the Immersive Learning Suite once again. In November we’ll be at Learning Network event in London. Before we know it, it will be 2023 and we’ll be planning for Learning Technologies in May with an even biggerer and betterer booth than our biggest yet from this year! Hopefully see some of you at the events to discuss creating meaningful immersive learning experiences with impact and positive outcomes.
We’re always happy to talk to you about how immersive technologies can engage your employees and customers. If you have a learning objective in mind, or simply want to know more about emerging technologies like VR, AR, or AI, send us a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.