The community that forms around a new idea is vital to its realization, its development, as well as its acceptance into normal society. Regardless of what you may say about how they were marketing, the price tag, or the non-consumer initial model, Magic Leap as of late has put the developer and community first. The thing that I’ve had to explain a lot, and most people I’ve talked to agree, is that if mixed reality hardware is going to be as big of a change as the iPhone was, then the current Magic Leap is about what the iPhone 1 was, and from what I remember of those times, it took until about the iPhone 3 to really go viral, so the stage of development that we are current at with the industry is that of childhood, the tech won’t just appear perfect no matter how much money they have. But pulling back, it’s so refreshing to see that well funded companies with big dreams can still feel like a startup, be interactive with the community, and be able to relay their goals in a way that feels like we are right there along with them in this industry growth. At Exokit from day 1 we’ve shared a similar dream of enabling developers to create on a level previously impossible, and do it in a way that gets their content on platforms that utilize all of what they make to the fullest power.

But aside from twitter, until LeapCon2018 I really didn’t have an understanding of the feel of Magic Leap as a company, and where they want to stand when it comes to committing to the developers, user, and community as a whole. To summarize my LeapCon experience, it was my favorite networking experience I’ve ever had, to me, at the end of it, yes there were cool demos, a great keynote, and awesome coffee, but the people there (that I got to talk to) were simply inspiring.

The funny part was, it wasn’t just devs or startups or people checking out the platform, but the employees as well! Hearing all their goals internally, the team directives, how they got into what they do, and how much they’ve taken in from the community and utilized it was so refreshing. I really can’t explain in words how much it made me happy to be working on a project that included the platform that all these people helped create and are still building, as well as being right there with everyone from the community that got to share their ideas, envision what’s to come of tech and Magic Leap, and more.

But at this point LeapCon has been explained enough, and you can watch the keynote and all the talks online, which I highly recommend. But for me, and everyone I’ve talked to that works with the web or WebXR, there was one thing that we learned a bit about that was just too great not to be excited as hell for, the concept of the Magicverse. This full overlaying of the virtual world onto our reality with constantly changing and interactive experiences is the stuff that we have been building for from the start. From how we see it, this kind of mass utilization of mixed reality to truly bring on this new world can only be done with the web at its core, and the whole team is working to be part of this evolution to the Magicverse now that we have seen that we aren’t the only ones sharing this dream (so validating haha). I think the crazy thing about this concept is that it isn’t coming in 100 years, hell maybe not even 10 years, but sooner (in my opinion).

As so much is in flight with all the cool new things coming from LeapCon, the projects coming from the community, and new ideas being explored, being in the trenches with everyone else fighting to bring what we see coming from this platform into reality is just an amazing experience. I’m very optimistic about what the future holds.

Thanks for reading, come hangout with myself, the Exokit community, and more at any of these links:

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