Author: James Ashley

Tim Huckaby is a mover and shaker in the Microsoft consulting world. He can tell you stories about the early days at Microsoft, where he was a product development lead for many years, as well as stories about the near-future technologies he is working on. Besides being a Microsoft MVP, he is also an RD (Richard Campbell describes him as an “RD’s RD”), a body of business leaders who provide independent feedback to Microsoft leadership about technology trends and strategic direction. In that role, Tim has been a forceful advocate for Microsoft’s transformative technologies like the Surface, Kinect, Perceptive Pixel, and now HoloLens, Mixed Reality Headsets and the Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK), Microsoft’s deep-learning AI stack.

Tim is the chairman and founder of Interknowlogy and Actus Interactive Software. They do interactive work across multiple industries, but the piece you will probably be most familiar with is the CNN Electoral Map touch screen used by John King.

Tim is also an avid fly fisherman.

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
All those comedies before we got “politically correct”: Animal House, Caddy Shack, Austin Power’s Goldmember, Arthur (with Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli), Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles… I could go on and on. I’m all about humor. Life without humor just isn’t life. When we get so serious about software that we lose humor then we are plain losing. I try not to be that guy. And it’s hard sometimes. The CEO job can be a lonely one.

I know you were probably looking for something more thought provoking but, really, the human race is insignificant without humor. The absolute smartest humans I know are also some of the funniest.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
Well, I’m 55 years old. I go back to pong. In fact, my younger brother Tom and I were so competitive in Pong we’d get in fist fights and screaming matches over it. It drove my parents nuts; constantly grounded from Pong.

But, my most fond memories were of Choplifter. I built myself a black market apple 2+ in my teens. I illegally downloaded Choplifter from a BBS (this is before the internet) and played that game for hours on end. It was so creative and the graphics were spectacular. So ahead of it’s time. And, of course, in college I used to hack on a few games. I’d put my roommates into the games to make them giggle. Good times.

One of my fellow founding members of the RD program, Don Awalt, was the guy that built Castle Wolfenstein. A truly brilliant guy. He’s retired now. He told me that the biggest engineering challenge in that game was the sound bytes… remember the German guards in the game saying, “Achtung!” ? Well, games back then didn’t have sound. The OS’s didn’t have sound APIs. He had to build all that in software.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
I love the process of aggregating role models though a lifetime. I have a lot of them; People who have helped me so much through the years. But, in all honesty the most influential person in my life is the exact same as most people: my dad. My dad was an English Teacher and super smart and wildly eloquent. He spoke a version of English that is long gone. His command of the English Language was impressive and his knowledge was extensive. I lost him almost 3 years ago. In today’s terms my dad would be called a “bleeding heart liberal”. He was a loud, eloquent voice for social and environmental causes. “Selfish” were the people that he despised the most…..well, those and racists. He would not stand for racism in any form; even in humor. And that is saying something for someone born in 1937. Sacrifice was what my dad taught me the most about, though. and how you are always rewarded by sacrifice. My youngest brother, Kevin, was a totally normal kid until at age 3 he started having grand mal seizures…the onslaught of epilepsy. It was terrifying. Still is. And the disease back then was so not understood…it took a toll and severely handicapped my brother. Today my brother would be totally normal because of technology. My parents know what sacrifice is because of 50 years of my brother Kevin. I am the man I am today because of witnessing that lifetime of sacrifice. My independence, fear management, confidence, etc. comes from being there and still continues to this day.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
I pride myself on a statement I always say at work, “I could be wrong; I often am.” I have surrounded myself with such brilliant and talented people. Not all of them; but they are typically younger than me and have awesome ideas. Many of the ideas are contradictory to mine. And I’m wrong a lot. Of course if you have been married as long as I have, 28 years, you get used to being wrong a lot.

My favorite story about changing my mind on something I thought was a terrible idea was a number of years ago at InterKnowlogy. The technical side of the management team came to me all excited about this great new idea, “RECESS” (Research and experimental coding to enhance software skills). The idea was simply a creative stab at a formal R&D program. But, InterKnowlogy is a service company. So to make a long story short they did their pitch to me, all excited, and a little bit of “asshole tim” came out. I said, “So, every week for 4 hours you want to pull engineers out of revenue so they can play with technology toys.” I immediately saw the look in their faces that I had made a management mistake. So, I backed up and was more professional about it. But, I still thought it was a terrible idea. But, I agreed we’d try it. and, of course, I was totally wrong. Best program ever. Pulling engineers out of revenue each week for 4 hours has produced so much innovation, so much IP, so much camaraderie. We do the high tech stuff we do (3d, gesture, holographic, etc.) because of RECESS. Awesome program…that I was totally wrong about.

What’s a skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
Well, I wouldn’t say I’m terrible at it, but most people assume I’m a god-like programmer. I truly am not. And I really never was. I used to be a good programmer, but I was always forced into a dev lead position or a PM position or an architect position in my career. And the dev lead doesn’t get to slay code like all the brilliant people that work for you. These brilliant people here at InterKnowlogy run circles around me in terms of programming. In fact, I haven’t written production code in years. I can still build a mean demo and recently built a proof of concept in computer vision that is going viral within msft. I can’t go into details because it’s currently slated as the flagship demo for Satya Nadella’s keynote at ignite. It’s jaw dropping awesome. my new found love for the last couple years is computer vision.

What inspires you to learn?
Can I turn that question around a bit? The older I get the more inspired I am to learn…about everything…..especially science. I barely watch tv for entertainment anymore. It pisses my wife off because I tend to mostly watch documentaries or television I can learn from. I feel like growing up in college and then in the software industry I got so enamored with software that I missed out on a lot of the world. I was so sheltered in the software community for so long. The business part of the business was a welcome respite when I got older. But, it was not enough. It took me until my mid 30s to discover nature and science. And now I’m obsessed with it. I have been told that I have obsessive personality traits; not obsessive/compulsive. When I am interested in something I go all in. I started fly fishing in my early 30s…and read everything I could about it without actually doing it. I still do. Now, I write, guide and tie professionally in the fly fishing industry. It’s a sickness. I know more about the bugs that trout eat than any other human you know.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
I don’t think that is the right question for me. I don’t “get through the day”; the day simply is not long enough for me. Typically, my day ends with me saying this to myself: “my god it’s dark and I’m exhausted and I have to sleep because I can’t wait to do this all over again tomorrow.”

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
My political views….especially that I’m a bleeding heart liberal…people think I am, but, I really am not. Nor am I a conservative; nor am I a libertarian. And now I feel I find myself more and more conflicted on issues. So, really I am a mish mash of what I believe are the best parts of all sides. Which means sometimes I catch myself in a hypocritical political view.

Also I believe the big bet on Unity has huge risks … risks that can be overcome by brilliant engineering and brilliant business….and Moore’s law….

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
It’s funny you ask this. About six months ago I was doing an industry keynote (as opposed to a developer keynote) and saying things like, “…imagine a world where…” I tend to use that strategy in keynotes: show a killer demo and then talk about how and why it’s going to be better in the future. I strongly believe the future of entertainment….especially movies…lies in mixed reality. Imagine a world where you are sitting in a movie theatre yet totally immersed and actually interactively part of the movie. That is the killer MR app: Interactive holographic in the Movie theatre. We’ll couple in the AI for vocal interaction… If we can figure out some tactile reinforcement even through haptic methods … oh man, what entertainment that would be. Couple in some Virtual Olfaction and that is a world I want to live in. Let’s face it. No matter what Hollywood says they just are not making the money they did a few years ago yet spending at a much bigger rate. Getting people into the theatres is a huge problem. Millennials actually prefer watching movies on their computers. It’s an interesting challenge. Well, Imagination Park entertainment caught wind of my comments and contacted me. I was honored. These are the brilliantly creative Hollywood people with Oscars. They put me on their advisory board and it went quickly. Now, we just completed the most exciting joint venture in IK history. There has been plenty of press already… and I can’t disclose the roadmap just yet. But it is going to be jaw dropping awesome.

What book have you recommended the most?
It has nothing to do with technology; software as you well know is not my only love. This book has everything to do with another one of my loves: running and endurance sports. It’s called, Born to Run. Actually now that I look it up the actual title is: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. It goes from science to this amazing tribe of Mexican Indians, The Tarahumara, who live in Copper Canyon, Mexico—pretty much hell and desolate and devoid of almost everything—where they thrive, and back to science. Everyone should read this book. It’s riveting. And it’s all true.

What question did James fail to ask you but you really wanted him to ask?

Tim what are you currently most proud of?

Well, my current joke is that after a career of writing 3 books, hundreds of magazine articles and probably over 500 published works in the technology industry I have never been more proud than of writing a regular column for California Fly Fisher Magazine called, “Fly Fishers who backpack.” 🙂

Michelle is a digital media artist and a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon with a Bachelor of Computer Science and Fine Arts. She’s currently a lab associate at Disney Research in Pittsburg. You can read more about her amazing explorations of art and technology at michelledoeswhat.com.  

While in college, Michelle worked on a HoloLens / Kinect integration project that has become the inspiration for many HoloLens sharing service apps on the market. She basically figured out how to modify the HL sharing service in order to use it as an integration backbone between mixed reality devices and other peripherals such as 3D cameras. It seems fitting that it took a mind trained to think along less traveled paths to come up with a way to adapt the HoloLens toolkit for an unintended but even cooler purpose. 

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
I’m an animation nerd and the movies that affect me the most always have a story that feels complete and characters that are compelling. Lilo and Stitch really made me feel the importance of these two components early on.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
The earliest video game I played had to have been something like Treasure Mountain or Math Blaster. But if we’re talking about the earliest video game I really got attached to it was Pokemon Emerald. It was the first game that really felt like I could explore and understand the world presented to me, and even now I compare my game experiences to how I felt when I first played Pokemon on Gameboy. Yes, graphics nowadays are always better and amazing, but sometimes the complexity of a virtual world gets in the way of the feeling of control I had playing old 90s games.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
I have so many people that played a role in shaping the way I think, but the most memorable one was my art club president from high school. As an artist I am very hard on myself and detail-oriented so I would always ask questions about how things should be done. He would jokingly respond with “Follow your heart”, which drove me insane but eventually it sunk in and that’s how I started answering other people’s questions. This way of thinking greatly helped me indulge in my whims and let my creative side do the decision making.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
I change my mind about something every hour. In fact, this past summer after graduating Carnegie Mellon, I’ve changed my mind about my career path once ever week or so. Its kind of hard to deal with but I have confidence in my skills and my experience so I’m prepared for the obstacles or opportunities coming my way.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
People make way too many assumptions about programmers and artists in general, and since I’m both its really hard to communicate my role to others. As a programmer, people assume I can write software and tools. As an artist programmer, people assume I can do web development. As an artist, people assume that I do graphic design. I have assumed all these roles for work and experience, but I must say I am pretty slow at these things compared to the work that I’m truly passionate about.

What inspires you to learn?
I learn new things in hopes of understanding more things and more people, being more aware of the current state of things, and improving myself. It sounds vague, yes, but the learning I do is also vague and all over the place.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
I just need to believe that things are going to be ok. Also vague, but there are so many things to worry about that keeping myself together with a giant umbrella helps at least for the day.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
I like to think that irrational fears such as acrophobia and fear of worms can be worked through but I haven’t really gotten past them so who knows.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
The next killer MR app will probably bring people together–whether it is through avatars or something else–and focus on the social capabilities of the technology. This is important because, as great as it is to design flawless virtual worlds and interactions for each and every application, it is the social energy of play and discovery that will keep an experience going.

What book have you recommended the most?
Honestly I don’t read as many books as before. I do, however, indulge in web comics and TV series, and my current recommendation for something visually stunning, highly disturbing, and surprisingly relevant is The Handmaid’s Tale.

Marek is CEO of Made in Holo, a German consulting firm that offers HoloLens design and development services. He won the 14th HoloLens Challenge with a multiplayer HoloCar app. Made In Holo’s latest product is SpaceCatcher, which uses HoloLens to scan and model a room. Here are his answers to the 10 Questions:

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
The Devil’s Advocate – the big question about what we need to be happy in our life. An aesthetic journey about the weakness of mankind. And about what we believe makes us strong. I like movies that prod me to reconsider what I do. To feel happiness if I’m on the right path, or a wakeup call if I’m not 🙂

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
Prince of Persia – at the time very impressive graphics, even if very reduced. Good mix of logic riddle, fast use of keyboard. To get the impression, see this fragment of the game.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
I don’t have a single idol. I like to listen to many opinions, to stay open minded. I’m not able to mention a single person but I have a lot of people who have given me signals to “filter” my life.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Yesterday. Very often I’ll change my mind if the known facts are changing (from my perspective).

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
No discrepancy 🙂

What inspires you to learn?
I’ve studied computer science and graphic design at the same time. This is the way my brain works. This give me the ability to connect technologies and information in a different way than the typical computer nerd will do 😉

All combinations of technology and aesthetics provoke me to try it out. To learn.

Other motivations are traveling, discovering other cultures, people—our roots. This is the best way to understand why we behave the way we do.

Hunger to understand.

I want to have the level 7 experience –> See the last question.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
To trust people.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
Trusting people 😉

I really don’t like the “politics” involved in human interactions. This make us progress slowly. But even if I don’t like them, I can play the game, if I have to.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
Connect the things that computers are good at, i.e. collecting information, with the analytic capabilities of our brains. Look at this TED talk to understand what I mean.

I believe the final version of MX will be a direct connection between biological brains and computers. The optical connection like HoloLens is a good substitute.

What book have you recommended the most?
On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins – Jeff is the creator of Palm, of you remember, the first successful hand computer with graffiti as special way of writing characters, to make it easy to read by a computer.

The money he earned with this device, he invested in research about how our brain works.

One of the amazing “wow” effect of the book was how our brains learn. For new experiences, we need up to seven connections in our brain. This gives us the feeling that time is slowing. If we are in a routine, we need only up to three connections. In this case time feels like it is rushing. This is the reason that with age time seems to be much faster than in the childhood. After reading this book, I try to proactively have a lot of level 7 experiences.

Mike Taulty is a near-legend in the world of HoloLens. A Microsoft Developer Evangelist out of Manchester, England, he runs an amazing technical blog where he tackles some of the biggest problems in mixed reality development (as well as lots of other Microsoft stack technologies).

How to describe his style? He writes as if he’s a computer programming version of Columbo, the TV detective, tackling cases he shouldn’t and stumbling over clues in an apparently haphazard way until he arrives at a solution, solves the case, compiles the app. He is our everyman.

In the process he manages to do two things. First, he provides a guide for working through some extremely thorny HoloLens scenarios for anyone who needs it. Second, and maybe even more important, he gives us an archetype of how a developer should approach new technology—with joy and a sense of adventure. He takes things that are very hard and makes them approachable.

Mike is held in high regard throughout the community not just because he has solved, over the past year, many of our hardest HoloLens problems for us, but also because of the panache with which he has done it.

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
Can we mix Spartacus with The Godfather, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and It’s a Wonderful Life?

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
I can remember playing Star Trek on the TRS 80 if you can really classify that as a video game 🙂

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
My wife. She’s undeniably, consistently, calmly, infuriatingly right 🙂

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Every few minutes. I’ve usually got things wrong and I’m easily persuaded that I’ve got things wrong.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
Unit testing. I don’t work on production code these days so I don’t often write tests. You don’t want me on your dev team but I’m quite handy with a debugger.

What inspires you to learn?
Natural curiosity mixed with the fear of being left behind.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
That everything can easily be finished before bedtime.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
The technology industry and the fashion industry are closer than anyone would dare to admit.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
I wish I knew – I’d be out there trying to build it! My view is that whatever it is has to lean towards the part of the spectrum where the real world is truly mixed with the digital world providing an “additive” experience rather than an “alternative” experience. It’s the “mixed” that for me is the key part of this.

What book have you recommended the most?
I’m a big fan of Raymond Chandler, I read them all every year or two. Recommended!

Vincent makes magic in the City of Lights.

He is a HoloLens developer in Paris, France and head of Innovative Interactions at OCTO Technology. Like many of the people profiled in this series, he has a long history with NUI interactions stretching back to the Kinect and original Surface Table. He is an in-demand speaker throughout Europe and also one of the organizers of NUI Day 2016.

 

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
I remember a movie called Explorers where a bunch of nerds receive schematics and source code from outer space and start building a spaceship. That definitely was the proof that convinced me anything is possible with a computer.

There were also some VR movies like:

The Lawnmower Man (I won’t give the actors names in order to respect their careers)

Disclosure with Demi Moore and Michael Douglas

and obviously T.R.O.N and The Matrix

Wargames was also a blast for me.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
Oh my God, I think it’s Pong on the Atari gaming console plugged into my TV.

Around the same time I also “play”-ed with my parents computer (IBM PC 198x with green and black display) and did some stuff in a text editor called EasyWriter.

I also had a Sharp MZ-80K computer with a tape drive. You had to type “Load MyProgram” and wait for tape to roll until it found the right entry. Or you could fast-forward for the right amount of time and press play to quickly switch programs. Kinda felt like hacker at this time.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
My father. He was a teacher and always tried to bring innovation / technology to his students and kids (no, he didn’t shrink us and lose us in the backyard).

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Last week, I finally decided to delay a customer summer project in order to spend more time with my family.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
Not a programming skill itself but quaternion, Euler angles and rotation matrices are my worst nightmare. I always end up filling my trash bin with a loads of angrily crumpled papers with mathematical nonsense written on it. 

My wife (who is a scientist) usually comes to the rescue.

What inspires you to learn?
Passion and the desire to understand.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
As long as I believe I can do it in 30 minutes, I try to do it. Usually it repeatedly takes 5 more minutes … 5 more minutes … 5 more minutes.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
Computer science is a passion, it’s a way of life. But it’s also a job. If you live for your job, you don’t need another hobby.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
There won’t be any killer app.

There was no killer app for TV, for Phone, for Smartphone.

A new medium like MR (or VR/AR) needs multiple services and added-values with a big S.

Training content, real-time assistance, virtual visits (museum, holiday location, real estate…), augmented preview for architecture and interior design…

And also smaller and cheaper devices…

What book have you recommended the most?
Rainbows End which is a good guess of what could happen to us.

Online, he’s better known as El Bruno, the author of the Innovation Craftsman blog. He is a Spanish developer working as an Innovation Lead in Ontario, Canada for Avenade. Besides his great posts on the HoloLens, he’s also been writing about Kinect development for many years, hosts a Spanish language technology podcast, and is a Microsoft MVP. But what I’ve always admired most about Bruno is his infectious love for coding and making. He is a well I return to when I feel down and need inspiration. Here are his answers to the 10 Questions:

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
My all-time favorite movie is The Matrix. I still remember the day I went to the cinema to watch this movie and how it basically made me choose to do something related to technology. Before this, I wasn’t even close to a computer.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
I’m not a big “gamer”, I’ve got several consoles but just for casual and social fun mostly. However, when I was a kid, I spent a lot of time playing Double Dragon 2. And with “time”, I may say “coins”, I didn’t have access to a console or a computer, and Double Dragon was the only video game available in my zone. I still remember when we passed the “final boss” with a friend, how happy we were, until we saw … there was still one more to kill! It was an amazing winter for me.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
I’m 40, and I can probably pick a different one every couple of years. Some of my professors, my colleagues, my bosses, very influential people, tech gurus, and so on. Living in 3 different countries also made me switch environments a lot and meet a lot of people. If I must pick one, at the end, I’ll go for my father and mother. They both share with me a set of values, which I believe are the ones guiding me right now.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Yesterday, I was almost going to quit a very hard trail race, and one runner had a T-shirt with the sentence: Any idiot can run. But it takes a special kind of idiot to run 42K.

You can guess the rest of the story.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
Maybe “Solution Architect from scratch”. I mean, I can pick up a system and do amazing things to improve the complete SA. However, starting this work from zero it’s very complicated for me. I’ve met amazing developers who can easily create a solid base foundation that can be used to create an amazing solution or App. This is a place where I need to improve my skills a lot today.

Bonus answer: I won’t add JavaScript here; I hope I will never be in a position where I need to improve my JS skills.

What inspires you to learn?
I get bored very easily, so I find that learning something new is an effective way to keep me focused. In the last 20 years, I’ve never spent more than 3 years focused on the same technology / platform. This is not an easy task; I need to unlearn tons of concepts and start again. But in the end, it’s very rewarding to learn something new and go from a simple “Hello World” prototype to a full inference reliability model in AI.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
I don’t have a fixed schedule. I mean, yes kids need to go school, I need to prepare their lunch, they got extra activities, there are always some home improvement activities to perform, and I also need to work. My additional activities include running marathons, podcast recording / editing, writing my blog, collaborating with User Groups, and more.

So, since I don’t have a fixed schedule, I usually try to focus on what’s more important to me right now, and I focus all my efforts in that direction. Of course, the balance is always “family first” driven, so I find myself coaching soccer matches, or playing guitar at my kids’ school. These types of activities help me to think in new scenarios, in example: Hololens and kids are always an innovative idea; or to think on more business focused scenarios, in example: should we talk with a Soccer team to discover how Mixed Reality could help them into their daily basis?
At the end, I’m always looking to learn something new and to find some real scenario to apply these innovative technologies / ideas to.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
This one is easy: “Kinect was (and it’s still) an excellent product”. Most people always talk bad about kinect, and how poorly it was received in the gaming community. I still believe that Kinect was kind of the “starting point” of some of the cool AR / MR experiences we are using today. To have a 3D sensor with body tracking capabilities under $150 was a great experience, and it was the chance for plenty of people to start the “path to 3D apps”. But in the end, unfortunately, the prevailing idea is that Kinect was a failed product.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
When we have a very smooth and light device, very easy to use, and with a very massive group of people using it, every app will be a killer MR App. I mean, when everyone has a MR device, and people use these Apps without the word “Mixed Reality”, that will mean that people finally are used to the MR concept, so we will see a lot of data augmentation apps, a lot of collaboration or communications apps, and … games. The next big change here will be at the gaming level.

What book have you recommended the most?
Technically I probably need to go for Clean Code, or something similar. But I don’t recommend technical books often. What I really recommend to the people is to read the complete Geralt of Rivia series of books by polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. It’s an amazing journey of short stories and novels about the Witcher. (This is also the source story for the “The Witcher” games.)

I’ve been crossing paths with András for most of my career in emerging experiences. I first saw him speak about Windows Phone 7 design and his game SongArc at Microsoft’s classic MIX conference in Las Vegas. A few years later we bumped into each other in New York City where we were both assisting Microsoft at a Kinect hackathon. After that it’s been a whirlwind of new technologies and running into each other at conferences and MVP Summits, ending up where we are now with HoloLens and the new Mixed Reality headsets.

Needless to say, András has an insatiable appetite for the latest newest thing along with the stamina to drink directly from the Microsoft hose. He lives in Budapest, Hungary and is currently head of R&D at 360World. With his team at 360World, he’s won the 1st and the 5th HoloLens Challenge. The Red Pill, just one of many cool apps created by 360World, is frequently used around the world to demonstrate the HoloLens spatial mapping capability.

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
Contact. A somewhat underrated classic, which shows that “cold” science and spiritual experiences can coexist.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
On a real computer? It was actually a number guessing game that I written myself on a C64 after learning BASIC from a book – with no access to a computer.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
My mother. Even though I’m approaching the point in my life where I will have lived longer without her than with her, I can’t even start listing the myriad ways she still affects my way of thinking.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Yesterday. If was a pretty big change, too, having to let go of something that’s been a big part of my life for a long time.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
I think people who know what programming languages are have a pretty good idea of what I’m good at.

What inspires you to learn?
We’re living in the sci-fi world of my childhood. To be able to create cool sh*t, participate in building this world, and making it a reality, you have to learn.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
That there’s another day tomorrow.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
I don’t think I have any views that I can’t defend at least in front of myself. If you’re asking about defending with scientific proof – it is the idea that the way people use computing a decade from now will be radically different than the way we use it today. A perfect storm of AI, cloud, and novel computing interfaces (such as Mixed Reality) is coming.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
I don’t think there’s one killer MR app. I do think however, that in just a few years, MR will be a lightweight, everyday wearable at the price point of a high-end mobile phone. This will make MR the killer of smartphones the way smartphones “killed” desktop computing. Why use a 5” screen when the whole world can be your display?

What book have you recommended the most?
Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Can history be scientifically predicted? How much power does one person have in the face of history? How does emotion affect judgement?

By day, Cameron is a straight-laced Azure architect. By night, he dons the cowl and cape and writes amazing HoloLens tutorials on his blog, Indubitable Development, to help the wider xR community. Several of these tutorials revolve around building a game that you can even download for your HoloLens called Western Town. Most people will know him best, however, for his tutorial on Spatial Understanding, one of the most difficult topics when developing for the HoloLens. Without further ado, I give you Cameron’s answers to the 10 Questions:

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
The Matrix because of the amazing technological concepts shown in the film combined with the implications of not having the proper safeguards on AI combined with the ethical implications of technology.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
Pick Axe Pete on the Odyssey 2. I was 6 years old and my parents had entered the world of video games, this machine was formative for me, especially because it had a keyboard making me more accepting of computers when I was exposed to the Commodore 64 2 years later.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Turbo Pascal and designer of C#, the two languages that have been most impactful on me and the way I think about logic and design patterns.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
30 seconds ago, I designed a web service interface, implemented it, decided it stunk, and redesigned it.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at? Javascript / Web development, most non developers assume every developer creates web sites, I don’t and I can’t help you make your web site :slightly_smiling_face:

What inspires you to learn?
Learning for the sake of learning, I have a general thirst for knowledge at least associated with technology learning.  This has helped me stay on the cutting edge each time the tech world makes a major shift.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
That although I will never keep up with technology, design patterns, languages, and everything else that goes with our field, I have the ability to learn these items as needed when the time comes and can’t be obsessed with trying to keep up.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
IOC is the most abused design pattern in software development, it is used where D/I is all that is really needed, or nothing at all.  The hotness of the pattern adds unneeded complexity, maintainability problems, performance issues, and unnecessary resource use.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
The “killer app” for mixed reality isn’t an app at all, it’s an operating system where everyone is in the same Mixed Reality world overlaid on the entire world at the O/S, level and all of the apps are running and influencing that world simultaneously as well as interacting with each other.

What book have you recommended the most?
There are so many I recommend a lot, but the most fitting for this group is Ready Player One, a must read for anyone in the MR or VR space.

Aileen is a marketing manager for the HoloLens and Mixed Reality Marketing team at Microsoft, and was named one of Next Reality’s Top 50 Influencers in the xR space. For many mixed reality devs, Aileen is the public face of Microsoft—she’s the person who answers your emails and always has a kind word to say when everyone else may be too busy to do so. She is also one of the chief storytellers on the team, charged with answering a deceptively simple question on a daily basis: why HoloLens? Here are her answers to the 10 Questions:

 

What movie has left the most lasting impression on you?
I’ll narrow it down to three! The Iron Giant introduced me to wit, how to embrace uncertainty, and just how beautiful animation can be. Ugh, I love it. Also, brilliant poster design and fan art. James Dean unleashes AMAZING emotional freedom in Rebel Without A Cause. I can hear him now: “You’re tearing me apart!” And that red jacket…aesthetic intoxication, and quite a legacy. Moonlight is beautiful – like HoloLens and spatial sound, it shows the power that audio can have on one’s experience, especially in relation to space and memory. All three movies made intense impressions on me because they exposed just how personal history is. And just how difficult but amazing authoring the truth is.

What is the earliest video game you remember playing?
Oh my goodness, Bugdom was my catnip growing up. My twin sister and I would play it on our laptop (in the Apple clamshell days) for hours on end. When we’d get stuck (almost literally, because as the game’s leading roly poly, we waded in honey to free ladybugs from angsty bees), we’d phone home (or Iowa) for help from our cousin. It would make a STELLAR mixed reality game.

Who is the person who has most influenced the way you think?
My twin sister Keara is a core creative inspiration in my life. Her illustration and burgeoning tattoo portfolio inspire me to always push my practice, rethink what I love, or what I think I’ve mastered. We give each other hell, but as we grow older and geographically farther (she’s in Chicago, I’m in Seattle), we build one and other up. I love collaborating with her. Recently, this manifests as she encourages me to champion stories beyond words. Yes, I’m a writer and a word nerd, but what I love is more than words: It’s the work that words do. And she inspires me to braid diverse mediums and communities together. That’s how you create something bold. Her passion for peanut butter almost eclipses mine, to which I say “challenge accepted” – just one example of the competitive spirit she sparks within me.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
I’ll echo everyone in this series: just this morning (if not a few seconds ago). That said, I’m all about proof. You’ll change my mind if you champion something real, in real-time. And the same goes for me: I’m always on a journey to create something contagious, and I love the challenge to explain, unpack, or – even better – simplify my ideas.

What’s a programming skill people assume you have but that you are terrible at?
Wonderful question – I hope it’s obvious that I’m a writer and storyteller by trade! I’ve done Unity workshops (shout out to Marianna Budnikova for her awesome HoloLens app workshop with VR/AR Collective) and love diving into technical successes and stresses. My language and syntax differ from programming, though. 😉

What inspires you to learn?
The people who build and use mixed reality, and the folks who’ve guided me towards where I am today. I’m also inspired to learn because of a question that’s been pounding in my mind since studying creative writing: So what? I love finding and defining why things matter. It’s a drumbeat almost as constant as Seattle rain: So what? So what? So what? Answering this is always a social journey – I meet incredible people along the way.

What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
I need to believe that creativity matters and that people are willing to be uncomfortable in order to create something equitable and true.

What’s a view that you hold but can’t defend?
There’s no such thing as too spicy. Though I’m always happy to try and defend this…please send your hot sauce recos my way.

What will the future killer Mixed Reality app do?
Remove barriers. Personally, I think mixed reality dissolves the definitions we tolerate today – human, computer, physical, digital – so that people can create, remember, heal, and teach beyond boundaries (my list goes on). You can be a graffiti artist improving your tactile work or you can be a surgeon planning your next procedure, or you could be tomorrow’s version of today’s social media addict. But I think that no matter who you are, with the killer mixed reality experience, you’ll braid together the things that matter, defying space and time.

What book have you recommended the most?
Hmmm. Most recently, Sherman Alexie’s You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me. It’s a beautiful, biting memoir that shares a searing look at motherhood through prose and poetry – makes my heart sing and cry and question. If you want to shake up your idea of sanity, read The Vegetarian by Han Kang. As a vegan, it rattled me (in the best way?). I am in awe of the way Ruth Ozeki fused research and her own life into A Tale for the Time Being. Read that!