On-Boarding Arn

Back in Phnom Penh, Arn’s friend Dika maneuvered his avatar to the front of the late night TV Talk Show VR world we were in. He’d been there before.

I host Conversations in VR at 10 am and 7:30 pm pacific time every day. Our evening event starts at a convenient time the next morning in Southeast Asia. Arn and Dika are my good friends and I have been with them a lot in Cambodia. I had to cancel a trip in March. I don’t know when I will be able to go back there again.

Dika and I have worked together producing 360 video for VR. He has a headset and he knows how to use it.

He saw avatar Tom sitting on stage as the host and said he’d bring Arn now.

In a few seconds we heard Arn’s voice.

Arn Chorn-Pond, Khmer Rouge survivor and living proof that music can save lives — that people’s art and music can save whole countries and help bring a culture back to life.

This was his first time in social VR, interacting with other people, speaking in a virtual event. His on-boarding happened in front of a live avatar audience. Getting used to the virtual world quietly for a while was not an option.

I had hoped and planned to meet him privately first, before the event, but it didn’t go that way. Introducing someone to VR and/or Social VR, is important. And it wasn’t going the way I’d…