In virtual space, the sky's the limit -- literally. Your Avatars can fly and teleport and change form in an instant, even in a relatively mundane collaboration meeting or classroom setting. Ben Erwin of Silicon Harlem returns to discuss the development of XR's version of "Netiquette."

Julie: Hello, my name is JulieSmithson and I am your XR for Learning podcast host. Every session ismeant to provide you with the value in microlearning, about the waytechnologies will change the approach of education, the creationneeded and the tech savvy brilliance to support the advances of ourdigital transformation. Join us today with my next guest, Ben Erwin,who is an expert on the XR ecosystem, from hardware and softwareplatforms to the who's who in the industry. Recognizing therevolution of how we consume information being brought about byspatial computing and volumetric video, Ben has focused on creatingnew experiences and WebXR and social VR. As director of SiliconHarlem's annual tech-enabled community conference since 2018, Benprogrammed the agenda, developed the marketing and produced theevents for the next one, which will be held at the Forum of ColumbiaUniversity in October. Thanks so much for joining me, Ben, today.

Ben: Hey, Julie, it's great tobe back.

Julie: And so much to talk aboutwith everything that's going on. I know we've had several differentconversations about our intake and insight into the way things havechanged before the coronavirus has hit our communities. But we talkeda lot about the communication of technology, the humanics behind it,and how to adapt with the interaction. So maybe if you want to openup with a bit of your expertise and what you're seeing today in ourcommunities and in business and how we're dealing with each other oncommunication.

Ben: Well, I think that thephenomenon that we're seeing right now, especially since it kicked in-- it was a very sort of interesting timing, how the Educators In VRconference happened. The outbreak had already happened in the east,and this conference happened the week of February 17th. And it was sophenomenally successful that it was a proof-positive use case thatsocial VR is not only a thing, but something that many differenttypes of use cases can take advantage of. Number one is conferences.And so HTC Vive, last week, had another phenomenal conference. Theyhad scheduled an in-person conference and they had to cancel itbecause of the pandemic. And they held it very successfully on theENGAGE platform last week. We've also seen a big surge in Zoom, whichis a traditional platform, uses browsers as an install base. Peopleare getting used to the idea of not only working remotely, butcollaborating remotely. Teachers are giving lesson plans over theInternet. Students are learning as classes, in groups over theInternet. This is a very rapid paradigm shift that we're seeing. Andwhat gives me a lot of heart is how well it's going.

Julie: Yeah, I think everybody'skind of-- well, we've had to, we've been forced to take that stepback and figure out both in the classrooms as well as in business onhow are we collaborating, how are we working together, how do we nowcollaborate when I'm at my house and you're at your house and we'reso many miles away? And we do have this technology now that can beput in front of us, we can connect to, we can actually see andvisualize things like 3D models to work on and to collaborate, todevelop and design together. All of that technology is possible now.So opening up that new means of communication, where before it wasalways face-to-face or it was over the phone or just even in aconference call, we can now introduce more online platforms andvirtual platforms to collaborate. And I think that's really openedthe