I suppose I should recap my trip to Las Vegas. I got to attend the Dell World Expo at The Venetian and one of the stations for Dell was dedicated to showing off the application I built for them. Here are a few pictures I took:


This is the booth setup before the show begins. There's two podium stations, a set of wireless headphones, and a Leap Motion device attached to a laptop via USB cable.


The convention is in full swing and people are coming up and interacting with my application. It's driven entirely with hand gestures. No mouse, keyboard, game pad, etc.


This is the first application of its kind in the world. Nobody else has used hand gestures to control and interact with 360 video before. Usually there were healthy crowds of people watching other people try it out.


I had three different interactive scenarios people could play through. The game portion was a fun way to learn about Dells philanthropic programs. I had some people literally go through every single video because engagement was so high. Who wants to watch 15 minutes of corporate feel good video? These guys do!

Just in case, I brought my laptop with me and had it setup to create new builds if I needed to. There were some small bugs and changes I wanted to fix, so I started to create another build. I copied all of the files over... and then disaster happened. I don't know how it happened, but somehow, the source code folder was completely empty. I still don't know how that could happen because I just copy/pasted the root project folder and the source code folder was a sub folder. All of the other subfolders had all of their files copied successfully, so it shall remain a mystery. So, if there was a critical bug, we would either need to just deal with it or I would have to catch an emergency flight back to Seattle. There were bugs, but fortunately they were minor enough that we could brush over them.

I had to train the Dell employees how to run the application. Fortunately, I had already anticipated this need and tried to simplify the application management to be as easy as possible. Basically, you could jump between scenes with the number buttons, and the first button just resets the whole app. Unfortunately, there were a few small lighting artifacts which popped up on a reset level, so I had to train them how to quit and restart the app. It only took a few seconds, but it did mean that a booth attendant had to always be on hand and paying attention.

For most of the event, I stood nearby and just watched people using my app and took notes. Where were the pain points? What assumptions were people making about the interface? How long was user interest being held? What was holding their interest? What mistakes did I make? How can I fix them in the next update? What am I missing?
One thing that I realized is that our introduction screen is terrible at attracting attention. I initially wanted to use an interface which trained the user on how to use the application, so to do that, I kept it bare minimalist so that people could focus on only one thing: Learning how to grab things. The interface started with a black background, a floating acorn, and a bit of white instructional text. In terms of focusing and training, it doesn't get any simpler and more clear. As far as capturing the attention of passer bys, it was TERRIBLE. So, if you're walking by and all you see is the intro screen waiting for users to engage, you have no idea what the application does or is about, so you'll just keep walking. This means that if you're the booth attendant, you have to be actively engaging with people walking by and trying to hook them. My opening line is always, "Hey, you want to see something amazing?! Come check this out!". This engagement stuff is always a really good skill to have if you're ever giving demos of your game at events like E3, PAX, meetups, game jams, etc.

After the expo was over, I felt drained and lost a majority of my interest in the application. I don't really know why, but I just got really bored with it. A month later, I'm still bored. My attitude feels like, "Yeah, that was pretty cool and it was hard to pull off, but it's been done now." I was hoping that I would get lots of contacts and leads for more work, but that didn't really happen. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I needed to be more outgoing and aggressive about getting to know people. Or maybe it wouldn't have mattered one way or another?

During the event, we were put in touch with a team at VMWare, a subsidiary owned by Dell. They were looking for a vendor who would build them a virtual reality application and we were the only ones they could find. So, we had a phone call meeting to get an understanding on what they're trying to build. Basically, it was a group of marketing people who had just seen Ready Player One and they wanted to build a VR experience for their customer experience team. Great! This sounds like a big project and a good opportunity! I started digging into their requirements. They... really didn't know what they wanted or could do. They said that they want every person in the company to be able to use their VR app, and they have 25,000 people. I asked them if they were going to buy 25,000 VR headsets. They didn't realize they needed to buy a headset. ...Okay... They decided that maybe they didn't want to do a VR app. What about a 3D game app instead?
"Sure! I can definitely build one! What do your client workstations look like in terms of hardware specs?"
"We run thin clients throughout the whole enterprise."
*long silence on my end*
"uh... that's not good."
So, I asked them to try running a 3D game on their server and playing it on their thin clients. The big, obvious problem is that all of the 3D GPU processing will happen server side, and the amount of GPU processing is going to be a function of the number of connected clients. So, can their server GPU handle a high rendering load? I'm still waiting to find out...a month later.
I found that they're trying to create a multiplayer app... in vr... with voice over IP...with a content management system backend... supporting up to 25,000 users... on thin clients... in three months! WTF?! Okay, I know I have the capability to build an enterprise level multiplayer CMS app. It's not going to be easy, but I could pull it off. But probably not alone in three months. I'd have to hire people to help. The problem is, it's going to get very expensive, very quickly. And if I put on my hat of pragmatism +5, I have to ask, "Why not just build an enterprise web app?". "Because we want to do something cool and different." That's a valid reason, especially for marketing folks who need to differentiate themselves from other marketing folks. Anyways, I submitted a ridiculous budget proposal last week. I think this project is going to fail before it starts because it's just not technically feasible, but I will probably just have to end up turning down the project if I don't get fully funded by the end of June. I just can't pull this off in less than three months... a corporate MMORPG in VR. In my mind, I'm already expecting it to fall through so I'm not getting any hopes up or counting on it to happen. They have to be moving a lot faster than they're moving right now if they want this to get built.

In other news, I've been in a bit of a professional rut lately. I need to make money. Money is a resource which enables me to do things, and the lack of money is seriously holding me back. For example, I want to create a 3D VR travel application. I've created a working MVP, so now all I have to do is go out and shoot some footage with a camera. I borrowed a 360 camera, but it sucked so bad that all the footage I shot was unusable. I've been looking hungrily at the Insta360 Pro camera. It's got everything I want and need to make my app. 8K 360 video in stereo. Automatic stitching. Image stabilization. Good battery life. etc. But, it costs $3,500 which I don't have. I asked my local community if anyone had one I could borrow one, but no replies. So, this project is on hold until I can get enough funds to purchase equipment. *Sigh*

My girlfriend has been getting on my case about not making enough money as well. It's really hard on her because I don't contribute enough financially. All of my money making schemes tend to be long term (6+ months out). And when I get clients, I tend to vastly undercharge for my services. For example, the leap motion app I just made for Dell, I charged at an hourly rate of $75/hour and grossed about $6,500. I should have at least added another zero to that. My girlfriend tells me I am a stubborn fool who won't listen, and I'll always be poor and broke unless I raise my rates. She's entirely right. She said I should 100% stop doing engineering work for a month and instead focus on sales and marketing. Full time sales and marketing. That's scary, I absolutely hate phone calls, and doing cold calls has zero appeal to me. But, my girlfriend is right. Nobody knows who I am or what I do, so how are they supposed to find me and hire me? Nothing is going to fall into my lap just by existing. I need to build a pretty website which highlights my work and abilities. Then I need to promote that website. So, for the next month, I need to focus on self promotion, sales and marketing.

It's SO tempting to do engineering stuff though. Yesterday I spent a few hours researching machine learning using reinforcement learning. It's really enticing, but it would take a LOT of engineering talent and time to pull off. And I want to try, and I could probably do cool stuff, but it won't help pay for tomorrows bills. So I kind of need to shelve that desire as well. Harsh.