Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Allison Ferenci - CEO and Co-Founder of Camera IQ

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Welcome to another episode of The Radcast! In this week’s episode, host Ryan Alford talks to Allison Ferenci, CEO & Co-Founder of Camera IQ.Allison, as a Creative Technologist, expresses her fascination with the kind of digital content that occupies our physical world.She describes Camera IQ's Augmented Reality (AR) technology and how it helps businesses boost sales. Allison also explains how Camera IQ differentiates from other brands in terms of technology. She also explains the Metaverse and how it influences digital marketing.To know more about Camera IQ, check their website https://cameraiq.com/about/. To know more about Allison Ferenci, you can follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisoneichlerwood/, Instagram: @allisonferenci and Twitter: @_AllisonWood.If you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, let us know by visiting our website www.theradcast.com. Check out www.theradicalformula.com. Like, Share and Subscribe to our YouTube account https://bit.ly/3iHGk44 or leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Be sure to keep up with all that’s radical from @ryanalford @radical_results @the.rad.cast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know this as an entrepreneur yourself. I think the key to being an entrepreneur's perseverance. I shared, I sold my first piece of digital art on the blockchain in 2016. You know, so an NFT. Aggressively early, an error experience across kind of any platform has an average play rate, at least the ones coming from camera IQ, with 55%. You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it.

Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome back to another edition of the Radcast. We're getting meta today. We're getting AR, VR, VR, MR, PR, all the R's here, all the realities. My friend Allison, Ferenci, CEO, and co-founder of Camera IQ. What's up, Allison? Hey, Ryan, thanks so much for having me today.

Hey, my pleasure. I'm going to go and admit to everyone that they're hearing this is we have, we're, we have transparency on the radcast. Allison is such a good sport. We started down the path. We had a complete meltdown of all machines. So we're doing some of this is take two, but nonetheless, we janked ourselves. I was like, we haven't edited but three episodes. It's a be working tech and then everything failed.

I know. But you know what? People appreciate the transparency and honesty. day. So, you know, if you're out there and you're listening to this podcast and you're doing your own, just know anything can happen. So anyway, we appreciate Alice. I really appreciate you've been a good sport. And I can't wait for everyone to hear what I already got to hear once, you know. But I do want to start with what got you into the AR world. You know, I think we've all been waiting for the promises to be fulfilled. And it sounds like you're headed down that path or well down

that path with camera IQ, but what kind of led you there? Great, great question. So my background is as a creative technologist. I have been for better or worse in the ARXR space for the last 10 years. I got started when I was in graduate school doing a master's in interior architecture and digital interactive art and was really fascinated about what it would mean. mean for digital content to occupy our physical world. And was a believer that I could actually bring those two realities closer together. Love it. I love it. And, you know, like, how hard was it building camera IQ?

I mean, was it, I want to get later on into some of the specifics, but have you, how's that entrepreneurial journey been for you? Look, I think, and you know this as an entrepreneur yourself, I think the key to being an entrepreneur's perseverance. There's there's kind of what is your idea, is the market right? And then are you willing to just stick it out? Because no matter what shit's going to be hard. And I think for Camry Q, you know, prior to founding Camry Q, I had an AR agency. So had the benefit of understanding where big tech was investing from the hardware, meaning into cameras, right?

So most ubiquitous piece of hardware in the world. You look at Apple ads today and this is all they show, right, is the camera. Had the benefit of watching them double down on the computer vision software. So the software that enables the camera to actually see and understand the world around them, watch consumer behavior change to, you know, from everyone becoming a photographer with Instagram to the rise of stories in Snapchat to, you know, everyone being a creator because of TikTok. And then also new firsthand as a creator, how hard it is to create this content across

platform at scale. But still, I would say, you know, it's hard as shit. It's a lot of pressure, but I feel lucky I wake up every day and I love what I do. And I want to define the future of computing. And I'm a believer that the metaverse or spatial computing is that. So as of now, running camera IQ is the best way. I know how to do that. You're a fashionable geek.

For sure, like I looked at your Instagram and I'm like, okay, she's fashionable. but she's got a, there's a dork deep down under there. She's, she is, she's got to be, you know, like you're too intelligent. Not that every nerd is, is intelligent. There's always both. I'm dirty my own way and I don't know that I'm smart. But I, but I sense this intelligence, but also just kind of you geek out on this stuff. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I think, you know, when we were, when we were taking our, our break here, getting to know each other. You know, I shared, I sold my first piece of digital art on the blockchain in 2016. You know, so. You were early. Aggressively early. And I think, you know, with all of these technologies, whether we're talking Metaverse, Web3, NFTs, it's all a function of kind of not if, but when. And I think part of bringing these technologies to bear is about the practicality.

of how that technology is implemented. So, you know, I feel perhaps as a creative technologist, I am at liberty to say this. But like, for me, tech for tech's sake is art. It's all about how we implement that technology to make it work for, whether it's for businesses or for consumers and hopefully in all of that helping ourselves be more human. I love your definition of the metaverse so I'm going to tee you up for it

you know you've got Roblox going on a gaming platform that has a metaverse you have Facebook and meta you have Decentraland you have a lot of universes kind of being built I'd love for you to kind of define the metaverse the way you do and kind of where all these, how all these universes come together, maybe, or are they? Yeah. So I'm going to try to do it better. So let's talk about the kind of the what is the metaverse, the how meaning the medium, and then the where. It is, so what is the metaverse?

Simply to me, it is the next evolution of the internet. And there's kind of three defining factors that differentiate it from the experience we have of the Internet today. The Internet today is two-dimensional. So the kind of three defining factors is the first is that it's going to be spatial. So by spatial, I mean it is 3D. It is interactive and it's something we can move through, whether that is a virtual reality or virtual environment. So a platform or like Vans World on Robo. blocks or

a lightsaber on Oculus, right? Those are virtual environments or virtual realities. And then there's the mapping of digital content

to our world. So augmented reality. To that end, the what of it really is, or sorry, let me back up. So that's the spatial nature of it, right? I can move through it. The second is that it's persistent.

So by persistent, I mean I can map content into Times Square and it's going to persistently live there. It's not going to disappear when I'm not engaging with it. And the same is true when we talk about a virtual reality. This is very common in open world games, even when I'm not playing. The game continues. So that kind of nature of it being live and persistent.

And then the third is that it's shared. What I mean by that is that if you and I, I are in Times Square. Not only is that object in Times Square persistent, but we're, we are engaging with it together and seeing the same thing and having it react to both of us. So in that way, it's shared, just like you would in a virtual environment. It's a shared persistent experience. In terms of the kind of what is it, in terms of its medium, the how, we would kind of couch all of it in the big XR. So extended reality, primarily that's going to be augmented reality or virtual reality. And then the where is it? You know, I think some folks have this conception that it has to be

a head-mounted display. But the truth or the reality of it, pun intended there, is the ways that we engage with the metaverse today are through our mobile phones, our tablets, personal computers, consoles. You know, it will be head mounted displays at some point, but I also would argue it's going to be holograms. It's going to be really any piece of hardware that has cameras and screens. So it could be your Tesla, right? All become computing platforms that help us enter the Metaverse. Do you think these worlds at some point all talk to one another? Is that like, is that realistic or is it, are they all just going to? to be obviously, and I do want to, you know, go down the wants, the needs, the professional

side, business side versus the gaming side, but is it unrealistic to hope that all these worlds come together? I mean, I think that's an, it is absolutely today an infrastructure problem, right? It's like even small, simple things like, how do I have a consistent avatar across every platform? Right now, everybody has a different avatar system. But I think, again, I always go back to if we're just thinking about the next iteration, the evolution of the internet, we see that those infrastructures in place on the internet today. Like the app that I'm most obsessed with right now, I don't know if you guys use it, is Shopify shop that is able to pull all of my shopping data and track all of my packages.

and right that before I had to manage all that shit in my inbox. Now I have this great app that helps me manage all of it. And that's an infrastructure that Shopify is put in place. Right. So I think absolutely we will see that happen. But I'm a believer that you also actually have to be at scale. Why build that infrastructure if we're not at scale yet? Yeah.

And I think that's that's been the million dollar question for me with a lot of this stuff. like the promise of AR and VR and all, you know, I've been talking about it for 10 plus years, but the promise and the experience haven't really aligned. I think that's been, you know, one of the most frustrating things. And I know, you know, you've developed camera IQ with a lot of that, you know, in mind and making that some of that come to reality.

But like, I don't know. Like, again, I went to conferences 10 plus years ago. we talked about this was all the rage and it was definitely bored of us. Yeah, you were like activating cereal boxes. Yeah, yeah. But it's so interesting. I'm so glad you said that. But I told people like, you know, QR codes were going to be the future, you know, like and all that.

And they're just now having their heyday because the pandemic as bad as it's been forced the consumer behavior. And so... Pause there for a second. Yeah. It wasn't just, yes, absolutely there was consumer behavior. But there was also a fundamental challenge with the hardware. Yes. What I mean by that is QR codes have had their heyday in Asia for a long time where Android is the primary OS.

And Android cameras could always recognize QR codes. Yeah. Apple only in the last, I believe, 24 months has allowed their camera to wrap. recognize QR code. So until recently, the friction for a Western consumer, someone in the U.S., where iOS or Apple is our primary device, you had to have a QR code reader. No consumer is downloading a freaking QR code reader and holding it up. It was too hard.

So I think the pandemic was part of it, but so much of what happened has to do with the friction and what the hardware allows for. It was a thousand percent degree. It was two parts. It was absolutely functionality and 75 percent of U.S. people are on iPhones. And so that was there. But you had this meeting of that combined with the average person. So let's just say, and again, let's remove Gen Z.

Let's go 35 to 65. I know that's a wide range. They don't really give a shit. they didn't really have, they weren't forced to do QR coding. But once you had to go to restaurant, the only way to read the thing was the user QR code, once your behavior was forced if you were going to get the information. So you pushed. Now you see who did at Coinbase.

Yeah. Their Super Bowl ad, right? Yeah. Here's the thing, though, is like, yes, there was absolutely the change in hardware that reduced the consumer friction. And then, but the biggest. change, I think also is like it went from being, I think all of us assumed QR codes were like, here's 50% off.

Like, here's a coupon, right? Like, you thought you were just going to get some sort of marketing sale versus QR code in the restaurant had a real utility that we want. Like, there was no other way to get the menu. Exactly. You had to do it. And then you're like, oh, this isn't so bad. It's built into the camera and it gives me useful information.

Totally. Totally. And now you're like, why aren't QR codes for everything? Like, I can get my manual for my new dishwasher there. Great. Like, exactly right. But anyway, I digress on our QR code discussion. But what was funny is I remember the last thing I'll say about QR codes is when they first

come out, you did have to download the stupid app or whatever. But then some of the experiences, they were building AR and VR kind of into it a little bit. where you would see through the lens of your thing and see different experiences within retail. I always thought that that had all the potential in the world, and I think maybe we'll come back to that now that, you know, that usage is more viable, so to speak. Yeah. I mean, look, I think this is the promise of AR.

And I think one of the secrets for camera IQ, other than, in my opinion, our great product is also our promise. to our customers around practicality and utility, which is, you know, we talk about how the, what you do with camera IQ today is an investment towards the metaverse. We're not trying to tell you you are 100% doing the metaverse and this is the promise of it, but rather, hey, how do I use the camera and create different AR experiences that address the consumer funnel? Meaning, what are experiences that I can run on social that are going to drive top of funnel? for me and have the outcome that I want.

And we have the data that shows that, right? So for reference, an AR experience compared to a traditional post on social can reach up to 34X your audience versus a traditional post on social media, photo or video, passive in my mind, is only going to reach 0.5% of your audience. So again, if you want to widen your top of funnel, AR is the most effective medium. If we're talking about engagement, an AR experience across kind of any platform has an average play rate, at least the ones coming from camera IQ, with 55%, meaning 55% of consumers have an opportunity to engage with the AR experience do.

When we look at folks at how they engage with a photo or video, we're talking about, you know, I think it's like a less than a 10% engagement rate. So like, again, kind of massive difference there in terms of whether we're talking about, you know, about engagement or talking about consideration, that kind of mid-futtle motion. And then when we look at conversion, meaning how do I use AR to visualize a product or try on a product before we buy, our customers are seeing at least a three and a half X increase in conversion rate and in some cases up to 10x increase in conversion rate on their e-commerce site. So for us, it's less about let's build fucking anything, right?

And like, do the never been done before. But instead, how do you get really practical and insert the camera or AR into the consumer journey where we know it's going to make a difference in your business? With the view that our promises, like we will add platforms to help you bridge into the metaverse. We will guarantee your content will work across platforms over time. And again, the content that you're building today, so you're you're investing in that 3D model, that will be used in the metaverse in the future as well.

So that is our viewpoint. And from that perspective, our customers have been very successful. But again, our promise isn't this is the never been done before. Our promises, here's where it works. And this is how we're going to drive your business forward. I like that. I do have a question, several things to kind of unpack from all that. Yeah.

When you would describe it like the engagement rate increases, like of a post, versus an AR experience. How do you define, are you saying instead of just a flat post, I post an AR experience? Help me unpack that a little bit of like, are you saying instead of posting the social, I need to send them within,

I don't know, the story app to do an AR experience? Like how are we comparing that like apples to apples? So just candidly, it is one of the challenges that camera IQ has really been focused on solving as like, how do you make this apples to apples? Because if they're not, right? The difference between an AR experience and a post is like we're talking about an AR is,

and even from a like post meeting, either a photo or video is like, I can play a video, but I can actually interact with an AR experience and then create a video and share it out. So it's like so much, it's such a richer experience. So even when we talk about, you know, how do we measure them against one another? It's not even, I feel like we're always cheapening AR because we're just kind of trying to take that slice that makes it the same. But what we're talking about is like most basic is I post on my Instagram a story using an AR experience. 55% of people who see that story are going to choose to opt in and use the AR experience for themselves. Versus if I post a story that's just a picture, you're only going to see a like 1.6% engagement rate in it,

meaning someone's going to like send a heart or like now they can like it. So the difference there of like, hey, I like it to this is cool. use it is kind of is astronomical yeah i get it i um i do always like to put the like the fiery red eyes on myself when i do uh when i do my stories like scare people uh better than like changing the your face structure yeah i know i know the um it's funny though though you can get down the rabbit hole with some of those things it's kind of fun like you're sitting there like going through all the filters and all the different things that it's like kind of a little time sucks sometimes I'm like okay all right I had fun there like there was one

that I can't remember what it was like it makes you like you sit in a chair and like you look at it and then it pulls out and like you're in the world or something I don't know all that shit's getting crazy the uh I do want to talk because I thought you know in our our 2.0 reboot here I really liked kind of how you talked to about, the reality is, you know, brands and people are hearing these things about the metaverses, NFTs and web3.0 and all these things. So, but it's always this, the want versus the need. Like, is this entertainment or is this the universe to come? Like, you know, is our world so fucked that we need to get into the metaverse? You know, like that whole other

moral conversation, but, but I do, I did like kind of your, your kind of explanation of the reality of where kind of all these things are going. Yeah. So I, I have, I'm of two minds. The first is kind of putting want and need aside. I think if we look at Gen Z, which is going to represent the largest consumer base in the next, I think it's like in the next five, years, they're going to have the most spending power of any generation of all times, and they're the largest, blah, blah, blah, blah, gen Z. The reality of Gen Z is they don't consume the way that previous generations have, meaning they're not interested in photo or video.

They're a generation that expects to have a voice and platform, meaning they want, they are, they all consider themselves creators. They are a generation that expects to see themselves reflected in your brand. They're a generation that wants to play with you and participate in your brand before they ever purchased from you. And a lot of that behavior is drawn from gaming, right? That interactivity, it's also drawn from platforms like TikTok. So broadly, what I believe is a requirement of the metaverse is that if brands want to reach this next generation of consumers, and I can't even imagine, you know, what our kids generate.

I don't even know what they're called, Colonials. Yeah. Is it that? Something like just like. Digital Colonials. Yeah. Pilgrims. Right.

It is like if you want to engage with them, you can't just depend on making your marketing campaigns photo and video. You have to be thinking about interactivity, which is a key principle in the metaverse and this kind of next iteration of the internet. So I think there's that just requirement of like if you want your brand to survive, you have to start to think about these immersive formats because that's what the next generation expects. It's not what they want. It's what they expect. the second piece of this, and, you know, for me probably could have gone AR VR. I am now a VR nerd. My team and I meet in VR in the regular.

I think it's becoming a really compelling experience. But frankly, I love AR for the promise of the ability for it to give us back our humanity. What I mean by that is, you know, is every time I pick up my phone and we're together physically and I send a text message, I've just transported myself somewhere else. Or I'm surfing the web here, which I know we're all guilty of, right? As like I'm having my own experience here. We're essentially in separate worlds at that point. And so the idea that the digital content can be in a shared time and space for you and I to engage with together,

I think unlocks our humanity in a way that these opaque devices today has taken it away. Yeah. I think. So from that perspective, I would say. It's a need, but the time horizon for me is not tomorrow. Realistically, I think just based on hardware and I think the amount of content we need, it's going to be a five to ten plus year time horizon. Yep.

I think you're right there. I mean, because we have brands all the time. They're like, do we need to be worried about this? Do we need to be thinking about this? And I'm like, some of them, it's the answer is yes. And I wouldn't say they have to worry about it, but they need to be brainstorming. And then some, it's like, you know, your budget doesn't necessarily allow for it. And the opportunity isn't necessarily here for it.

And I think it really depends. You know, it's so, I don't know, brand and vertical specific. I think it's brand and vertical specific. But I would say there's kind of two things, depending again on, on vertical that your brand is in. It's like the first is like if you're a product company, meaning you're selling a digital good, the most important thing for you to be doing as a business is starting to digitize your brand. You have to start, we talk about it as digital twins. How do you get, even if you can't go back in time and digitize all of your products, moving

forward, how do you make that part of your pipeline? That's easier set than done, so which is why I'm like, that has to be a day one, start making that investment. It should be part of your investment just based on the fact that visualizing products in 3D and are can increase your conversion over three and a half X. So like you should do that. Yeah. And then I think if you're a content company,

meaning your, you know, media and entertainment, you should be building in-house what it means to not just think about your IP as a linear story, but how do you start to think about this as an interactive experience where your audience can help drive or participate in new ways? I love that. And I'm going to make you unpack just because you never know who's listening. Some people get it, all that. When you say, I don't know, camera IQ plays.

I'm going to tee up camera IQ and everything in this, you know, good marketer. Good to my guess. When you say digitize, explain to everyone what you mean if you're selling physical goods. And what does this mean when you say digitize exactly what does that allow? me to then do and why should I do that? Sure. All right. I'll talk about, let's say, beauty and a sneaker company.

Yep. We have both as customers at Camry Q. So very practically as a beauty company, if you want to sell your product online and not, I mean, even testers in stores because of the pandemic is a health risk now, right? How do people try your product before they buy? They literally want to try on an eye shadow color or a lipstick color. They want to make sure the foundation matches their skin, right? When we talk about digitizing their products, is they literally, and camera IQ provides us for them, are going in and matching the hex code. They're matching the finish and they're creating a digital version of a physical product. So in that case,

it could be an eye shadow. The same is actually true for, if we talk about sneakers or furniture or watches, is we are helping customers or encouraging our customers to literally make digital replicas, 3D digital replicas of their physical products. Now, in a lot of instances, actually at the point of, you know, the industrial design of that particular product, most people are actually using 3D software to do that. So that's where it's an opportunity at the top of production and design to start to think about how else that asset can be used at camera IQ. And broadly, the opportunity there is like, hey, and now I'm going to pitch a couple of different

companies and certainly can follow up on who they are, but like you can use it for product visualization. So does that, does that eyeshadow look good on me? Does that couch fit in my living room? You can use it. We all know right now that fulfillment is a huge problem, right? I just moved from L.A. The port of L.A. has basically everything we're all trying to buy sitting out in the ocean, right? So how could you be pre-selling product by actually allowing people to see different colors, different skews? You could be using these 3D assets to reduce your cost in product photography, right? Digital assets are good enough now that you can't tell the difference between if it's the real one or the digital one. So there's kind of a number of ways. The other thing we see is when you actually visualize these products

at the point of purchase, you're reducing your returns, right? So you're actually becoming more efficient in that way. So I think the biggest barrier for brands here is how do we change our workflow at the top of production and design to make sure we're capturing those 3D models? But if you're able to do that, that asset can be used not only along your entire kind of e-commerce funnel, but can be used in your entire customer journey to help them make a smarter business. better purchase that not only increases your sales, but will help reduce your returns. Excellent. I love that. And so every sweatshirt and every t-shirt and everything, make a digital version so people can try it on or see how it is. Or, you know, if you build like a

metaverse, you can use it digitally within that space, right? Yeah. Listen, you can't participate in the metaverse without these assets. Yeah. It's the biggest blocker for Ryan, if you had to guess, do you know how much content is uploaded to the internet every day? More terabytes than I can count. 25 quintillion bytes of data are uploaded to the internet every day. That's 18 zeros. We can't even comprehend how much content that is.

So again, if we want the metaverse to be as rich and interactive as the experience we have on the worldwide web, today, we have to start investing in the in 3D content. Don't get me wrong. You can use 2D assets, but if we're trying to sell your product, you have to digitize your content in 3D. At the end of the day, that's what camera IQ does, correct? You're digitizing content and helping build the AR experience? Great question. Primarily, camera IQ is actually enabling you to build these experiences and then have them work across. platform. So across all of the major social platforms, as well as on your e-commerce site. When it comes to digitizing your products, that's a whole other workflow that we have a number of partners

that we can introduce our customers to to help them do that. Okay. So it's more of the AR experience once you have the digital assets in place. Yes. Yes. Perfect. Talk to me about, I mean, what's the evolution for you guys? Like you guys, there's so many platforms. Like, you know, we talked about this, how scattered it is and how marketers have to kind of, you know, slice and dice and work in a lot of different fields. But like for you guys, like, where's the evolution? Where are you guys kind of seeing things with, you know, both with camera IQ and I guess in general?

Yeah. I mean, we actually see that fragmentation as poor to our business opportunity. So, again, our promise is create once and publish everywhere. So through Camera IQ a lot like, you know, platforms like Unity or before video was, you know, had a standard. You can essentially build on our platform and we're going to guarantee that it works on every major AR platform. We started with social because that's where they're where consumers were. in the camera every day.

We're now in web. So we can support your e-commerce site. We can do SMS marketing. We can do email marketing. Pretty much anywhere that you want to invoke a web page, we can run. For us, the future really starts to look at both next generation hardware as well as virtual environment. So while we're extremely passionate on a personal level coming from a camera first world,

so AR World. For us, VR is just AR with the lights out. And so it's just a different camera feed, right? It's either I have the live camera feed or I'm going to have a virtual camera feed. And so what you'll see from us over the next 12 to 18 months is starting to think about, again, next generation hardware, as well as the ability to distribute into virtual environments and really focused on how do we become the best tool for creating scaling and managing these experiences. What inspires you?

Where do you get inspiration? Is it just naturally, like intrinsically in you? Like, I'm just driven. I'm inspired as a person. I mean, like, but do you does the, yeah, I mean, well, first I read first, I got into AR because I, I read a sci-fi book. And that for me was just a picture of like what the future could look like and what it would mean for our digital and physical realities to share us time and space. And that was really exciting.

So that was kind of the kernel for me of like, oh, wow, this is how technology should act and how we can create a better human experience with it. In terms of inspiration, I think the thing now that I get most inspiration from is like, I love building tools. There is nothing more exciting for me than seeing one of our customers. And, you know, whether it's a social media marketer at a brand or a graphic designer who's, you know, using proficient in the Adobe Creative Cloud, having that aha moment of like, holy shit, I can create an AR experience. and it was joyful and fun. And I didn't spend hours trying to watch YouTube videos. You know, our customers say we're like the Canva of AR, if you're familiar with Canva.

That for me, that democratization of technology is what I get out of bed every day for is wanting to invite more people to participate. I like that. Very good answer. Very good answer. So as we close out, Allison, I know, you know, we talked a little bit about NFTs and I think I mentioned, you know, that I posted on LinkedIn. Like we all, I believe firmly in the tech and the vision and what NFTs can enable.

But a lot of really shitty digital art is clouding the issue. Where do you see? It's junking up the internet. And I think it's confusing people for exactly. the true promise of what, you know, blockchain and the rest can kind of enable down the road. I'd love for people to kind of hear your take on that as we close things out. I mean, I will say this is my personal, non-professional point of view. I think maybe it was this version, maybe it was the last.

I sold my first piece of art on the blockchain in 2016 on a, a very amazing early platform called Monograph that's since relaunched. But I think really for me, the promise isn't, you know, there is absolutely a use case around we can talk about them as NFTs, also known as collectibles, right? Yeah. There's a digital collectible. That is certainly in some cases a use case. The sale of digital goods is another, right?

So in game. but I think where I get excited and I'm most interested in Ryan, I think you're aligned is really if we talk about blockchain technology as a ledger, an ability to authenticate and experience an asset and ownership from a particular person or brand, that's where it becomes really interesting to me. So whether that's, you know, you could be using it internally of who creates. these assets at this, you know, Fortune 500 brand where you have offices across the world, being able to look back and actually look at who, what creator at your business made a particular asset or as a consumer to be able to authenticate that this color lipstick, this vampire bite red is genuinely from X brand. And I can feel good about purchasing it. I think especially as we, you know, look at deep fakes and,

not to open another can. Oh, God, yes. You can't fake the blockchain and that ledger. And so that's where, for me, the longevity of the technology becomes especially interesting for businesses. And again, not to say, there aren't collectibles that aren't interesting for the right brand and use case. But I don't think that's the end all be all. I think that's a hype cycle we're in right now. Yeah, totally agree.

And I mean, I long for the day. Even it seems like a really simple like one more step is just like patents, trademarks, legal contracts, everything. Why is it not already on the blockchain, right? Yeah, I mean, that's what Ethereum is. It's now just about building. Maybe you should start a company. Something on top of it that actually makes that, you know, that contract more visible

and easier. I think there's companies like chain link that are trying to solve that. But yeah. Like mortgage companies. Like more. There's so many things, right? Totally. You could sell a house so easily.

Yeah. With that right. Titling and all that shit that gets, it holds up and takes forever. I mean. Oh my God. Don't even get me started. Probably just went through it.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Well, Alison, where can everybody keep up with you, keep up with camera IQ? and, you know, everything's got going on. On Twitter, underscore Allison Wood, my maiden name, I know confusing, but what are you going to do? Yeah, you don't want to change your name.

Or Camera IQ Co on Twitter. And, of course, you can head over to our website, camera IQ.com, shoot us a note. And we have an amazing team that would love to talk to you. about how AR can be part of your business strategy. I love it. I really appreciate you coming on and let's stay in touch. I think we can help one another. And, you know, when I have my first like metaverse, I don't know,

mastermind, I'm going to have, I'm going to call in a favor and be like, all right, Allison, I need you on this call. Let's do it. Let's do it. And only because I think it would be interesting, I think at some point we should do an episode in VR. You know, can you make that happen? Yeah, we should do a roundtable.

We should invite like a handful of people and do a round table. Let's. Yes, we need to do that. Nick and I have been talking about that very thing. And we just need someone as connected as you are to help us, you know, shortcut all what we need to make it happen. Totally. I love it.

I love it. Well, hey guys, you know where to keep up with us. We're at the radcast.com. You can search for all of our content. put in camera IQ into search bar. You'll find all the content from today's episode. You know where to find me. I'm verified at all the platforms.

At Ryan Offord. We'll see you next time on the radcast.