Field of View Podcast with Joseph Artuso
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SPEAKER: Brought to you by Accenture computer interface. Would you like to Extended Reality. This is field of view. introduce our guest today? DANIEL COLAIANNI: Hi, everyone. My name is DANIEL COLAIANNI: Yeah, sure. And as most Daniel Colaianni from the Academy of people know, I think Field of View is all about International Extended Reality. finding that origin story of how people get into our industry and how different areas from you NICK ROSA: And my name is Nick Rosa from know everything from entertainment, such as Accenture XR and this is the Field of View Star Wars through to brain computer interfaces Podcast. of all things. Things that seem like science DANIEL COLAIANNI: So, Nick, what if I could tell fiction come together. And Nick and I host this you that you can control things with just your on a bi-weekly basis to go through with some mind? really fantastic people. And I mean today is where we have the unconventional side of this NICK ROSA: I would call probably someone that technology kind of come together with what we can help you with that, like a very good think is very futuristic. And someone who specialist or a doctor or something like that. I’m started their career really kind of in ad tech and just kidding. I’m just joking. I would be amazed. in kind of the digital marketing sphere and kind I mean that's a super power, is a dream of a of slowly, I guess, found himself in this place lifetime. We see all those movies where there where we're making kind of future things are telekinetic powers and people that are able happen. So, yeah, I mean I'd love to be able to to control a machine just thinking about it and it introduce Joseph Artuso. Oh God, I messed that seems that this is the future that this is up. We can't re-record it though. happening. I'd like to introduce you, Joseph, kind of to the DANIEL COLAIANNI: So what if I told you, it's Field of View Podcast today. not just the future, but it's now as well, it's real? JOSEPH ARTUSO: Yeah, thanks. It's good to be NICK ROSA: Well, I would say that probably here and, yeah, kind of excited to talk about you're about to introduce the guest that we how I ended up in this XR space and working in have today, that is coming from a company that neurotechnology as well. is developing an open source platform for brain DANIEL COLAIANNI: How do I actually fields of study that are now using this type of pronounce your last name? physical data from the body. And two years ago, more than two years ago, but a growing trend JOSEPH ARTUSO: Artuso. we saw in the research being done was that VR DANIEL COLAIANNI: Okay. was like an increasingly - in addition to our hardware, virtual reality headsets were JOSEPH ARTUSO: Italian family. becoming more and more like the other NICK ROSA: From an Italian family, right, of hardware tool that people were using. And just course, I can see the connection. seeing how our users are applying our stuff gives us a lot of info on like where we go as a JOSEPH ARTUSO: Yeah, Sardinia and then company. where like the heel meets the boot, that's where my grandmother and grandfather were So it's been cool to see exposed to all kinds of from respectively. crazy research that's being done around the world. I can talk about some of my favorite NICK ROSA: So Basilicata. examples later. And then to get to play a part in JOSEPH ARTUSO: Basilicata, exactly. it and creating kind of what we think are going to be the next generation of tools for NICK ROSA: I’m from there. I’m from there. researchers and developers in this space. JOSEPH ARTUSO: That’s great. NICK ROSA: And, Joseph, before we deep dive into all the different use cases for OpenBCI, DANIEL COLAIANNI: That’s amazing. Tell us a maybe we want to give a little bit of a little bit about why me and Nick here are talking background of you. Can you tell us a little bit about science fiction and I guess why the about your origin story which is the usual step company you work for is just so cool? before we deep dive into the technology? We JOSEPH ARTUSO: Yeah, so I work at OpenBCI. like to understand a little bit more about the We have been making open source tools for background of the people that we are having in neuroscience and biosensing since 2014. We our – kick-started as a company. We've never taken DANIEL COLAIANNI: Who's the superhero that's outside funding. That's kind of cool. I like that, in front of us right now? but what's exciting about it for me is that we're making these products that make it possible - NICK ROSA: Exactly. this is our site onboard. We make these little PCBs that have kind of electrode pins that you JOSEPH ARTUSO: Yeah, so I mean I – gosh, how can plug in different sensors to and people are far back should I go. Should I start at the using them to detect electrical activity from all beginning? different parts of your body, mostly your scalp DANIEL COLAIANNI: I mean like you had like for your brain, but also your heart, your muscle what, like a BA in political science, right? And activity. And what's just amazing about it is over so, I’m interested how something from there the last six, seven years, it took a little while to for it to bring computer interfaces. How do we gain traction, but we record all the citations make that connection, that jump? that referenced our hardware and it's just growing. It's speeding up. We see more each JOSEPH ARTUSO: Yeah, definitely. So I studied year and we're seeing just like a wider area of political science at Columbia. While I was at Columbia, I played rugby and was a roommate I worked at Salesforce for a few more years. I with Connor Russomanno, who would later go learned a lot about running a team. I learned a on to start OpenBCI, neither of us knew that at lot about big organizations and how enterprise the time. He was a civil engineer saying that his companies quantify and value the technology job was to build parking garages. And I was that they buy and also the data they collect. But studying how - really, I was fascinated with how pretty soon, I was reaching a point where I was political movements sort of gain traction, how still feeling – I’m still pretty young. I didn't need they broke down. I was specifically interested in to be – I wanted a bit more risk and I wanted to kind of the breakdown of existing institutions try something completely new and outside of and then how like new norms arose and my comfort zone more so than climb the ladder persuasion happened. at a world-class institution like Salesforce. So I was studying that, I didn't necessarily want And I kept talking to Conor, you know, my to jump into politics myself. When I was friend, Conor would hang out and I'd been graduating, I had a couple different helping them out with advertising for years for opportunities, one of which was to work at an OpenBCI. I've been doing their search and social advertising agency in New York called the advertising and it really helped that background Media Innovation Group. And it was either that just learning the lingo and learning the or become a third grade teacher or work at like vocabulary of the industry. a consulting company. And I picked the And then, two years ago, I started working full- advertising because I found out I really did have time there taking over kind of their marketing an interest in like the science of persuasion. I capacities, but also business development, got sort of fascinated by the quantification that really everything related to like was happening in the digital advertising space commercialization and kind of the to this old industry of persuading people. And it communication that the company was putting was how new tools and the internet were being out. applied for that. And so, my background was more, okay, what is So I worked in Ad Tech for a while. I got to the stuff that we're writing that people are move to London with that job. I moved to interacting with? What are the parts of our London and started working with Zaxis and documentation that people are most interested WPP. And then they sold off part of that in? How can we use that to guide what types of business to App Nexus, which was later bought content we're creating? It's a really small team by AT&T. I had like five different jobs with only actually. We punch well above our weight as a ever interviewing for one. I've been through company, I think. People are always surprised multiple acquisitions, learned something from when they're like it's just like, wow. And we that. have to be pretty strategic about where we And then, I moved back to the U.S. in 2017. I did spend our time and also, how we leverage a short period of time where I was organizing content that's being created by the community concerts and like events around New York City.