Forest Gibson

Forest Gibson and his colleagues at Pluto VR have an ambitious purpose: "to help humanity transcend physical location."

Even before they formed their company, Forest and his fellow founders did deep work to align on their purpose. That clarity helps them evaluate their ideas and make better decisions faster.

Their work aims to transform how people interact in virtual reality. By hacking human perception and behavior, they are creating experiences that feel more real than current prototypical VR experiences.

One crucial element in these new experiences will be content created specifically for virtual spaces. Just as movies became more immersive when directors moved away from stage-play esthetics, VR experiences will come of age when we master content practices that are native to the new medium.

Forest and I talked about:

the early work that their founder team undertook to clarify their purpose

the benefits of locking in vision and purpose early in the life of an enterprise

how his background in theater and film prepared him for his purposeful approach to business

how they melded two founder teams into one

how human visual perception systems drive some at-first counter-intuitive VR system decisions

the paradox of having a crisp, well-defined purpose but no specific product ideas

how their purpose helps them quickly evaluate how well an idea fits into their business

how having clarity of purpose works at any scale from a one-minute video up to large ventures

how they vet early ideas and prototypes against their purpose

how to manage content in virtual environments

how there are currently few obvious communication channels to illustrate VR content distribution

how physical devices anchor your experience in voice interactions

how it will be native content, content that is created specifically for the new medium, that will really make this new communication medium take off

Forest's Bio

Forest is a co-founder and the Director of Labs at Pluto VR. The company’s purpose is to help humanity transcend physical location so that everyone can more easily connect, communicate, and collaborate as if they were in person regardless of where they are. Before co-founding Pluto VR he was a creative innovations leader at Deloitte Digital, working with the largest brands in the world to help them stay competitive in the new digital landscape. He has a diverse background including VR, film, marketing, and crowdfunding. Other projects include: an automated brewing machine Kickstarter that makes beer at the press of a button, a new way to train employees through mobile gaming, and the web series Know Your Meme.

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/A7HbxS6I4-Q

Podcast Intro Transcript

When movies were first introduced, producers and directors simply captured stage productions on film. Once they figured out that they could move their cameras around and add sound to their productions, the medium really came into its own. We're at a similar place with virtual reality right now. Forest Gibson and his colleagues at Pluto VR are building tools that mimic real human communication in virtual environments. As you might imagine, the implications of this for content strategists and content creators are huge.

Interview Transcript

Larry:

Hi everyone. Welcome to Episode Number 61 of the Content Strategy Insights Podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Forest Gibson. Forest is a founder at Pluto VR, which is a really cool sounding startup here in Seattle. Well, first, welcome, Forest, and tell the folks a little bit about Pluto VR and your role there.

Forest:

Hey, Larry, thanks for having me on the show. So,