Future Talks: What is the point of the Metaverse­?

In order to understand the heightened awareness around the metaverse, we kicked off the afternoon with a closed, two-hour industry roundtable discussion hosted by Esther O’Callaghan OBE, founder of hundo.xyz. The roundtable convened experts from industry, educational and government institutions to discuss what the metaverse means to the business community and how the metaverse can play a part in the bigger picture of futureproofing our economy.

Shortly thereafter, our brilliant keynote speaker Amber Allen, CEO and Founder of Double A Labs took to Centre Stage. Amber guided the audience through the various iterations of public internet technologies - comparing asynchronous and synchronous models as well as her own projections for the evolution of the internet we know now into Web 3.0. Ending her address, she implored the audience to consider whether we are ready to live in a Ready Player One world.

Next up was the main panel session, chaired by the insightful Esther O’Callaghan OBE who invited roundtable guests Dr Christina Yan Zhang, Dominic Dunn and Orfeo Nicolai to the stage to discuss

the role the metaverse can play in creating new growth opportunities - from education and gaming to property development and placemaking.

Bringing the panel to a close, Esther posed the pertinent question - ‘What is the point of the metaverse?’. The recurring response to the question is that there is no concrete or real silver bullet response to this. Our CEO, Gavin Poole, returned to the stage to close out the panel to deliver chatGPT’s response to the input: What is the point of the Metaverse?

Thank you to all that attended our networking session and for sharing fascinating insights into the powerful mechanism that the metaverse could become, from the standpoint of London, academia, government and entertainment sectors.

Plenty more to come from us in this space – next up, we're headed to SXSW!