Replay: Matt Miesnieks, Dennis Crowley, John Gaeta (LivingCities) on Laying the Foundation for the Future of Social Expression (Part 2)

AR Show with Jason McDowall

Replay of an interview originally published in September 2022:

Today’s conversation is a continuation of my discussion with Matt Miesnieks about LivingCities. Joining us for part 2 are co-founders John Gaeta and Dennis Crowley.

John won an Oscar for his visual effects work on The Matrix movies, and after many additional creative and visual effects projects, including Speed Racer, he went on to co-found ILMxLAB as part of Lucusfilm. He then served as the SVP of Creative Strategy at Magic Leap before returning to work on the latest installment of The Matrix franchise.

Dennis Crowley was the co-founder and CEO of location intelligence apps, Dodgeball and Foursquare. Both companies focused on using mobile phones to connect people to each other in the real world. Dodgeball was sold to Google in 2005 and Foursquare is still thriving today as a location intelligence provider.

John and Dennis have joined Matt at LivingCities to explore new ways of blending the virtual and real worlds. But as Matt explains, they are not making a game; the bigger opportunity is in social engagement and communication.

They go on to discuss the hard problems they are excited to solve and provide some hints at new forms of social expression in a 3D spatial environment. They discuss the tradeoffs of different technology choices as well as their ambitions, and what they want to do differently or better compared to their previous entrepreneurial experiences.

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