Put most simply, a 360 video is a video shot with an omnidirectional camera — meaning that the view in every direction is recorded at the same time. This gives the viewer the ability to look anywhere and see everything happening in the shot.

There are two main types of cameras used to shoot 360 video. Monoscopic 360 video is the most common, as it is easiest to stitch together and edit. These videos are shot with one camera from one point of view. Stereoscopic 360 videos are basically two videos shot side by side, with a separate recording mapped…

This month we are releasing preview content from the forthcoming book “A Practical Guide to Making VR That Changes the World.”

First of all, ask this one question — how do I want someone to feel when they take the headset off? Do I want them to feel conflicted, as was the case with the child welfare piece mentioned in the intro? Do I want them to feel angry and frustrated, which was the goal of the workplace exclusion piece? Should they feel happy, sad, empowered, confident, unsure? …

Here’s another sneak peak of some new material from our next book, due out in October. Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for a sneak peek of the cover coming soon!

The best reason to use VR for learning is to let your audience experience a situation. If you use VR, the participant will feel like they are part of the experience — that they are actually there and they are experiencing it in real time, leading to them being more prepared when the situation does arise. There are lots of examples of this being successful — in a…

Yeah, I’m finally doing the damn thing.

This October, look out for the initial release of “A Practical Guide to Making VR That Changes the World,” coming via Apple Books. I’m shaking things up for my third book, based on learnings from my first two books (available on Amazon here and here); namely, that any writing about new technology gets dated very, very quickly. So rather than put out a book and call it a day, I’ll be building in public and adding new chapters to the book on a regular basis as the industry develops.

To tide you over…

A few years ago, I was in a meeting with a client and she shared a competitor’s bid with me. For the same as it cost to create a custom VR piece, this company wanted to license a pre-created VR piece and charge a per seat fee — meaning that as the piece succeeded and more people wanted to use it, the company would have to pay more. …

Several years ago, when I was a staff writer at Billboard, a new editor came in and for some reason decided he disliked me. He assigned stories in my subject area to other writers without checking with me, once asked me if I was dating a member of a band whose story I was pitching (for the record: no, I just liked their album), and just generally treated me poorly. Frustrated, I took him to lunch and point blank asked how he thought I could do my job better. His (useless) answer: “be less rockist.” Dutifully, I spent the following…

And how Facebook can change that before it’s too late.

Many years ago I was sitting in a bar when a friend pulled out her shiny new iPhone one. I cooed over a piece of hardware that my broke grad school self was too poor to even think about, but she quickly burst my bubble. “It looks cool,” she said, “but it’s kind of useless. Honestly my Blackberry is so much better and more useful — I can’t even get my work email on the iPhone because corporate won’t set it up. The iPhone is just a toy.”

My friend…

Just over five years ago, I flew to Austin to appear on a panel about VR and music at SXSW. At the time, I was still working in the music startup space, but was curious about VR and how it could be used in the music industry. One of my fellow panelists was a VR director named Kevin Cornish, and after the panel we stayed in touch. Within a few months, I had joined his new VR production company, Moth+Flame, doing business development and a bit of everything else, including arranging production insurance, learning how to use InDesign to update…