Exclusives

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — According to Jeff Julian, creative-futurist, designer, and founder of boutique consultancy Lab5 Systems, the metaverse will be the end of the world as we know it. Well, at least for Hollywood.

“The metaverse is a sea-change,” he said May 19 during his opening keynote address at the Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit (HITS). “It’s going to have its bumps, but it’s coming, and you better be ready for it. Streaming services? Gone. Most of the things you do today on the internet? Gone. All [will move] to the metaverse. This will transform the way we do things.”

Retail, gaming, content consumption, communication, you name it, Julian sees everything on the internet today moving to the metaverse, and quickly, an exponential acceleration of a “t-shaped world” in a future dominated by purpose-built artificial intelligence. And with the metaverse, there will be no limits, he said.

“Working in this space, it’s critical you understand you’ll be working in an infinite space, with lots of metaverses,” he said. “And when you see the world as having a positive, abundant space, you’re going to make positive decisions.” Julian stressed he’s not talking about anything spiritual, or making the couple hundred attendees of his keynote better people. He’s talking about content companies and technology vendors preparing for what’s around the corner, not resting on their laurels, and realizing how creative strategies can impact organizational breakdowns.

Julian’s worked with many of Hollywood’s ‘A-list’ directors, including Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, and more, along with top brands ranging from Apple to RED Digital Cinema, Samsung to BMW. And he’s watched even the biggest names and brands put out failures.

“The … biggest gaming failures we’re from Spielberg,” Julian said. “If you don’t bring the goods, nobody cares about your branding. It’ll be the downfall of your business if you don’t bring the creatives to your space.” Julian brought up a comparison of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, and why the former was more of a commercial success than the latter: Edison wasn’t afraid to bring in a team. And he wasn’t afraid to fail.

“Fail fast, fail often, get it out of the way,” he said. “Try something and fail, have the ability to do that.”

Before Julian’s entertaining keynote, Sinan AlRubaye, chief experience officer of software development studio ICVR, kicked off the HITS proceedings with welcome remarks, stressing how the lines between gaming and filmmaking technology have blurred beyond recognition.

“We’re learning how filmmaking is done, [clients] are learning how gaming works, and while we’re heads down game developers, we want to bring success stories [across industries],” he said.

The Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit event was produced by MESA in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), Media & Entertainment Data Center Alliance (MEDCA), presented by ICVR and sponsored by Genpact, MicroStrategy, Whip Media, Convergent Risks, Perforce, Richey May Technology Solutions, Signiant, Softtek, Bluescape, Databricks, KeyCode Media, Metal Toad, Shift, Zendesk, EIDR, Fortinet, Arch Platform Technologies and Amazon Studios.