Sept 29, 2019
Plano, TX
Developers are designers of a sort. The impulse and aspiration to create new and enchanting ideas of tech are rooted in beautiful hopes that someday, others will take those ideas and expand the wonder. Spatial computing has been fervently growing into the common market place, and developers are just scratching at the surface of what blending technology into the physical world can mean. Refreshingly, large enterprises coupled with small businesses, start-ups and contractors are aspiring to finding the meaning of Spatial Computing life.
Enter AT&T Business with 5G Network and Magic Leap with the ML1 Creator Edition, two endearing advocates who are investing in finding the answers and the ideas of how businesses and the modern consumers can utilize spatial computing. The tools were given, the verticals of businesses were fortified for this science fair-style hackathon, and Omega Ortega came to play.
Hackathons are continually a great venture for businesses to explore new ideas. Not just because of the diverse group of geniuses that congregate to build, but it also removes the bull sh*t. What does it mean by removing the BS? There is a limited amount of time to build, therefore, no business analytics or interference, or long winded meetings of too many ‘cooks in the kitchen’ that prevent a concept from being deployed promptly. What does that directly affect? It pushes people to build with almost reckless, but thoughtful abandon. If that makes sense. Just the purity of being able to design and code a creation to its closest tangibility.
Enter Omega Ortega. We are seasoned programmers, designers that are hungry. Literally, hungry. We couldn’t wait to eat the Texas BBQ that Dallas had to offer. In fact, the second evening we were in town, we stopped by a Brazillian BBQ restaurant that had terrific portions of carne delight, as well an amazing grilled pineapple that made you salivate as if you were relishing a piece of acidic paradise wrapped in a churro’s powder.
Digression happens when writing these posts, and this is one of those moments.
Back at the AT&T Foundry, we initially thought of a B2C banking concept that we could utilize the Magic Leap One to allow every day consumers to visualize their finances throughout their household, analyze the brevity of how much money was leaving their bank account versus how much was being brought in, and budget accordingly. Unfortunately, sh*t happens. So we conjured up a playful way of being able to enter emergency mode when extra finances would be needed for unseen circumstances. You’d hit a button, and your world gets flipped into calm chaos in trying to realign monies into platoons ready to battle any bills and nasty invoices.
We were ready.
We held conversations with some of the AT&T business personnel on hand to leverage their excitement for getting more customers onto the 5G train and breathe in the electricity of all the newfound wonder of what we were creating.
However, we are humble, and we kind of … sucked.
That idea was crumpled up (more folded than crumpled), and pushed into the proverbial recycle bin (because we try to be environmentally friendly).
Digression continues.
We knew we needed backup to help us pivot quickly and fruitfully. We called upon Rance (who unfortunately could not be with us physically but could back us up mentally) and we were able to quickly pivot and develop a new idea.
We decided to bring car shopping to banks. Sort of. We want the bank’s customers to know that the bank has their best interests at heart. We want customers to think of the bank first when they think of major financial decisions. We want the banks to feel confident that their customers trust them, so we developed a way for customers to prequalify themselves, given their financial criteria (some adjustable, some not) coupled with their desired vehicle type.
Our youthful developer, Antonio, sprang from his self imposed hibernation and worked with Tom tirelessly to bring this new product to fruition, and it worked. We see it now as a sustainable and important tool for the financial vertical, as those distinguished institutions will be able to give their customers a real look into what is affordable vs what is desirable. Just because we want something doesn’t mean we can afford it. It’s better to know that before you arrive at a dealership vs after you’ve fallen in love with a vehicle you find out you can’t afford.
We give the power to the banks to help their customers realize what they can truly afford, which will bring peace of mind but also excitement to the consumers as they know when they arrive at the dealership they can afford what they’ve already set their hearts on. The happy ending to the experience is a dealership can be chosen through our spatial computing experience.
We won in the sense that we were able to build a sensible product that can be utilized in today’s market, using the 5G acceleration from AT&T, and deploying the Magic Leap One device into the world that is begging for a technological savior to an otherwise boring paper process.
No, I’m not blowing sunshine.
Congratulations to all the winners, you are amazing!
However, *********’s coffee is still terrible, Antonio.
