At Media.Monks, we’re always on the lookout for ways to integrate the best AI technology into our business. We do this not just because we know AI is (and will continue to be) highly disruptive, but also because we know our tech-savvy and ceaselessly curious people are bound to experiment with exciting new tools—and we want to make sure this happens in the most secure way possible. We all remember pivotal blunders of these past months, like private code being leaked out into the public domain, and thus it comes as no surprise that our Legal and InfoSec teams have been pushing the brakes a bit on what tech we can adopt, taking the safety of our brand and those of our partners into consideration. 

So, when OpenAI—the force behind ChatGPT—updated their terms of service, allowing people who leverage the API to utilize the service without any of their data being used to train the model as a default setting, we were presented with a huge opportunity. Naturally, we seized it with both hands and decided to build our own internal version of the popular tool by leveraging OpenAI’s API: MonkGPT, which allows our teams to harness the power of this platform while layering in our own security and privacy checks. Why? So that our talent can use a tool that’s both business-specific and much safer, with the aim to mitigate risks like data leaks.

You can’t risk putting brand protection in danger.  

Ever since generative AI sprung onto the scene, we’ve been experimenting with these tools while exploring how endless their possibilities are. As it turns out, AI tools are incredible, but they don’t necessarily come without limitations. Besides not being tailored to specific business needs, public AI platforms may use proprietary algorithms or models, which could raise concerns about intellectual property rights and ownership. In line with this, these public tools typically collect data, the use of which may not be transparent and may fail to meet an organization’s privacy policies and security measures. 

Brand risk is what we’re most worried about, as our top priority is to protect both our intellectual property and our employee and customer data. Interestingly, a key solution is to build the tools yourself. Besides, there’s no better way to truly understand the capabilities of a technology than by rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty.

Breaking deployment records, despite hurdles.  

In creating MonkGPT, there was no need to reinvent the wheel. Sure, we can—and do—train our own LLMs, but with the rapid success of ChatGPT, we decided to leverage OpenAI’s API and popular open source libraries vetted by our engineers to bring this generative AI functionality into our business quickly and safely.

In fact, the main hurdle we had to overcome was internal. Our Legal and InfoSec teams are critical of AI tooling terms of service (ToS), especially when it comes to how data is managed, owned and stored. So, we needed to get alignment with them on data risk and updates to OpenAI’s ToS—which had been modified for API users specifically so that it disabled data passed through OpenAI’s service to be used to train their models by default.

Though OpenAI stores the data that's passed through the API for a period of 30 days for audit purposes (after which it’s immediately deleted), their ToS states that it does not use this data to train its models. Coupling this with our internal best practices documentation, which all our people have access to and are urged to review before using MonkGPT, we make sure that we minimize any potential for sensitive data to persist in OpenAI’s model.

As I’ve seen time and time again, ain’t no hurdle high enough to keep us from turning our ideas into reality—and useful tools for our talent. Within just 35 days we were able to deploy MonkGPT, scale it out across the company, and launch it at our global All Hands meeting. Talking about faster, better and cheaper, this project is our motto manifested. Of course, we didn’t stop there. 

Baking in benefits for our workforce.   

Right now, we have our own interface and application stack, which means we can start to build our own tooling and functionality leveraging all sorts of generative AI tech. The intention behind this is to enhance the user experience, while catering to the needs of our use cases. For example, we’re currently adding features like Data Loss Prevention to further increase security and privacy. This involves implementing ways to effectively remove any potential for sensitive information to be sent into OpenAI’s ecosystem, so as to increase our control over the data, which we wouldn’t have been able to do had we gone straight through ChatGPT’s service. 

Another exciting feature we’re developing revolves around prompt discovery and prompt sharing. One of the main challenges in leveraging a prompt-based LLM’s software is figuring out what the best ways are to ask something. That’s why we’re working on a feature—which ChatGPT doesn’t have yet—that allows users to explore the most useful prompts across business units. Say you’re a copywriter, the tool could show you the most effective prompts that other copywriters use or like. By integrating this discoverability into the use of the tool, our people won’t have to spin their wheels as much to get to the same destination.

In the same vein, we’re also training LLMs towards specific purposes. For instance, we can train a model for our legal counsels that uncovers all the red flags in a contract based on both the language for legal entities and what they have seen in similar contacts. Imagine the time and effort you can save by heading over to MonkGPT and, depending on your business unit, selecting the model that you want to interact with—because that model has been specifically trained for your use cases.

It’s only a matter of time before we’re all powered by AI. 

All these efforts feed into our overall AI offering. In developing new features, we’re not just advancing our understanding of LLMs and generative AI, but also expanding our experience in taking these tools to the next level. It’s all about asking ourselves, “What challenges do our business units face and how can AI help?” with the goal to provide our talent with the right superpowers. 

It goes without saying that my team and I apply this same kind of thinking to the work we do for all our clients. Our AI mission moves well beyond our own organization as we want to make sure the brands we partner with reap the benefits of our trial and error, too. This is because we know with absolute certainty that sooner or later every brand is going to have their very own models that know their business from the inside out, just like MonkGPT. If you’re not already embracing this inevitability now, then I’m sure you will soon. Whether getting there takes just a bit of consultation or full end-to-end support, my team and I have the tools and experience to customize the perfect cape for you.

NextUp.Monks offers emerging talent from our 8,900-strong multidisciplinary team the opportunity to continue to cross and push boundaries—and reaffirms our commitment to support them along the way. With our people spanning 57 talent hubs in 32 countries, this internal initiative is the perfect way to bring our talent closer together and provide them with a platform  to shine on a global stage. The first edition turned out to be such a great success that there was no other option but to bring it back in 2023. 

“Our ambition is to transform the industry. We want to change the work, what the work can do, and who does the work—and that change starts with us, right now,” says Jouke Vuurmans, our Chief Creative Officer. “NextUp.Monks is one of the ways we work towards this goal, as it gives our up-and-coming talent the chance to be bold, think outside the box, and ultimately thrive both within our company and on the global stage. What we saw last year is that it’s not just about professional development, it’s also about personal growth. Through this competition, participants get to meet and mingle with like-minded and equally ambitious colleagues from every corner of the globe.”

Connecting talent from across categories and capabilities 

As the aim is to give people the opportunity to thrive within our company and the industry, the main rule of NextUp.Monks is that everyone can join—as long as you have seven years or less of industry experience and are not in a managerial position. If you check those boxes, you are good to go find a partner to team up with and get to work. 

The competition consists of three categories, each of which is designed to highlight specific strengths, skill sets and interests. Teams are invited to participate in any category, regardless of their current role within Media.Monks. 

First up, the Innovation.Monks are future-facing visionaries. They’re adept at sniffing out innovative ideas and turning them into reality using the latest in emerging tech and formats, resulting in groundbreaking experiences and new possibilities.

Second, the Film.Monks deliver cinematic stories for screens of all sizes. They’re an inclusive bunch of thinkers that have a knack for original concepting, scriptwriting, visual treatments, film treatments, shooting, directing, editing, VFX, post—and everything in between. Together, they believe that film has the power to connect people and tell stories that we’ve never seen or thought about before.

Third, the Interactive.Monks are driven to build creative experiences that go beyond the mundane. They put the audience at the heart of every moment they craft, giving them the opportunity to immerse themselves within compelling, transformative digital experiences that build lasting memories.

Sparking boundary-pushing ideas  

For this year’s edition, we teamed up with a world-renowned global brand to develop a unique creative brief for each category. Our aim was to get people to flex their creative muscles and give shape to the craziest and most mind-bending ideas. 

The brief, “VR for Good,” challenged participants to think about VR as a vehicle for change and to find ways to excite Gen Z consumers about the potential of this technology. Through each category, teams were tasked to demonstrate VR’s transformative power to positively impact areas such as medicine, sports training, and emergency response—and ultimately change people’s minds about VR as a device solely intended for gaming.

If you ask Steve Latham, Head of Learning at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, all participants understood the assignment. “After last year’s success, our team couldn’t wait to continue to work with Media.Monks on this groundbreaking initiative and breathe new life into our shared goal to spark boundary-pushing creativity,” he says. “Once again, our minds were blown—just when I thought the bar couldn’t go any higher, their talent raised it. Massive shout-out to everyone who participated, because the level of future-forward thinking, creativity and craft was outstanding. Now, it’s time to meet the winners at Cannes Lions 2023!”

And the winners are… 

With so many incredible submissions, we had to be very diligent and detail-oriented in reviewing all the work. So, we established an esteemed jury of internal Media.Monks employees and industry experts, who reviewed the work in a blind judging process using the following judging criteria: the creative idea (40%); the insight and strategy (20%); the relevancy to the brief (20%); and the execution (20%). The jury selected bronze, silver and gold winners across each of the three categories. While the silver and bronze winners received a personalized trophy—plus eternal bragging rights—the creative minds behind the gold-winning work earned an all-inclusive ticket to Cannes. 

Those going down in history as the 2023 NextUp.Monks gold medalists are Anna Zhang and Yazad Dastur in the Innovation category, Vasyl Ilba and Mykyta Zolotoverkhyi in the Interactive category, and Jorene Chew and Ashwin Paul in the Film category. Out of these teams, the judges crowned Anna Zhang and Yazad Dastur the ultimate winners. This means that in addition to their trip to Cannes, they have also been admitted to the prestigious Creative Academy at Cannes—which will welcome a mere 30 people from around the world this year. 

“I still feel like I’m dreaming,” says Anna Zhang, Junior Designer. “Two months ago, I went to a little happy hour mixer for the NextUp.Monks competition and met Yazad. I didn’t really think I would enter the race, but Yazad told me that his best trait is his personality—and I was sold. We may have started as partners, but through this competition, we have become great friends. We come from totally different backgrounds, career paths, and even parts of the organization, but we got together with one common goal: to create something that feels true to us and, most importantly, to have fun!”

“Something that really made the difference when Anna and I decided to do the competition together was that we developed a rapport before we got to work, and really got to know each other as people and understand where the other was coming from—both creatively and personally,” adds Yazad Dastur, Junior Copywriter. “Becoming friends allowed us to tap into a deep emotional place and insights, and I think that’s what made it so much more important for us to give it our all. To find a partner who is willing to stay up until 6:00 am to finish a project is rare, especially one that does not guarantee an outcome. So, I think the fact that we told each other ‘let’s have fun and give this our best’ made this process an experience that we are truly proud of. I’m absolutely grateful for Anna—we completely pushed each other whenever one of us was faltering, doubting or even falling asleep.”

Bridging cultures and crossing borders

As much as the winning pitch, the NextUp.Monks initiative itself is all about creating strong connections, both across our organization and the globe. Not only did this internal competition garner interest from more than 600 employees in 25 countries, with a striking 350 people actually participating in the race, the top three teams are based in completely different places—from Los Angeles to Poland to Malaysia. 

This circles back to the fact that NextUp.Monks helps our emerging talent grow professionally as well as personally, as this initiative—within the context of our unified business structure—allows our people to work with peers from different countries, categories and capabilities. 

“Being a global team, we rely on an agile, flexible framework that lets people be themselves while staying keyed into the emerging opportunities and challenges that brands and our industry face. We’re a unified organization, but everyone is given the space to let their distinct voice and personality shine through—and our NextUp.Monks initiative only reinforces this spirit,” says our Chief Marketing Officer Kate Richling. “The competition opens up a myriad of possibilities for our up-and-coming talent across the globe to work together, no matter their location, expertise or job description.” 

Nothing Cannes stop our winners now

All that’s left for the winners to do is pack their bags, hop on a plane, and enjoy their time in Cannes—and if we have to believe Noelle Mayasich, our Senior Creative and last year’s winner, this will be the easiest part. 

“The amount of knowledge my partner and I gained from Cannes Lions has been so valuable to the way I look at creativity in my daily work—the workshops and keynote speeches have honestly molded me into who I am today,” says Mayasich. “We saw many notable speakers, including heads of large agencies, industry-wide influential figures, and even Ryan Reynolds, who talked about his break into the industry. Some of the speakers made us cry, and many others made us laugh. What truly stuck with me were the following lessons: be ambitious and humble at the same time. Create value for people of the world, not fluff. Sometimes we fail and sometimes we win, but having that freedom gives us the power to be creative.”

But Mayasich’s biggest takeaway from this experience was that the creative people in our industry really do care about the good of humanity and social, cultural, environmental and societal issues. “While our creative work reaches so many people on a daily basis, we don't often get to see this impact because we have to move on to the next project. This festival made me realize that my work is so much more impactful than I thought it was, and we’re the living proof there’s a fighting force behind it,” she says.

“It’s every advertiser’s dream to go to Cannes, so to say we’re excited would be an understatement—I’m actually still in shock,” says Dastur. “What makes me the happiest is that people saw potential in our idea and understood what we were trying to convey: that there’s a promise to the future of AI and VR. When utilized responsibly, these technologies have the power to bring people closer together.”

As we continue to provide our talent worldwide with diverse opportunities for growth, who knows where they will be in their careers next year—it might just be the French Riviera. As Media.Monks Co-Founder and Executive Director of S4Capital Wesley ter Haar says, “This year's NextUp.Monks was amazing. Great to see so much fun work and boundary-pushing thinking from teams across the globe, which is the result of our exciting partnership with Cannes Lions. I’m sure we'll see some of this year’s participants back there in the foreseeable future.”

What’s supercharging these AIs are large language models (LLMs). LLMs are language prediction tools that can read, summarize and translate text by predicting upcoming words in a sentence, allowing them to generate new text that closely resembles human speech and writing. They’re adept at both writing and interpreting text, and that cognitive ability means they can do far more than just write the first draft of an email or summarize your meeting notes.

ChatGPT, built by OpenAI, has gained incredible popularity thanks to its simple conversational interface and its ease of use. This accessibility has inspired multiple teams within Media.Monks to experiment with LLMs, and GPT in particular, to find better ways to work and create. The result is a series of prototyped innovations that demonstrate the ability of LLMs to aid in internal collaboration, streamline information gathering and self-service, and make highly technical metrics more accessible for everyone.

Enabling collaboration through multi-user experiences.

The Labs.Monks, our R&D team focused on technology and innovation, built a chatbot designed to streamline brainstorming and collaboration across teams. Charmingly named Brian (originally from an internal pun of BrAIn but renamed for simplicity), the GPT-powered bot integrates into Slack and serves as an intelligent, active participant in team channels. The idea for Brian came from the realization that most applications of ChatGPT are task-based, which inspired the team to consider other ways LLMs can support teams, like serving as a creative collaborator.

Brian has two modes. In facilitation mode, it keeps group brainstorms going by offering questions and providing summaries on the discussion. In contribution mode, Brian serves as another collaborator who thinks along with the team and adds to the discussion.

“During one of our tests, it was able to help us brainstorm a fictional brief on how to create an experiential activation for a soft drink brand catered to seniors with some interesting results! Though ultimately we ended up coming up with an idea ourselves, the input from Brian helped us get to other outcomes we might not have thought of otherwise,” says Angelica Ortiz, Senior Creative Technologist. Being able to field a discussion among a group of users (and even address individuals by name) separates Brian from other chatbots, which are typically limited to one-on-one conversations.

The team originally built Brian as an exercise to gain hands-on knowledge and experience with LLMs, the focus of their recent Labs Report. Now, the team is exploring how to roll it out as a tool for wide use by the Media.Monks team.

An alternative to fine-tuning GPT.

After seeing the potential of LLMs, many brands are exploring the idea of fine-tuning those models to better match their tone of voice or the kinds of content they create. Generally, fine-tuning an existing model can be cost-effective, removing the need to train a model, program a chatbot or write new content from scratch. But for some use cases, fine-tuning can be prohibitively expensive compared to another method of generating more brand-unique results: prompt engineering.

Our Tech Services practice developed a method of prompt engineering that makes it easy to build a GPT-powered chatbot that can answer questions based on content from a specific domain. The example they use is turning a company’s internal wiki into an assistant that saves employees the trouble of searching and sifting through long documents to find the information they need. The key technology behind this method are OpenAI’s embeddings, a feature that allows matching user queries with answers from the most relevant source content.

Embeddings unlock some incredible features. Users can ask questions and receive responses in their language of choice, regardless of the source content’s original language, meaning there’s no need to localize. They also don’t rely on exact word matches; if someone asks our hypothetical company wiki bot about “vacation time” policies, the bot will know to pull information from a document about “paid time off.” Adding more content to the chatbot is also easy, as all it takes is a simple webhook to enable the bot to answer questions about new content as its published.

If you want to learn more about how to use embeddings to prompt engineer a bot of your own, check out the full writeup. You’ll also see a video demo that walks you through how embeddings achieve each of the outcomes above.

Digesting information at speed.

Sifting through data can be overwhelming—especially if numbers aren’t your forte. That’s why our enterprise automation team developed Turing.Monk, a chatbot affectionately named after Alan Turing, the 20th century computer scientist who developed the Turing test, which tests a computer’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. Turing.Monk help teams quickly find the answers they need about their campaigns by answering queries in three formats: lists, summaries and graphs.

The bot functions a lot like a marketing assistant, helping marketers draw conclusions about a campaign’s performance. Want to see how the media cost has changed on a week-by-week basis? Just ask Turing.Bot to “provide a written summary of how the media cost is changing” for the campaign in question. It’s that easy.

The ability to ask questions in natural language helps puts analytics and data science at the fingertips for those on the team who might not know SQL or Python. “It’s early in development, but today an account manager can keep prompting and fine-tuning the prompt to get the outcome they desire,” says Michael Balarezo, Global VP of Enterprise Automation. “We’re now working on improving the analytical capability of the tool, leveraging the power of LLMs to understand the nuance of the ask, and translate that into more complex insight generation”

More potential has yet to be unlocked.

While much has been said about LLMs’ abilities to generate text, their skill in interpreting queries and surfacing up helpful, contextual information—all in a conversational format—will make them incredible tools in the workplace and beyond. From facilitating creative collaboration, to making information easily accessible for all, to giving people superpowers by putting digestible data at their fingertips, the potential for LLMs like GPT is great—and you can bet we’ll continue to experiment and find even more applications and use cases to benefit our team and the brands we work with.

These insights take the form of newsletters, podcasts and reports—the most recent one featuring motion capture and the ways it can plug into a variety of content production workflows. Because of motion capture’s growing influence across digital experience, the Labs.Monks’ research into the technology illustrates how the team plugs into different categories and talent to unlock new innovations.

Motion Capture in the Moment

Digital has gone from the place where you go to buy a concert ticket, to the place where you go for the concert. And as experiences in the metaverse continue to illustrate this concept, there’s a growing need for solutions that close the gap between the physical and virtual worlds—like expressive Vtubers, live events that star virtual characters, purchasable dances and greetings for avatars and more. And what each of these examples have in common is that they are activated by motion capture.

Motion capture technology records the actions of humans to digitally represent live movement. It takes many forms: suits outfitted with several accelerometers (the same tech that tells your phone if or how you’re holding it), camera-based tracking balls or dots on the body, and camera-based tracking powered by artificial intelligence (like a Snapchat filter). With so many ways to record motion in real time, mocap has become more affordable and accessible than ever—and has far-reaching application across building digital content and experiences.

Realizing the different ways that mocap can impact workflows across MediaMonks, the Labs.Monks have experimented with the Xsens MVN Link suit to better understand its accuracy in sensing fine movements. This took shape in a prototype VR experience in which users can play a digital instrument simply by moving their body. Learnings from that experience will help the Labs.Monks assist other teams interested in using mocap.

Streamlined Virtual Production

The history of motion capture correlates with the history of film, from rotoscoping footage by hand in traditional animation to an actor’s digital embodiment of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and more. So it should be no surprise that one of the most obvious uses of mocap is in virtual production, eliminating the need to shoot in front of a green screen within a large studio setting.

“For one of our clients, we are doing a hybrid type of editing that mixes offline capture, VFX and animation,” says Cas de Brouwer, Head of Post Production. “We end up doing a lot of rotoscoping to add in the animation, but with motion capture, we can really benefit.” With tabletop production, for example, motion data captured from a robotic arm-mounted camera can be ported to Adobe After Effects to add in virtual objects and animations that are lined up with the camera’s perspective.

Patrick Staud, Chief Creative Technologist, has already experimented with mocap-enhanced virtual production for automotive clients—for example, using mocap in pre-production to capture actors’ movements and then reflect them on the car’s surface in post. But the technology can have a greater impact within fully virtual environments.

New Efficiencies in Animation

 When it comes to efficiencies that are unlocked by motion capture, animation can benefit substantially. Animation as a capability is often the through line in producing digital experiences that range from original content to immersive metaverse environments. And while manually drawn or rigged animation isn’t going anywhere—the medium thrives on exaggeration and stylization best produced by an artist’s hand, rather than verisimilitude—in some cases, closely mimicking mannerisms is key.

This was true in a virtual performance starring Post Malone that we helped animate to celebrate Pokémon’s 25th anniversary. The singer’s movements were translated into the virtual environment through motion capture. “With live events on hold, this was a great opportunity to use motion capture to create an animated experience to engage our audience,” says Jessica Norton, Executive Producer, Experiential at Media.Monks.

Head of Animation.Monks Thymo van der Vlies notes how representing Post Malone realistically was key, despite his stylized look: “Because he is a celebrity, you want to capture his exact movements—he holds the microphone in a very specific way, for instance,” he says. “Use of motion capture is a huge time saver if we need to capture realistic movement.” 

This same need makes it useful for research and pre-visualization: “For one of our projects, a fun part of the process was that we had animators filming each other falling down to capture what the movements looked like,” says Van der Vlies.

Immersive Live Events Combine Fantasy and Reality

Animation and virtual production come together to create live experiences starring virtual characters who can be interacted with in real time. “We’re creating images in ways that in the past would take months of post-production work—and now they are live,” says Director of Creative Solutions Lewis Smithingham, who recently worked with motion capture to bring an animated character into three dimensions for the first time during a live event. “Audiences have a higher bar for quality than ever before, and these tools allow us to deliver them live.”

In addition to breaking the boundaries between fantasy and reality, motion capture used in a live events setting can also bridge together time and space. Actors can be recorded in separate locations and brought together digitally—a solution to working within ongoing pandemic restrictions as well as talents’ busy schedules. Connectivity like 5G ultra-wideband and multi-access edge computing can reduce onsite processing and latency to ensure both talents can interact with one another—and audiences—in real time no matter the location.

Toward Future Innovation

The uses of motion capture are far-reaching, and the Labs.Monks continue to experiment and find ways for the technology to become integrated within our diverse production workflows. At the same time, the team is keen to forecast future innovations and their practical applications. “Labs has an opportunity to take more risks than other teams,” says Eichhorn. “We’re a little more flexible and have the resources to experiment with things. We can figure out if something is viable without having to invest too many resources.”

Their approach of connecting experimentation with collaboration for category teams—including automotive, fashion and sports—has been crucial in keeping our people and our clients on the bleeding edge of technology. As virtualization continues to shape new ways to interact and engage digitally, the Labs.Monks will continue to connect insights and subject matter expertise in the space.

Rushali and I are both Creative Technologists on the Labs.Monks team, which gives us the opportunity to explore and play with some of the latest digital innovations. A lot of our work is focused on not just exploring emerging technology’s potential, but also making it more accessible and understandable for audiences at all skill levels. As much as we are developers, we’re creatives and creators, too. Because of that, our podcast aims to “scrap the manual” by challenging pre-existing notions of what creativity and technology looks like and can be. You can listen to our first two episodes here.

Since we want to scrap the manual in all senses of the term, our goal is to keep  things informal and fun, because we already have enough seriousness in our lives considering the past two years have taken the world on a ride. Scrap the Manual is the podcast you listen to when you’re up for learning something new but also want some levity in your day. We’ll still be asking the tough questions—no doubt—but we’ll make sure that it’s still easy to listen to and feels like you’re right there in the room with us.

And with that, let me introduce our first two episodes with you to give you a taste of what’s to come—maybe with a dash of FOMO to encourage you to give them a listen. 

Diving Head-First into Industry Challenges

Our first episode follows our “Challenge the Hosts” format, where Rushali and I call on our customized randomizer, a tool that pairs an industry with a challenge, live. Once we have an industry and challenge, we brainstorm solutions on the fly about what we could do to improve it. No pre-scripted material for this one; it’s a 100% off-the-cuff discussion. If you’ve ever wanted to be a fly on the wall observing an R&D team in the heart of a brainstorm, this is the closest you’ll get besides working with us.

During this episode, the randomizer landed on a combo that couldn’t be more relevant as we tackle yet another stage of lockdowns worldwide: COVID-19 (challenge) and art (industry). In this discussion, we explore how the pandemic influenced art throughout the last couple of years, and how it will move forward, too. This was the perfect opportunity for us both to align our shared passion for creativity and technology as the world of fine arts—including museums, art galleries and experiential activations—quickly pivoted and adapted to emerging technology that until now has been waiting for its moment. From exploring NFTs to some of our favorite hybrid installations throughout the past year, we cover a lot of ground in our first episode.

Giving an Inside Look into the Lab

Our second episode takes a different approach, expanding on our recent Labs Report about the metaverse. As we roll out new reports, expect more episodes that dive deeper into some of the concepts explored within. The idea isn’t to repeat ourselves; these episodes instead serve as a companion to the reports by digging in a little deeper.

For the metaverse report, Rushali and I open up on the process (and some comical missteps) in creating a prototype in Roblox that demonstrates the metaverse concept of interoperability. To illustrate what the metaverse could look like if embedded into our daily lives, we built a series of spaces: an admin area to manage one’s personal details and assets; a social environment where you can engage with others or see what they’re up to; and a shopping world where you can try on and buy both physical and virtual goods.

Since we as a team always want to push technology to its limits, we always run into surprising challenges during our prototyping process. Episode two gives listeners an inside look into some of the quirks of the Roblox platform as well as its developer culture—and because Roblox is viewed as a pioneer in the metaverse landscape, our process may give you some insight into what to consider when building your own metaverse experiences.

So, where did we run into some trouble? It turns out we got trolled by young developers more than once… but you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out how. (On that note, you’ll also hear about Rushali’s deep-seated fear of teens—sorry Gen Z, we still love you).

What’s Next?

That’s all for now, but you can look forward to more episodes every other month. In addition to the two formats already mentioned, look forward to our third format: “How do we do this?” where our audience (that means you!) submits ideas to Rushali and I and we put our brains together to figure out how we can make it real. If you already have an idea in mind that you’re just aching to make possible, feel free to email us.

Rushali and I had a lot of fun sitting down to talk about all things creative tech, and we’re just getting started. Remember: this is a podcast for anyone interested in tech—whether you’re a passionate tech evangelist, a creative looking to learn more, or someone who simply wants a behind-the-scenes look into what the Labs.Monks are doing and thinking about. I hope you enjoy our first couple episodes and let us know what you think. Stay tuned for more!

This month we look at how social commerce is playing a role in the holiday shopping season, the influence of TikTok on social app development, and more. Find a quick look—and a link to the insights in full—below.

Brands canceling social media as a statement 

While it seems like everyone is on social media these days, some brands are intentionally absent. We take a look at the decision of Lush to deactivate its social media profiles as a statement on mental health. 

Baby Boomers and Gen X as the newest generation of social users 

The hottest audience on social media might not be who you think it is—Baby Boomers and Gen X. COVID-19 has accelerated digital adoption within both generations, presenting new branding opportunities for marketers in 2022. 

Holiday live-streaming and changing social commerce landscape 

This holiday season, many marketers are looking to shorten the path to purchase. Social commerce and live-streaming opportunities present new purchase opportunities across social platforms. 

The influence of TikTok on social media app development

TikTok has taken the social world by storm and other platforms have taken notice. The latest updates across Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube look to take a page out of TikTok’s short video playbook.

Increasing interactivity on Instagram with ‘Add Yours’ 

This month Instagram launched the ‘Add Yours’ sticker aimed at increasing interactivity between users. We look at how this new feature has been received.