There was a moment at the 2016 Sprott Symposium where I was chatting with a friend in front of the Ivanhoe Mining booth, watching a short video playing on loop and trying to figure out where exactly the core samples on the table came from. I commented that, someday, the booth would have a VR headset we could use to find the answers. My friend agreed and said "if anyone is going to do it, it would be Friedland."

The basic idea of using a VR headset for a company's promotional material is pretty straightforward. The company can tell their story, same as before, but now use a broad set of graphics to help make things pop. For example, a 3D computer-generated image of a mineral deposit that can be viewed from different angles, or a 360˚ video of a mine tour.  

I, for one, have already started to notice more sophisticated animations in corporate videos. These fancy graphics are great, and I think they will prove valuable to geologists, mine engineers, and investors.

However, I think it's fair to say that these new graphics are just more sophisticated versions of the printed maps and pictures that mining promoters have used for decades at conferences. As such, any fancy new graphics cannot replace an important thing that happens at conferences: people asking questions.

I wonder if new media tools, like VR, will help or hinder us to ask questions that take the discussion off the company's prepared script? A pre-recorded video forces the audience to follow a fixed narrative, which misses the magic that can happen in an actual conversation between people at a conference. Will we find ways to use virtual reality that allow us to go off the standard storyline, or will it end up simply as a fancier version of the same old corporate video?

Part of the answer may be that virtual reality is, so far, a private activity. The VR headset is a pretty isolated place, in some sense. That contrasts with the value of the crowd for a conference and a market. I wonder if the future holds some exciting kind of group VR environment? Disney, eat your heart out!

As I go forward to a trio of back-back conferences in Vancouver this month, I will be searching for a glimpse of the future of the conference booth and will let you know what I find. Until then, from Peter Bell.