2019 Was Truly Amazing for FWH

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What a year 2019 has been for Friends With Holograms.

First and foremost, a huge shoutout to everyone in the FWH family that has made this all possible. Pamela Jaber, the head of ideation and the true MVP of the company. Louisa Spring, who hustled and sold and put headsets on a lot of people. Robert Lester and Neil Redding, for great advice and creative input. Kevin Cornish and Gabo Arora, for directing the heck out of projects -- we wouldn’t have the accolades we do without your vision and expertise. 

A few highlights from the year:

Soon after we finished chapter one of AvenueS, our point of contact at Accenture went on maternity leave, and we never got word that we had been nominated for the Best VR/AR award at Mobile World Congress. Spoiler alert: we won, and found out via a tweet posted by another team member. Our competition? Just a few little companies you might have heard of, like China Mobile and Huawei. 

The ride didn’t stop there, as AvenueS was a finalist for a SXSW Innovation Award the next month. We spent an amazing afternoon putting close to a thousand people through the experience, and participated in a great panel about how it all came together. 

We made the follow-up chapter over the summer, and the work continues to get amazing feedback. It’s being used in states like Indiana and has been shown around the world. People still cry when they see, and that’s the best feedback we could ask for.

FWH also racked up some amazing accolades our project for DDI, Can’t Win. The piece was named a top HR product by HR Executive, and also got some great features in that publication and in Fortune. The single best piece of feedback remains a user who described it as “not a conversation, but an emotional experience” and went on to make some big changes at his organization.  
 

We also had several amazing speaking engagements, including addressing 250 strategic marketing managers at Coca-Cola, speaking at ARVR Innovate in beautiful Dublin, and doing a great workshop at the NWA Tech Summit in Bentonville, AR. That trip was memorable for a number of reasons, including the fact that we learned what to do to keep safe during a tornado!

VR for training has also had a massive year, as a flood of data about how effective it is has poured forth. At this point, if you’re not making investments in how best to train a team in VR, you are at a very real risk of losing competitive advantage.

As this year comes to a close, we are so excited for what is on the horizon in 2020. A massive thank you to our clients for being great partners and the team for working their guts out.