My presentation from Liege Web Fest 2016
The Women in VR movement in the US is super popular, is growing quickly and a great resource to the VR community as a whole. European women in VR, AR & other future audiovisual technologies are numerous as well, but should unite to identify other women in VR, to support each other, and in general to ensure the VR/AR industry in Europe is as female/minority friendly as other regions are across the world.
The start of a new medium as VR provides an unprecedented opportunity to structurally improve the industry from the get go. VR innovation happens today, and we need to ensure diversity, equality and inclusion are cornerstones of this booming new industry. In the presentation, data is highlighted that shows that women in tech are more competent and female film directors in Europe are more successful. More women in VR today will accelerate the success of VR in general.
6. Why?
□ 1 out of 5 film directors = female
□ 18% tech founders = female
□ VR innovation happens now
□ Opportunity to structurally
improve a new industry from the
start
□ Ensuring diversity, equality &
inclusion are cornerstones of VR
□ More women in VR will accelerate
the success of VR
8. Gender
equality with
directors □ Study, 2006-2013
□ European Women’s Audiovisual
Network (EWA)
□ Worldwide growing concern
about the marginalisation of
female directors in the EU film
culture
□ Powerful impact of the
audiovisual media on society
□ Media content will be different if
its creators are diverse
9. Female under-
represent -ation
on all levels □ 4 out of 5 films are not directed by
women
□ 84% funding go to films not
directed by women
□ Affecting the willingness to invest
□ % female graduating and % female
directors ⇒ talent exists
11. Female directed
films are more
successful
□ More (83%) films made by
women are shown at festivals
□ More (51%) films made by
women are nominated for or win
awards
13. Some stats
□ Tech: 26% are women
□ Female founders in US (2015) :
24%
□ Female founders, exl. USA:
■ 9,5% in 2009
■ 18% in 2014
□ 2015 Global Startup Ecosystem:
▣ 9% in Berlin
▣ 13% in Amsterdam
▣ 18% in London
▣ 21% in Paris
14. Some stats
□Female VCs (US): 4,2%
□What stage (US)?
■ 19,4% Seed/angel
■ 13% A/B
■ 11,8% C
15. Female led
startups are
more likely to
succeed
□ Innovative firms with > women
in top management are more
profitable
□ Companies with > gender
diversity have > revenues,
>customers, >market share &
>profits
□ When it comes to leadership
skills, men are more confident,
women are more competent.
(source Adam Grant & Sheryl Sandberg)
Hello everyone my name is Leen and here to present to you today the importance of the Women in VR movement, globally and the one for Europe.
Before we dive into why the movement but also the momentum are important, first a bit about me.
I am Leen Segers, and previous to co-founding EEYOU and LucidWeb, i have worked for more than 10 years in consumer media.
I started my career with Accenture, followed by 4 years at the social media site Netlog, and the next 4 years in London in the OTT space, or online video.
In London, I consulted European media companies in how to better upload, manage and distribute their video content online.
I moved back to Brussels two years ago and joined the media publication Tech.eu.
In december last year, I experience for the first time the Samsung Gear VR and I immediately was hooked.
As most content that was available in the Oculus store, was US flavoured, I co-founded EEYOU. EEYOU is a curated destination for VR content from Europe. It is our objective to offer high quality content from Europe, but with international appeal.
While talking to these content creators, we identified a huge bottleneck for VR content to reach a larger audience, distribution.
I joined hands with Thomas Balouet, who has been working on WebVR since 2014 to cofound LUCIDWEB. With lucidweb we have just released the private alpha of a B2B platform called reVeRies. You can find more info on both offerings if you visit my twitter profile.
Without going to deep on the VR topic itself, a lot of people ask me why VR is the next big thing.
I personally consider VR as a new platform shift, a new medium.
At IBC in Amsterdam, Gregg Katano, the guy behind unofficial cardboard and many other initiatives pioneering the VR movement, he used the above quote as a confirmation and the need for a new platform. I believe it is a very good recap on why VR is happening.
Another reason why I believe VR will be successful is because there is a growing movement that believes that wealth is no longer defined by material things or possessions but by unique experiences, the talks we have, the people we meet. With VR, people should all have access to the richness of these experiences.
And that’s why we believe the current distribution landscape is too fragmented, too difficult to access for content creators as well as their audience so we have launched LucidWeb. Our mission is to democratize VR discovery. Again, if you want more info, please feel to ask questions via twitter or direclty after the talks.
Hence the Women in VR Movement. Why is it important?
To proof its importance, we should look into some current ratios in the most relevant industries. As VR is a new sector, we don’t have access yet to the ratio of women participating today. Then again, women who start working in VR expect to come normally from the film industry, gaming industry or the more general tech world.
I looked at some numbers for Europe and as for:
Film: only 1 out of 5 film directors is female
As for tech, only 18% of female tech founders are women.
These ratios are horrible and it’s the ambition of Women in VR groups worldwide to make sure this ratios don’t continue to involve as they did.
With a new medium as VR, with a new platform shift, we receive the unique opportunity to structurally improve industries.
As VR innovation is happening now, it’s important we have as much women as man at the negotiating table, and this on all levels and all companies involved in VR: women working in content production, in VR hardware as well as software, from developers, to marketing and back to female founders.
It’s the women in VR movement’s objective to ensure diversity, equality & inclusion are cornerstones of VR
More women stepping into to film or tech, is not only serving a cause of equality and inclusion, no, research shows that women active in both industries help build more successful businesses
Lets look first at film.
A large study of the EWA, the European Women’s Audiovisual network, conducted between 2006-2013, came to some interesting conclusions.
They organised the study because of the worldwide growing concern about the marginalisation of female directors in our film culture.
As the audiovisual media has a powerful impact on our society as a whole, its important that its creators are divers.
Let’s look at the some numbers
The report shows that there is a significant under-representation of female directors in all levels of the industry, even though there is an almost equal share of women graduating from film schools.
• Only one in five films in the seven European countries studied is directed by a woman (21%). This means four out five films are NOT directed by a woman.
• The vast majority of the funding resources (namely 84%) go into films that are NOT directed by women.
• Low funding perpetuates the scarcity of female-directed films in circulation, in turn affecting the markets’ willingness to invest and thus creating a vicious circle.
• There is a significant difference between the proportion of female directors graduating from film schools and entering the film industry (44%) and the overall proportion of female directors working in the industry (24%).
The table below shows that the share of female directors ranges between 18.2% in Austria and 36.4% in Sweden. Sweden’s figure stands out and affects EWA’s European average, which at 24.4% is high in relation to four of the other countries
But for the small percentage of women that do show persistence and become a director, how do they do?
More films made by women are shown at festivals (either national or international) in proportion to the overall number of productions. This means that of all films made by women 83% (4 out of 5) are shown at national or international festivals,
while only 73% of the films made by men are shown at festivals.
Overall, of all films made by women about half (51%), are either nominated for or win awards. In
comparison, only 45% of films directed by men achieve this target.
The stats are a combination of international and non US stats.
Internationally 26% of all people working in tech, hence startups, the large software companies etc, 26% is female.
As for the percentage of female founders in tech, 24% is the number for the US, 18% outside the US.
Based upon the global startup ecosystem report, the numbers differ greatly comparing the most important EU cities, from only 9% in berlin to 21% in paris
Again, like with the film industry, research this time done by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook and Adam grant, concluded that companies with women on board are more succesfull.
In the next slides I will provide a brief overview of different initiatives, mostly in the US and the UK, hence why I have co-founded together with Screen.Brussels the Women in VR Europe initiative.
The primary objective of these groups at this stage is to increase the network, identify women active in VR, help each other out, organise meetups, and in this way inspire and welcome more women to join the VR industry.
http://www.ewawomen.com/uploads/files/Exec_summary%20Berlin16.pdf
http://www.ewawomen.com/uploads/files/MERGED_Press-2016.pdf
Today is the moment for VR to intentionally diversify because it is today that we must innovate VR’s content. Who can build better content creation tools and experiences? The more diverse the participants in the creative process and the more we collaborate over compete, the more successful we will be, however counterintuitive.
Nonny de la Pena:
Nonny de la Peña, founder of Emblematic Group. Considered the Godmother of Virtual Reality by more than a few people, de la Peña can be found on any list of notable women in virtual reality. Her VR experience, Hunger in Los Angeles was one of the first forays into using VR as a tool for empathy: de la Peña wanted to show what it was like to stand in line at a food bank in L.A.
Liv Erickson:
Virtual Reality Developer at Microsoft & Co-Founder of ARVR Academy. Erickson is a virtual and augmented reality evangelist and developer at Microsoft. She has experience building for both virtual and augmented platforms, including the Oculus Rift and Meta Glass, and taught an introductory virtual reality development course at the University of Bremens Informatica Feminale summer program this past August.
Angie Smets, executive producer for Sony’s game studio Guerrilla Games. The Playstation VR has released with glowing reviews. Smets played a huge role in not only developing the games but also facilitating the growth and development of a more immersive experience.
Tanya laird: Creative technologist/Franchise strategist/Transmedia storyteller/VR Producer founder @DigitalJamLtd. London.
