Disclosure: Nvidia is a client of the author.
Next week at Siggraph, Nvidia will be talking about its Omniverse offering, which contrasts sharply with the much-overhyped metaverse. What makes Nvidia’s effort powerful isn’t just that it’s being wrapped with services from companies like Siemens and used for cutting-edge autonomous factories like BMW’s latest, but its ability to anticipate and correct problems early on before they result in cost overruns or injuries.
I also wish more companies understood is how much richer Nvidia’s presentations are in general because they use tools like Omniverse to create them. (This video of the last GTC keynote demonstrates the point.) Rather than relying on static word slides, the video experience from an Nvidia keynote better conveys the message while keeping the audience glued to the screen in a way that few speakers do today, proving you don’t need to be Steve Jobs if you have the right tools and spend the time on multimedia tools to entertain and inform.
Nvidia at Siggraph
Nvidia is expected to talk about its progress with its Omniverse tool and the short-term future of these efforts. Much of what is driving the advance of Omniverse at the moment are the underlying concepts of digital twins and AI — one can’t reliably exist without the other. To be viable, digital twins not only have to initially emulate the real world but must stay connected to their physical counterparts to assure related simulations can accurately predict future events. Without that connection, any variances between the physical element being emulated and the digital twin will introduce a growing number of unknown errors, which will reduce the accuracy of the result at an increasing rate because of the disconnect.
This is particularly problematic if, when used for factories and automobiles, the system attempts to come up with methodologies that blend these two elements. The result might not adequately predict future problems, and decision makers would have no way to understand the related risks in believing something that’s increasingly unreliable.
AI is critical not only to making sure the physical world and its related digital twin remain connected (by bridging information gaps sensors can’t yet collect), but also by predicting the future behavior of these elements so problems can be identified early on. Nvidia’s approach to aggressively use AI in its Omniverse tool should provide a far higher degree of accuracy and reliability to any related metaverse simulation, which translates to more reliable outcomes.
Nvidia’s presentation process
Even if you have the best tool available, it won’t make much difference if you can’t sell it. Nvidia’s heavy use of graphics during presentations has always given it a competitive advantage. These tools make presentations more entertaining and compelling, which has helped the company move ahead of rivals and drive new markets such as autonomous machines (including automobiles), the metaverse, and broad AI. With these tools, Nvidia can recreate much of the magic master presenters like the late Apple CEO and P. T. Barnum delivered through oration alone. It can show you what their version of the future will be — and make it real.
And if people believe in a future, much like what happened with Jobs and the iPhone, they will make it happen. If they don’t, you end up with something like the LG Prada — it was which was just like the iPhone but failed in market. Nvidia’s success isn’t just tied to what it builds, but how it presents what it builds. If more companies understood that dynamic, more new and potentially revolutionary products would succeed.
With that in mind, Nvidia’s presentation at Siggraph is important for two reasons. First, it represents the cutting edge of what is working in the metaverse and addresses the growing belief (thanks to overhype on the consumer side) that the metaverse is more smoke than mirrors. And it makes the case with presentations for audiences that are still largely remote 9with attention spans that are exceedingly short).
Presentation matters
In short, Nvidia’s success isn’t just in building revolutionary offerings, but in presenting them in ways that are compelling and interesting, better assuring a future that benefits the company.
I wish more firms would emulate Nvidia. If they did, not only would I be more entertained (and yes, sometimes it is about me) but their potential for success would be tremendous. Nvidia is turning the metaverse into a powerful productivity tool by both building a great toolset and presenting the technology in a way that will get it adopted.
This isn’t multiple choice. You have to do both to ensure the benefits the tool promises will be achieved.
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