Me: Hi John, it’s great pleasure to meet you and know more about ViVi party! Thank you for making the time for me. I’ll do a quick and brief introduction of myself. I'm currently pursuing my MFA degree at California College of Arts and I’m in my thesis year, focusing on the topic of building a more humane virtual workspace. One of the problem I found during remote working is that people don't have this kind of transition time. So basically we we wake up and then we brush our teeth and wash our faces and then we sit in front of our desks. There's no this commute time we used to have and maybe people used to hate commute because it takes a lot of time but when when we actually lost it, some people found themselves missing that period of time of the day. Part of the reason is that, it is the time that people can get mentally prepared for their day. There's also no transition time during the work, like a bathroom break, or a coffee break. So I think a lot of social aspects are missing from the remote working so that's why I'm doing my thesis around the topic of innovative teleconferencing tool. The reason I reached out, well part of it it’s because this is one of my assignments, but more importantly, I want to take advantage to interview some professionals that is in this industry. So yeah, that’s some information about myself and I guess I'll start with my questions. Can you first briefly just talk about how ViVi works?

John: Sure, well, the way it usually works is that generally we tried to build it, so it's super intuitive and easy to use, and that guests can move around freely from room to room. They can have one-on-one conversations. They can meet in small groups, larger groups, and create their own rooms, which it looks like you did by creating a room and inviting whichever guests they want into that room. There are also some privacy features associated with that. You can leave it open and anybody can join your room or you can make it private and lock it in and it'll just be you and whoever you invited or you could review who's knocking on your door and either let them in or not let them in. So there's some different options there and we built some other rooms where you can do a slideshow. If you went on a trip or it’s someone's birthday you want to show a bunch of photos of that person, you can build a slideshow pretty easily. We're in the process of creating a photo booth where you and guests can take a picture with a fun background and be in a photo together, and get a pdf of that. We're working on getting some music in the background. One other thing we've created is a trivia game in the format of template to play different trivia games. People also used it for, like, murder mysteries, where use different rooms with different groups together. So we're trying to make it like a fun platform for events, for social events, where it's not you know static and business like it is with Zoom, but instead, we try to make it as easy and intuitive as Zoom. So that's how ViVi generally works.

Me: So I guess there are different functions to different rooms. As I see there are a lot of options, and you can even create your customized rooms. I assume that each room has its own specific functions, is that right?

John: Yeah, right, you create different room and you can name them. You can pick a background or you can upload your own background, your own photos. So there's some flexibility there.

Me: When I was selecting the rooms, I wasn't really sure which what kind of functions I will have, if I choose this kind of room. So is there like a description online that I can find about what kind of rooms are for my events?

John: Nah, not yet. We are trying to set up different rooms, like there is a center stage, which is a type of room used for presentations with a lot of people that. There's a regular room, there's, you know, slideshow rooms, all those sort of options. I think trivia is another room that we have.

Me: So you are imagining this will be also for business use or just for social events?

John: Well, we were not really trying to target the business users. It may be used for people posting social happy hours for remote workers, but we're really not trying to be a platform for companies or work. It's really for social engagement.

Me: I see. When you actually hosting the event like, for example if I'm in the playroom, if there is one of such rooms, my guess is that there will be video games that we can play together?

John: Yeah, we have it set up, so you can play trivia, but we don't have other games set up yet. But you can come up with your own games and come up with your own kind of set up of number of rooms and placing people in different rooms. The host can move from room to room and give instructions, say okay, everybody goes back to center stage now, and things like that.

Me: Wow, I’m really impressed! I think the trailer didn't really show the essence of ViVi. When I first saw the trailer, I felt like it was a lot like Zoom. I know that I can create new rooms and stuff. But when I actually tried out, like just now, I was really impressed by how flexible the platform is. I really like it.

John: Yeah, check it out tomorrow. It should be updated. They are doing an update today. Tomorrow you can play with it to see more.

Me: I see. Also I saw the description of below the trailer about the origin of the name Vivi. Would you like to talk more about the origin?

John: I'm in a special event business and one of the founders of a company called “Bright.com”, which is about event rentals. We rent a lot of tables, chairs, glasswares, and everything you need for a party throughout California and Arizona. So we have a lot of employees, a lot of trucks, a lot of warehouses, full of equipments, and putting on a lot of different events. During Covid, our business started to slow down quite a bit. So we were thinking, Gosh, how is the event world going to change and how is it going to be different after Covid? Certainly there been a lot of online virtual events but there haven't been many hybrid events historically and so I believe that in moving forward, there's a lot of clients are going to be offered the opportunity to have a hybrid event. Maybe it’s a wedding , or a birthday party where not everyone can attend. But in the future, I believe there will be a lot more attendance virtually in that event. We’ll have a combination of both live and hybrid or at least there'd be a hybrid function to it. So you know that's different than the way parties has historically been, because you would either attend the party or you wouldn’t. It’s really binary. But now, since everybody is very fluent with Zoom and other platforms and very comfortable with it, there's going to be a hybrid component or virtual component to a live event. So that's why we created ViVi, for both hybrid event and for virtual events. We recently hired a CEO who will really take it to market and we're looking to raise some funding from Venture capitalists. We are starting to promote the platform to event planners for hybrid events, to HR departments who have remote worker, or to Universities, who have different reunions and functions like that. So those are some of the target groups we are going after.

Me: When you say hybrid, you mean like the hybrid of virtual and physical space, right?

John: Yeah, so physical spaces with live events and have, like TV screens with ViVi on it, or on iPads where someone can have a one-on-one conversation with someone who is virtual. There may also be cameras that can live stream the ceremony or different parts of a live event.

Me: I see. Would you like to share any fun stories during the process.

John: We’ ve tested it with a lot of different events, birthday parties, people gatherings. It’s always fun to see people for the first time moving around from room to room. I think some of the fun things that happen when people create room and try to attract everybody to their room and someone will create the funnest room or more fun room and try and get people to show up. So that that's been that kind of a fun part of it.

Me: How long has been ViVi been published?

John: We started in September, so I guess it’s 9 months that it is been under development.

Me: I saw on the pop-up window when I created the room just now, saying things like the event is only for 50 guests. So I guess there's a capacity limit for number of participants?

John: Yeah, we have different pricing plans. You can host a free event, where you can have 40 minutes and up to 25 people. There is the regular event and that's up to 50 people. In a premium event, which cost more, you can have a hundred or more people. That's kind of the way we’ve priced it so far.

Me: I guess that’s all my questions and thank you so much for taking the time to have this interview with me. I really appreciate it. I’ll definitely try out ViVi with my friends!

John: Yeah, no problem. Try it tomorrow when the updates are finished.

Me: Sure, thank you again. It was a pleasure talking with you.

John: No problem. Let me know if you have further questions.