MEWS 2023: Monaco Welcomes Metaverse Creators from Around the Globe
As all the roads lead to Roma, the ancient said, the second edition of Global leadership summit MEWS makes it clear – from now on, all the phygital roads lead to Monaco.
On the 3-5 of May, Monaco welcomed creators from all over the world for the second edition of MEWS, a Metaverse Entertainment World Summit and Award Show.
Under the High Patronage of H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco, the event was held in the ultra-modern conference center, One Monte Carlo, to be followed by the Awards in one of the most sophisticated locations, the Hotel Hermitage.
With its ‘EYES TO THE FUTURE,’ MEWS has featured cutting-edge companies and professionals from the USA, Italy, Switzerland, Singapore, and New Zealand and showcased groundbreaking immersive Web3 innovations – Metaverses, virtual and augmented reality projects, Avatar creations, and many more. Summit highlights diapason from Art, Fashion and Luxury, Food and Real Estate to Sustainability and Society.
Getting Phygital
‘First of all, we aim to reflect Monaco’s values. Monaco loves Innovation and technological developments. Here is where the professional elite of the industry meets. I consider it like the United Nations of the Internet.’ – Steven Saltzman, Managing Director, Advance Monaco.
The Principality of Monaco is in the avant-garde of global digital trends and invests a lot of resources in its own digital transformation. Monte Carlo’s digital twin DWorld, a Monaco-based startup, is one of the most accurately detailed 3D digital twins ever created. It’s a one-of-a-kind synergetic platform allowing simple and efficient digital data sharing between any level of officials and citizens of the Principality of Monaco. Guess what’s coming next? Economics! These days 22-year-old innovator Manila Di Giovanni, a founder and CEO of DWorld, is working on a start-up creating the world’s first-ever virtual economics for Monaco. Manila is currently the youngest female technopreneur based in Monaco, she won the Rising Star award at the MEWS 2022 and shared her progress at MEWS 2023 as Speaker.
Her senior colleague, Dr. Christina Yan Zhang, who represents Metaverse Institute at MEWS 2023, has started in 2006 by using the world’s first Metaverse platform, looking at ways to develop an international strategy for Universities worldwide. She worked on how to use digital twins in the Metaverse environment to simulate and augment and optimize real-world construction projects. Everything can be simulated before it is constructed, she says. That’s what is called a Smart City. A whole city can be simulated with its ventilation, lightning, fire evacuation, traffic control, preventing of extreme weather, and the whole space design and arrangement to make sure it’s efficient.
We have interviewed Dr. Yan Zhang and a few more major players of ‘the game’ who participated in MEWS 2023 and asked them about the major achievements and the major challenges for the industry. Considering their experience and the fact that their companies are worth billions of dollars on the market, we are utterly confident that our readers will get the deepest insights ever possible. So hop on and hold on, here we go…
‘I think we have to get the world for the industry.’ – John Linden. ’10 million users – that’s a serious game, isn’t it?’ – John Linden, CEO of Mythical Games, USA. He represents the next generation of gaming technology at MEWS 2023. The company became a Sport Award winner with its new game NFL Rivals, which reached half a million users in just the first week of its launch, and the total number of Mythical Games’ users goes to 10 million, as mentioned above.
’10 million should become 100 million very soon, that’s the goal, and we will go to a billion after that!’ – John Linden
The company’s valuation was already estimated at 1,25 billion a couple of years ago, so a billion goals were already achieved in a certain sense, we may say.
‘I personally love where physical and digital are heading together, – John says, – We see just a little bit of phygital now but I’m sure there will be bigger innovation over the next decade. The industry has made a groundbreaking leap within a year and it’s a great chance to share news and ideas with each other here in Monaco.’
The biggest challenge I see is bringing two worlds together – the general mass consumers and the virtual experiences. We are to make sure we can really get the consumers educated enough to be able to use it while not making it too simple so that they would lose interest.’
‘Would you like to own a piece of Kim Kardashian’s new coat, with Web3 it will be possible.’ – Allen Bolden
‘That’s fantastic networking here at MEWS. I like the atmosphere because it allows for everyone to come together for business networking and enjoy Monaco, – says Allen Bolden, technologist, and inventor, founder of IDX, USA, – I’ve been doing vfx (visual effects) all my life, about 20 years. I’ve started doing animation for vfx using different technologies other than those they use now for creating Metaverses, and I must say we were very much ahead of the time considering what I see today in the industry.’
He is a smiley guy who created vfx for Titanic, Transformers, Ironman, and many others people love around the globe. And with his passion and experience in creating state-of-the-art adventures on screen, we trust he can make us believe an immersive experience is more real than the real world.
Gianna Valintina, at Spatial
It’s all about Art…
‘We focus on art and storytelling in immersive experiences, – Gianna Valintina shared with us about their concept at Spatial, where she works as a Director Of Marketing & Partnerships, – Art is pivotal and the foundation of this technology, we believe. We feel happy that art and culture can rise to the top and be recognised at this prestigious event under the High Patronage of Prince Albert. Talking about Metaverse we truly believe that art and architecture is the foundation which attracts and inspires people even through the web browser or a phone.’
‘We are making immersive art accessible. It’s a breakthrough fact that with Spatial you can click a web link and be immersed into art and culture from anywhere in the world. Before the developers could only provide games and apps one had to download. With this new technology, we remove the barriers and unleash the potential that everyone can participate.
Moving forward with this technology the industry aims to be sure that all people in the world have access to it. Now we have the opportunity to talk to other humans to visualize our ideas and our dreams. We didn’t have a chance to have this voice before but now we all have a chance to build it together and think about our data, our privacy, etc. Everyone is to participate in this mission.’ – Gianna Valintina. So where does it all go?
‘Education should move to the Metaverse on the final day, on Friday.’ – Dr. Christina Yan Zhang. ‘And today is Wednesday,’ – she claims.
Indeed, the pandemic facilitated a great leap towards education going online – in 2020, the EdTech industry experienced an explosive growth caused by the lockdown. This opened up new opportunities for online educational projects and startups.
Web2 is the Internet we know. Web3 is a totally new Internet version. So-called Semantic Web, Web3 is meant to automatically interface with systems, people, and home devices. And the next one is planned to be Symbiotic Web4.0 where humans and machines can interact in symbiosis, which is still an underground idea in progress in the context of Artificial Intelligence.
Responsible AI – is the mission possible?
‘Responsible AI is very difficult to achieve, – Dr. Christina Yan Zhang shares, – Let’s try to assume and analyze how much Google and Microsoft are making a balance between commercial success and ethical standards. If they are following the ethical rules of AI development they are apparently going to lose commercial success, their share price will go down. And as leaders, especially business leaders, very influential shareholders, they are undoubtedly looking to have KPI…
Metaverse is like any kind of technological innovation, it’s not perfect, it’s not going to solve all our issues and bring any panacea.
The whole idea about the Metaverse started in 1992 by Neal Stephenson in his book ‘Snow Crush’, already 40 years ago. And the world’s first Metaverse was called ‘Second Life’ and it was created by Linden Lab based in San Francisco in 2003.
The Godfather of Ai Doctor Jeffrey Hinton has just recently resigned from Google and the reason he resigned is because he feels extremely strongly that it is time we really develop responsible AI,’ – Dr. Christina Yan Zhang highlights the most problematic and hidden from sight of the consumer zone of the topic, – He has three areas of main concerns.
The first area is actually he believes that AI can be used by people who are let’s say not so responsible so that can cause a lot of damage to the human race.
The second concern he has is that while AI is replacing most of the people’s jobs which makes a really bad social impact so a lot of people will be unhappy. How to deal with that?
Without jobs, people have no confidence. Let’s go back to the Great Depression in America. President Franklin Roosevelt solved the issue by creating massive infrastructure projects for building roads, bridges, buildings and planting trees so that people could not lose their confidence and survive.
The third area of his concern is very very controversial. He believes that the human race has now come to the stage when the alternative AI starts to exceed human intelligence. That means a point of singularity is near.
How would society respond to that? Would we be prepared and figure out a way to live in harmony or would we have a situation like in the famous movie Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger and we’ll have really bad robots fighting against good robots trying to protect the human race in terms of global survival?
Jeffrey Hinton’s resignation is causing worldwide debate regarding chat GBT, alternative AI, and many more. There’s a huge amount of investment in space. The issue is once AI becomes self-aware and starts experiencing feelings, what the relationships between humans and robots will be? But here we are to ask the question: how do we make sure that the existence of the human race will be sustainable?
Compared to last year, investment increased by four times, Doctor shares.
‘According to JP Morgan, the Metaverse market is estimated to become a trillion-dollar industry, and Monaco is at the center of the Web3 movement with their support of Meta Entertainment World and MEWS is further confirmation of this business opportunity.’
— Steven Saltzman, Managing Director, Advance Monaco Quote from the MEWS website.
Last but not least, ladies might appreciate news about fashion getting virtual. One of the MEWS exhibitors, Phygicode represents itself as an incubator for brand exploration. It has showcased a one-of-a-kind piece of clothing that was reimagined in phygital form. Obviously, we would need to wear something in Metaverse and we wonder what the price will be.
Finally after all there was a fabulous gala dinner in the presence of His Highness Prince Albert II, where guests enjoyed celebrating their achievements, wearing beautiful physical garments and sparkling jewelry, enjoying A-list immersive entertainment by Les French Twins, exclusive food by world-renowned Michelin-starred Chef Yannick Alléno. We are more than excited for next year’s 3d edition of MEWS with more amazing insights to come.