TechWag

Transmutable is a company that offers virtual meeting space, and looks like a fantastic way of approaching multiple communities. From virtual schools, to virtual meetings, this is one of those unlimited applications. By that, we mean it is only limited by your imagination. While folks thought that meetings via teleconferencing was rocket science 8 years ago, the same holds true for virtual meeting space today.

Transmutable via their web site Tomorrowspace.com provides a bridge between participant and leader, in a way that is much more approachable than live meeting. When we went through their web site and took at look at their “spaces”, we were very impressed with the potential of the technology.

Look for the video interview in about 2 weeks with Transmutable.

Techwag: What do you do, and what makes you unique in your space?

Transmutable : We’re building a series of goal oriented web applications which merge 2D and 3D media. Our first application, Tomorrow Space (http://tomorrowspace.com/), provides online event halls for the growing number of people who organize online events like CD listening parties, company meetings, online learning classes, or who just want to gather a group remote friends together.

Unlike the “world as canvas” products like Second Life or There.com which require you to download and install a fat client, register for an account, and then go through a 45 minute orientation session, our applications are available in your web browser and are designed to be instantly usable. For example, Tomorrow Space event organizers can choose to open their events to the public and attendees can just browse to the event URL and enter the event.

Techwag: Where do you see your technology space going in the next 18 months?

Transmutable : Right now, there is a boom in funding for virtual world companies so we will see many questionable businesses get funded and a lot of spectacular failures. Once that cycle is on the downswing the capable companies will focus on the aspects of online spaces, which have provided actual value for their customers: online events, casual gaming, “dating”, and a few others. We’re not a game or “adult content” company, but there are plenty of applications of online spaces which have broad appeal once you move them to the larger audience on the web.

Techwag: What makes your software/business/idea compelling?

Transmutable: Transmutable is a new form of web development house that uses cloud computing like Amazon’s EC2 to build applications which can scale to support millions of users but which don’t require millions of dollars in hardware purchases up front. We can spin servers up and down as our customer demand changes which is means massive savings for applications, which have high peak usage hours.

Because we are using off-the-shelf web servers and standards for development of online spaces, we are much more nimble than the companies, which roll their own platform from scratch. We are seeing a lot of craziness like the Second Life grid, which has a server to user ratio of about 1 to 10. Can you imagine a web server that could only support 10 or 20 people? Since we use standard web languages and patterns, we can attract talented people from the huge pool of available web developers instead of the tiny pool of virtual world engineers.

Techwag: What experience does your management team/board of advisors have in this space?

I’ve (Trevor Smith) had an early role in three tech startups (Mindspring, Be, and i-drive) in roles ranging from customer support to development team leader, and at Xerox PARC I spent five years helping people take their visions with 5 to 10 year timelines and convert them to working prototypes. While I was at (Xerox) PARC, I met the two people who would later become my CFO and CTO, Drs. Nicolas Ducheneaut and Ian Smith.

In addition to holding a business degree, Nicolas runs the very successful PlayOn project, which has been researching social patterns in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) so he is an expert in how people experience online spaces.

Ian Smith has a PhD in computer science from Georgia Tech and has considerable experience building large scale systems. I convinced him to give up a plush, safe job at Intel Research to come run the technology side of our little startup. He has a deep understanding of systems design which I sometimes find somewhat scary, so I’m glad that he’s taken on the risk of startup life.

Techwag: How hard has it been to find the right people to help you accomplish your vision?

Transmutable: The management team is made up of people I’ve known and worked with for 5+ years, so finding them wasn’t a problem. Seattle has provided a good pool of services for us, and I had no problem finding an attorney or CPA. We are using contract artists and freelance designers because the back end technology for 3D spaces required quite a bit of development before it was ready for content. We’re keeping the team small to give us a longer runway without taking on VC funding, though that hasn’t stopped them from knocking on the door every few weeks.

Techwag: If you had the perfect job candidate what would they look like, what skills would they bring to the table?

Transmutable: Though it seems like most of the capable 3D artists are happily employed by the ad or games industry, we are looking for artists who are energized by the idea of building web-weight environments, which will be used by millions of people. There is a very specific skill to building our spaces, which are not quite architecture and are not quite game levels but which share characteristics which each.

Techwag: Who else do you compete with? What is your goal for building a “mass effect” and generate buzz?

Transmutable: Though there are other online event systems like WebEx, I see Tomorrow Space more as a complimentary application to people’s current web media. For example, we have worked a bit with podcasters who already have active communities around their weekly program and their web forum but who want to occasionally bring them all together for a real time event. So, they announce the event for a few weekly podcasts, then link to the event page from their blog and everyone shows up to talk about the podcast and to get to know each other.

In addition to blogging extensively about the company and products and appearing at conferences, we are running events during “real” events like the Macworld keynote and the presidential debates. Our application is a bit viral because we’ve found that once someone attends an event they often think of several events that they want to host. We make it very easy to get started (no 3D building skills required) and because we run off-the-shelf web platforms we can charge substantially less than virtual worlds like Second Life or There.com.

Techwag: What would you like to say to our audience?

Transmutable: Take a look at the web applications you’re using every day and ask yourself whether you’d like to bring that community together in an online space. it’s really surprising how many of the essential web apps would be better with light-weight shared spaces like those of Tomorrow Space: http://tomorrowspace.com/

We would like to thank Trevor Smith from Transmutable for being available for this interview, again look again at this site in about 2 weeks for the video interview and some cool walk through’s of their work.

Tags: web 2.0, education, technology, award, fun, idea, Participation, business, Cool Tools //