#51: Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning)

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:00:00]:
We hope to stay at the forefront of learning. I think that's, that's really what our passion is, whatever that means. So we want to be able to deliver the best combination of technology and learning that we can possibly do. And I think, you know, staying up staying at the forefront of that has always been essentially the passion. So and for a while, for a while, that was that was learning management. It started with elearning. And now we've we've taken this this back to how can we get the most out of learning and deliver the most with it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:32]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the lay of the land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern. And today we are learning about the future of learning. I had the pleasure of speaking with Bob Baskette, who is the founder and CTO of Roundtable Learning, a company based here in Cleveland, working to push the boundaries of how learning can work in practice. Roundtable Learning has reimagined what learning is by building innovative training solutions that leverage immersive learning and extended reality technology like virtual reality and augmented reality. This allows people to gain real experience by going through situations virtually that would be too costly or too dangerous, or just too difficult to replicate in the real world, like complex factory processes or active shooter scenarios, for example.

Jeffrey Stern [00:01:34]:
To help organizations enrich their current learning programs, Roundtable has developed custom learning content for corporations like Amazon, Walmart, Kellogg's, Cox Communications, and more to help them engage with and develop their workforce. It is pretty amazing to see the future being built by a local company and to hear the nuance and detail of how roundtable learning is doing it. So please enjoy my conversation with Bob Baskette. So I've been very much, looking forward to this conversation. One of the things that has always been really interesting to me is these kind of technologies on the forefront of progress and innovation and VR, AR. I keep you know, I hear about them all the time, and it's it's very cool to find a company in in roundtable learning and the work that you're doing that is is putting it into practice and has found a real business model around it. And so I've I've been very excited to understand and and learn more about how the company has evolved and and the work that you're all doing and your own personal journey into, you know, bringing this all together, all of which we'll explore over the course of this conversation. But thanks for for coming on, Bob.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:02:51]:
Hey. Thank you very much, Jeff.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:53]:
So I I'd love to to start with just kind of laying the context and giving everyone a sense for where you're coming from and where roundtable learning has come from. But maybe just to set that context, let's start with a brief overview of how you describe roundtable learning today. And we'll kind of work our our way backwards from there.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:03:14]:
Alright. Well yeah. Okay. So it goes roundtable learning is a full service learning and development group that leverages immersive learning technology to develop learning content that achieves real performance improvements. So that's a lot of words.

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:30]:
Yeah.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:03:31]:
So what it what we're doing is we're essentially identifying all modalities of learning. And, you know, we really identify first and foremost as a learning company, and, we bring the technology with us. So we have, fantastic people that work here as, instructional designers, e learning developers, as well as, you know, the engineering side with, 3 d modeling and software development. So but we we lead with that learning, and and part of that is delivering and and finding ways to measure that performance. And we do that in AR and VR. We do that in, traditional learning, and we do that with tools that we developed to deliver those as well.

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:10]:
And what was your own path to to roundtable learning? Roundtable learning as as I have understood it, it's evolved quite a lot over the years in terms of offerings and and maybe the vision, but how is it that you came to to start this company?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:04:25]:
So now this is probably about 20 years ago at this point. We had started, sort of in around, dotcomboomera as, essentially ecommerce, consultants in the area. You know, the idea was to, know, we wanted to we didn't wanna be making everybody else's product and dream come true. So, we wanted to sit down and find a good idea for ourselves, something that we believed in that we could build. And I think every, you know, everybody in the group at that time, really chilled around, learning just because, 1, it just didn't exist at the time. You know, the content delivery or digital digital elearning was very much based you know, there's a lot of military work, CBTs from the AICC group, and the web just hadn't arrived there yet for digital learning. So, back in those early days, we were making content and, you know, we had some success getting Parker Refrigeration as an original LMS customer because they the the refrigeration division wanted to give get some training out to their folks. And not only did we have this training that we could make for the web, but they had nowhere to put it or in a way to to to figure out if anybody took it.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:05:36]:
So we could have walked our way backwards into, that initial kind of LMS circa 2001, 2002. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:05:44]:
And LMS is learning management?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:05:47]:
Learning management system. So I think at the time, we're, you know, one of a dozen or so max people that even offered this. It sort of progressed from there. We ended up kind of more of a boutique shop for setting up these customized LMS solutions for for customers so that they could get their corporate training out. And then it started ballooning. People asked for things. People people always want more when they like what you're doing. So we started getting asked about HR software, which is kind of funny.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:06:17]:
So we ended up creating modules to do, onboarding, to do, job boards and recruitment, and it turned into this monster of a talent management suite that we were trying to deliver. And just over the course of time, it was really becoming we were trying to do too much, I think. And and we've really tried to focus back in over the over the course of those years, focus back in on on the learning side of that. And that's where we felt we could make the most impact, what we've been doing the longest, you know, what what we know best. And, and so we continued on on that path. And obviously, as we went through the learning landscape, especially digital has gone through in that time, 2 separate sets, at least of consolidations. The market is very competitive. And at that point, you know, we decided to exit the LMS space because we're, you know, we're competing with folks that have, you know, 700 people working on 10,000 new features.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:07:16]:
And, we just knew we weren't gonna have the most impact there. And so, at this time, when we're going to do that, our director of immersive learning now was, taking some first steps into, some ARVR experimentation, and we kinda threw all our weight into that. And in the end, ended up developing not just immersive VR training in those initial days of it's really about 2, 3 years ago at this point, but now developing a system for content delivery as well as management of that content and collection of analytics and disaggregation of those. And this is all in addition to the to the core e learning business that we that we still do.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:57]:
Right. Right. It's it's quite a journey, the the breadth from, you know, starting very, very specific, evolving from the consulting world and and being kind of reined back in, it sounds like from the market to to really focus on on the learning side of things. With the immersive learning, which I wanna talk a lot more about, is that something that you found was similarly being extracted from you guys by the market? Or was it more you guys had a vision for an application of it that filled this void in the market that it maybe didn't even know that it had?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:08:33]:
Well, maybe a little of both. You could definitely see it on the horizon. And there was what I what I really see from it is that the cost for VR, you know, virtual reality headsets and the accessibility of the software and development tools from it, was starting to get to a point where it was realistic to have, you know, a number of these things for a corporate customer that and, the software toolkits available were starting to become more accessible as well. So it was really cost went down. The general market awareness of it as a possibility went up, and I think we just kinda latched on to it, and started making some internal demos and, putting a few things out there for, you know, AR and VR at the same time. I think that some of those original demos we had, we had an engineer do a a virtual office space in Vybe on the unreal engine. So these are it's a headset brand. I'm sorry.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:09:27]:
You'll you can stop me for a technical terms. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, the the tethered Vive headset that was linked to a tower computer that had to power it, you know, so you could take a virtual walk through our office. We also had some, studios you sit down at Target that a phone or a tablet could recognize and display a 3 d model around that. And so we did a number of these and, really came to a head when we did a and I I believe we have, like, a white paper on our website, for superior beverage, and this was essentially people stacking pallets. And this is something where somebody would spend, I believe, half a day on a line, you know, slowing everything down.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:10:05]:
No. I don't know. But, you know, they they would spend half a day on on a line actually training. And, what we did is we created a virtual training environment that allowed them to kinda get an idea. It's not a perfect simulation. It's, you know, it's VR, but, it provided a good enough sense of what's going on, what's coming, and what you can do to really, get people to a level where they could just spend a half hour actually on the floor to be productive. So it's a neat story.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:32]:
Yeah. No. It's it's one of the things I wanted to to ask you about when when you envisioned, you know, immersive learning. Again, we'll come to some definitions here in a little in in a sec. But when you envisioned immersive learning as a solution, what were the problems that it solves? And it sounds like maybe it's in that some of these trainings are only possible historically without this kind of technology by actually doing it, which causes some some burden to the organization overall. But but what what were the some of the problems that you guys had recognized that this kind of solution could could alleviate?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:11:08]:
Sure. And I think there's, you know, there's 2 things. There's the there's the simulation aspect, which is, you know, what we're talking about there. I'm performing a task that I need to be trained to do, and I need to do it with some amount of precision. And I'm going to measure the precision with which I've performed that task and my ability to repeat it. That's the obvious. One thing that that folks miss frequently is, we're able to put people in situations that make them really uncomfortable. And they're using anything from 360 video or or or, you know, full 3 d environments to help those soft skills training.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:11:40]:
See, with with soft skills training, you can really put somebody in that situation. And the fact that they're in VR, they're let's say let's say that you have an irate customer situation. You can put that angry customer in front of them. You have a store buzzing with people. You have, you know, distractions, things going off, like what, you know, how do you react to them? And and, you know, we can we can definitely and then we can start, recording those interactions and figuring out how well people do with them and then give them give them coaching to get them to the right place. Same goes with, you know, there's scenarios like active shooter, things where people need to have, you know, real knowledge to have, you know, to be a little bit scared so they know what to do in a real situation. So it's all about getting people fully immersed in a situation. So when they're actually presented with it, they have an they have a wealth of experience already canned that they can tap into.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:31]:
Right. And experience where they were not subject to real harm.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:12:36]:
Yes. Yeah. Well, that's right. We're working on that, though, now.

Jeffrey Stern [00:12:41]:
Well, okay. I think it might be a good time to just define some terms here. But when we talk about immersive learning, extended reality, augmented reality, virtual reality, how are you thinking about these terms? Denotationally? How are they related? And specifically in the context of roundtable learning? How are how are you leveraging them?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:13:01]:
So immersive learning in general is the idea that, you know, people learn best when they're deeply involved with their training content, and it's holding their attention completely. And they're able to evoke critical thinking by interacting with it. So it's, you know, how are they how are they experiencing it? What are they doing with it? You know, how is that how's that, reinforcing the concepts being presented? And then when you think about, extended reality or XR, that's kind of the umbrella term for all of these things. So it's really around the the technology for for delivery. It includes augmented reality, which is your AR, and that's essentially you're being presented with an image and, of real life, and you're overlaying, let's say, a virtual item into the real scenario. And that can be done, that can be done with a headset like hollow lens, or, I don't know if you remember the Google class that was hot for a minute. Mhmm. That was essentially providing information in virtual space over top of a real space.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:14:04]:
Then, of course, we have virtual reality, which is essentially a fully immersive, either 3 degrees of freedom, which means you're basically stationary and and and an observer interacting with what's immediately around you, where you have 6 degrees of freedom where you can actually, walk around in the space and interact with things. And then additionally, you know, there's mixed reality, which is, which is a a newer term where that we're starting to combine either real world images and objects with the VR experience. So it's kind of part augmented, part virtual. So there's there's different combinations of of things there in that can make that XR term necessary.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:43]:
Got it. Got it. When you were kind of first developing the the prospect for this immersive learning technology, One of the things that I think I always hear and envision about specifically this kind of development is how expensive it is, and and the specific kind of expertise that it requires. And so was the ability to develop this kind of software? Was there, you know, a fundraising mechanism involved with with this specific kind of development? Were you able to fund it just from the proceeds from the rest of the business? How how did you kind of approach the the business prospect of the initial development for for all the work that you were doing on this front?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:15:24]:
The yeah. So the the initial part of it was actually, done all internally. And, the bulk of that was done by Scott Stachow, our director of immersive learning where who dug into really dug into some of those initial, technology pieces. And we were in there to, essentially support kind of the the most technical pieces of that. We did a lot of work. He did a lot of work specifically, but we all we've all done a lot of work to kind of grow it as a as a project internally. So we had a lot of freedom, thanks to our our owner, Dan Gradrell, who's really supported the whole process as well, as we've gone.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:59]:
And so just to kind of give the the lay of of where the business is today, how much like, what what are the I'll take a step back. One of the things that really struck me was kind of the breadth of kind of use cases in terms of what you are offering from anything like these high intensity active shooter situations to more, you know, warehouse process kind of tasks. What is the breadth of of the kinds of things that you're tackling with this? Maybe we could start there. So And and and how you think about, like, you know, what to what to address.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:16:37]:
So typically, we're we're listening to we're listening to our customers first and foremost because, you know, we have a good we have a good handle on the technology and the delivery of it. So that gives us, you know, the ability to apply it in a lot of different ways. We have a we have a good common toolkit to to use. And is the breadth, we do some crazy stuff. We've got, air marshaling. So you're you're we're landing planes with, we're we're having we're directing planes in with batons using voice recognition in the headset to simulate a voice activated computer system for for packing. We're doing full video shoots, with a full cast of professional actors on on location to to record the soft skills. So as far as the the breadth, I think where we've ended is I don't think we've done a, a sit down full in vehicle driving situate simulation, but, we've come pretty close with some basic things for safety with a with a wheel and some pedals and some, and some screens.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:17:37]:
So

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:38]:
I understand how the technology infrastructure that you've developed would would be pretty extensible to handle any of these situations. But do you have to acquire the specific domain expertise in house to develop the situations that people are then trained in? Or is is that a collaborative process with your customers to develop those?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:18:01]:
It is. Yeah. That that's that's always a collaborative process. And that goes back to kind of our experience in learning as well because anytime you're developing, e learning that you're not, let's say, originating yourself and and generating as like an off the shelf component, you're you're relying on what are referred to as SMEs or subject matter experts. So we work with our customer subject matter experts to find, where the business need is for it. How can we correct apply correctly? Because, you know, a lot a lot of it's fun looking, but, you know, it's not it's not always the correct answer for for your learning. And and we're happy to tell you that it isn't.

Jeffrey Stern [00:18:35]:
So the the next consequence of this is, what have you seen as the outcomes? Yeah. I imagine there are a few things I kinda wanna dive into here, but what is generally the reception from customers, working with what I imagine is unprecedented, just a new way of training their employees to to handle these kinds of situations.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:19:01]:
Yeah. Well, what we've seen from customers where we've, you know, where we've come back and looked at is, you know, reductions in training times. A lot of times, we've reduced training time up to a third, 50% reduction in workers comp claims in some of these cases. 12% reduction in training costs because they don't have to have people there all the time on staff that they can go through in groups. And then, you know, measured measured increased of 10% in productivity. So what we hear from our users is things like, you know, the fact that you felt like we were an actual store in a store speaking to someone who was standing in front of our product. It was a great example of a store visit and ad pitch. We've gotten all kinds of great feedback about actually, you know, being there and having the experience like they thought they were there, they're ready.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:19:46]:
They're ready for the situation, but once they actually were in there, they knew they weren't and then gained something coming out of it. So that that that's really where we feel the most impact, And those are the kind of things we like to hear the most.

Jeffrey Stern [00:19:58]:
Is there resistance that you ever experience with just a completely new way? Or do people find it difficult ever to to partake in this kind of training? What's what's the learning curve itself for for individuals trying to to experience it? And I'm just I'm wondering what what the kind of, you know, like, if there's any psychological resistance to to what you guys are trying to do.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:20:22]:
Well, you know, I think a lot of the people that are coming are typically very excited to be trying it. It's usually there's usually a lot of excitement around attempting an ARVR project. Some some of the resistance pieces, I guess, would be, some people have problems with wearing a VR headset. They don't feel comfortable putting it on. In in that case, you know, we're able to provide ways that they can take the same training in a in a more traditional way, literally the same training on a computer or through their web browser. It's an exciting technology that people aren't quite sure how they want to use yet. They know they know they think it can make a difference, but I think one of the biggest things is walking them through, 1, how we think it could actually solve their problem, and 2, how we're gonna measure that response and get them useful information for the business. So I think those are the two biggest things that that we typically worry about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:14]:
And where do you feel like we are in the in the broader adoption of of VR as a technology today? Like, you know, why is it taking it so long for it to to go mainstream? I feel like growing up. I've been hearing about it as like, oh, just the 2 more years and then mainstream adopt for like, where why it what has been going on that is that it's still a little bit far away, but that you've now found real, you know, commercial viability and and success in in a in an enterprise product?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:21:41]:
I think it's the the computing trend of of smaller devices with better CPUs, better GPUs on them. I'm sorry. Maybe too technical, but, basically, I think the cell phone the cell phone revolution that happened actually largely is powering VR at the moment. Because if you think about a lot of these devices, whether it's an enterprise Pico, some of the new vibes, the Oculus devices, they're essentially cell phones strapped to your face with 2 screens on them. And that kind of cost and power savings and the ability to operate it independently of of a tower computer with a powerful graphics card has really opened it up. And and the fact that the the hardware is so mass produced right now really, has brought down the cost of those devices. So now you can get, you know, for 3 or $400, you can get a good quality VR headset in your home today. And at that point, you you can now justify purchases of, you know, 10, 15, 22,000 of these things to be able to deploy content on.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:22:46]:
So I'd say, it's it's largely an outgrowth of, the advancements in mobile and power saving chipsets as a whole.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:54]:
So I wanna tie together the advancements in on the technology front with the the work you're doing right now at roundtable learning and just kind of, you know, query looking forward with the direction that technology is headed. Are there things that that you are excited about that you guys have worked through kind of internally at Roundtable Learning that that will be coming on the horizon as a consequence of where the technology is is going that you can't do right now?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:23:26]:
So while there there are things that are possible, but but highly dependent because some of them are still, you know, very expensive and things that we've done and looked at. But I think there's a lot more to be done with mixed reality, just a ton as far as, being able to integrate, the integrate real world objects and motion capture with the VR world, as well as using things like haptics and custom peripherals. So a lot of different ways to get more out of the experience and more out of the technology. The those pass through cameras to allow better augmented reality are gonna be, gonna be great. Right now, you can look at things like, like a hollow lens or, or even we have a Korean headset called, Nreal, which is kind of interesting. And these things allow augmented reality, but there there's still a tiny window. The hollow lens 2 is slightly better, but as far as, the technology is concerned, once we get more of a field of view in AR, and that that might be enabled by a next generation Oculus device or or some other VR headset as opposed to an AR headset. But, once we get there, I'm gonna start mixing in the real world with virtual environments.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:24:35]:
There there's a lot more that can be done that we're excited about.

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:39]:
And on top of LMS, is what you are selling here specifically a software product that those who have the hardware, the VR headsets purchase? Or is it a whole comprehensive experience that you are selling when you are developing and bringing to market these these trainings and solutions?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:25:00]:
So we're primarily offering the the software. So basically, we're we're working with our customers to develop the the training itself, and that exists in its own separate application that can be deployed. But additionally, we offer the package called Mercury XRS, which is the just the SaaS product that'll allow that allows you to deploy that content to the headsets, allow single sign on and analytics tracking as well so that users can come back, do dashboarding from a learning perspective, and then be able to disaggregate those results all the way back to, let's say, a BI system, 3rd party LMS or LRS. So we're doing everything instead of a generic analytics way around VR and content deployment, for delivering applications. We're doing it. We we have, essentially a learning focus around that as well. So things are handled with xAPI extensions. They're they're done in learning native ways, and the and the the bandwidth which we create them, focuses around that sort of data collection.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:03]:
So what is really the broader vision for for what you guys are doing at Roundtable Learning? You know, understanding the past has been kind of this, you know, collage of of different directions and and kind of honing back in on on learning management as the focus. But when you think towards the future, what is the impact that that you hope to have? And what are you most excited about as a consequence of of the work that you were doing?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:26:30]:
Basically, we hope to stay at the forefront of learning. I think that's that's really what our passion is, whatever that means. So we want to be able to deliver the best combination of technology and learning that we can possibly do. And I think, you know, staying up staying at the forefront of that has always been essentially the passion. So and for a while, for a while that was that was learning management. It started with elearning. And now we've we've taken this this back to how can we get the most out of learning and deliver the most with it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:27:03]:
So when you develop these programs, how often are they extensible trainings? Right? If you if you're working with someone to develop that airline, you know, landing the plane program, Is that then a a product that you take to market and are able to sell kind of across that vertical? And what's kind of the the strategy for, again, like, which of these programs you're developing and kind of the reusability of them, if you will?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:27:31]:
Well, right now, for for the most part, the applications themselves are bespoke. Right? They're basically developed on demand for the customer. We have a certain set of tool kits, that we bring with us. And, of course, we have the the the product that comes with those tool kits, the XRS. So the broader vision is to be able to allow people to eventually make software for that XRS platform so that we can give them tools, be able to create content for it, and possibly create an ecosystem around that. As well as creating, you know, obviously, we're we're always looking at ways that we can take our own skills and hone them. So we do have some off the shelf products that we have in mind, but they're not yet to market. Right.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:28:10]:
Because that

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:11]:
that's what I was I was working towards is Yeah. How do you think about, like, where the flywheel comes from and building some of those network effects? Have there been any considerations or interest from the market with regards to more just consumer based learning rather than on the enterprise front?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:28:30]:
Well, given the amount of effort it takes put it in, I don't think we felt too much from the consumer side. I think it's it's mostly b two b. I'm trying to think if there was consumer facing. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:39]:
Or from, like, maybe academic institutions or things that could be applicable to many consumers, but less like a one off development for a person.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:28:49]:
Oh, yes. Okay. So I mean, there's obvious applications that we're that we've been looking at. And some of those are, you know, that's one of the things that we're looking at is saw that soft skills training. I think I think there's a lot of opportunity there. And there there's some other things that, you know, I I don't wanna quite let out of the bag yet, but there's some other interesting opportunities that we have with, with partners to bring out some really great content in the future.

Jeffrey Stern [00:29:12]:
Got it. And what does the competitive landscape look like in this world?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:29:19]:
There aren't a lot of them, but they're definitely there. So, of course, we've got some folks, that do similar things, not exact. Everybody's kind of doing a little differently. It's not as it's not as bad as, let's say, in in the LMS market where everybody's basically competing on a fixed set of, you know, 200 features. And it's, you know, and it's a race to the bottom there. It's it's more about different types of service offerings, whether people are offering mostly mostly soft skills, mostly 3 DOF, 3 degrees of freedom, you know, kind of passive consumption. People that are full on simulations, these are your engineering simulation companies that are that are doing, you know, that are focusing only on that. So there's there's a lot of different flavors in the market right now.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:30:07]:
And there's a few of them that focus specifically on corporate learning like us, and the market's also international. There's a lot of UK companies out there too right now, which we thought was interesting as far as, that that seems to be a big innovation hub for for VR and AR now too as well. So it's not just from the coast anymore.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:25]:
And is your your focus mostly domestic or have you had that interest from abroad as well?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:30:32]:
We've been primarily doing domestic companies. We're involved with, you know, basically US fortune 500 companies. So we do work with Amazon, Walmart, Staples, those kinds of companies. So it's been, you know, we we figured there's plenty to do at home first.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:48]:
Sure. Sure. Sure. What's the the kind of scale of of the company today? How many, you know, customers are we talking about? And just maybe a little overview of what what the company itself looks like today. How you guys kind of structure the business of of roundtable learning?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:31:06]:
Let's see here. So as far as the number of customers, boy, I don't know if I could tell you that number offhand. It seems to be a whirlwind lately. We're growing right now. We we clock in or bound 30 people that we have, we have engineers working on specifically just content development. We have engineering, working on the platform, the delivery platform and toolkits, 3 d modelers coming up with the all the all the stuff we get to put in. Instructional designers, graphic designers, elearning developers, and sales and marketing. So as far as the skill sets, you know, and and every, you know, every one of the skill sets around learning is used in every project.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:31:50]:
So almost none of these are just a pure technology. Well, actually, there is some pure learning pieces as well, though. But our, but, you know, the focus is bringing together that differentiator, which is bringing in that, that instructional design expertise, to AR and VR and everything that we do here.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:08]:
Yeah. No. It really the the the space you're in is is really fascinating to me because it like you were saying, it's not commoditized software, but it's also not straight up services. It's essentially you've kind of built your own product internally that you can you can leverage like a product to offer these highly specific curated services for for these large companies to develop, you know, the training programs that literally have never existed before.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:32:37]:
Yes. And we hope to not we to to be able to release that platform to into the wild as well. So we're our own best customer right now for that. But, yeah, we have we have folks using, not just the software that we develop as as learning, but also the delivery product, which includes, you know, in single single app content delivery for VR learning to the device and handles all that single sign on and all the analytics capture as well. So I think that's, you know, it's it's that combination because we understand, you know, coming from elearning and LMS, we understand what you need to get back out of it in order to make good decisions. And we're helping our customers, you know, find how to do that in, VR so that we can, you know, provide real ROI and provide real ways to measure and understand how the learning is impacting their organization and how it fits into the broader scope. Right.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:28]:
No. It's it's fascinating. Do you find that there is already developer interest in the impending releasing of the product that you have internally?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:33:38]:
Yes. Actually, I in fact, we've been we've been in contact. Just I was just thinking it's I I told told you not much international that I've been talking to somebody in the EU right now about it, because they're very excited about it as well. There are a number of platform competitors. And, you know, I think, again, we're we're trying to differentiate ourselves by providing better tools to help make that software and providing more open platform. And I think that's what's gonna be the biggest selling point right now. Since they were we're supporting, the VIVE Focus, the HoloLens 2, the Oculus devices, the Pico devices, iOS and Android tablets for for AR. So we have a number of things that we can that we can deploy to.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:34:18]:
And and, we've been able to make that toolset in such a way that we can effectively deploy to to all of them.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:25]:
And I imagine just as the technology itself becomes more accessible to people that there just may be a greater demand for for things like this. You're kind of ahead of the the wave, if you will.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:34:38]:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I I think once people get an idea of how this can impact their organizations and how much more effective it is in certain in certain aspects and certain kinds of training, I think we're gonna see a lot of movement. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:53]:
Because I'll just I I mean, I haven't experienced a VR training myself, but the the own personal experience I've had going through VR was first one of of a little skepticism. Mhmm. And then trying it back in the day and finding it a little underwhelming because of I was a little nauseated. But trying it more recently and truly being blown away by the experience with the headsets that exist today. And I think the thing that struck me most about the experience was when you play a video game or you you watch the video on the on the screen of your computer, you kind of compartmentalize it as something else. It's like content you are consuming. But when you are in VR, it it is experiential. It is like you are you are creating memories of, like, things that you are doing.

Jeffrey Stern [00:35:43]:
It's a very different experience, and it it really is this kind of magical thing. And I I really I would be very excited to to kind of imagine the world where education has that component kind of built into it. It's it seems very cool to me.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:35:58]:
Yeah. I think that's that's really one of the the most interesting parts about it is, you know, again, that that feedback from the from an active shooter training that we received, which was, you know, basically, like, I didn't know how I'd react in that situation. I didn't think it would be anything until I was in it, and I didn't know, you know, I I wasn't sure actually sure how to hit the panic button. You know? Like, really internalizing what's going on. Like, they they were really there in their mind and, you know, and, and really faced with those situations. So, yeah, create creating that that that broad impact, I mean, and that's a negative one, but, you know, there are, of course, positive ones around, you know, customer interaction, getting people the right help, getting them to the right place, being able to let people have imprint that in their memory, by doing it. There's and there's so much more to that we can do once, when some of these upcoming technologies become more mainstream.

Jeffrey Stern [00:36:49]:
I look forward to to following the work you guys are doing and and seeing, what transpires. So one thing I'll tie it back here to to Cleveland at the end for, you know, something that we do for for everyone that comes on the show is to explore not necessarily their favorite things in Cleveland, but for things that other people may not know about. They're hidden gems in Cleveland, if you will. So totally unrelated to business and and what you're doing at roundtable learning. But with that, I will I will ask you for some of your hidden gems in the area.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:37:22]:
I don't get out as much as I used to, but the but, you know, one of one of that one of the hidden gems I think in the area is, St. Herman's house over on Franklin Avenue or in the near West Side. They're a, they're a men's shelter. They're a place that, up until the pandemic, serve literally 3 meals a day to anybody that showed up. So they provide a tremendous service to the community, and, Paul Findlay over there is the director. He's done a super job. My son and I, head there to to make meals, whenever we can. Each each, each of the parishes that are involved tend to come in and and, have a have a meal day where we all basically take turns volunteering at Surrey.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:38:06]:
And then, you know, my kids get to the kids get to go out and and, you know, they're they're out there with the people and, you know, we're we're all leading together and and it's a it's a tremendous experience. Pandemic times, of course have changed things, but, they've knocked it back to just 2 meals a day, which is still a tremendous effort and, they do a tremendous job there. So I think it's really one of the gems of of Cleveland property.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:31]:
That's fantastic. Well, Bob, thank you very much for your time and and for sharing the the work you're doing with, Roundtable Learning. It was, I was I had very much been looking forward to to learning about what you guys were doing. I I just hadn't come across you guys before, and so it's been great to to have you on and and to share share your story.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:38:49]:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and very kind very kind interview. I appreciate it.

Jeffrey Stern [00:38:55]:
For sure. For sure. If folks have anything that they would like to follow-up with you about about the technology, about the business, what what is the best place for them to to do so?

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:39:05]:
Sure. I think, you can find us on Linkedin at roundtablelearning or roundtablelearning.com. Those 2 those 2 places are your best bets at getting to us.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:13]:
Well, thank you again, Bob.

Robert Baskette (Roundtable Learning) [00:39:15]:
Excellent. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. Take care.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:18]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so if you have any feedback, please send over an email to jeffrey at lay of the land dot f m or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland or @sternjefe, j e f e. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders we love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.