It’s that time again to learn all about one of the many great employees that make the magic at Layar possible. This time, we look to someone who does a lot of the “behind the scenes” work at Layar, making sure this well-oiled machine remains … well-oiled! Nanda Jaspers is our Office/HR/Management Assistant and takes care of virtually all of the small hidden tasks that keep the company going. Here’s our interview with Nanda!

So tell us about you and where you’re from…

My full name is Nanda Anna Carolina Mathias Jaspers. It’s a unique combination of names. Anna is the name which they gave me when I got baptized and Carolina and Mathias are the given names of my godmother and father. I was born in Maastricht, a lovely stress-free city in the south of the Netherlands. I lived there until I was 18 years old but I still try to spend enough time there.

And what about your family?

My entire family is active and big! My parents have many brothers and sisters and the whole family is about 80 people big! I also have an older sister and a younger brother who both live close around me here in Amsterdam.

When I was young we did lots of activities like travelling, fun parks, weekends to Ardennes in Belgium, etc. I was always playing songs on my harmonica in the back of the car when I was only 7 years old!

Harmonica? Any other special talents we’re unaware of?

Well, except my musical talent I love playing computer games and I own a natural compass so I never get lost anywhere in the world!

What did you study in school?

I studied Hotel Management. I had my first “big” adventure by doing an internship in the Caribbean when I was 18 years old. After coming home I graduated and realized that I loved travelling and exploring new places so much more than studying! I followed another study in Tourism Management at an international high school and then worked in Greece for 5 years.

And now you’re back and working at Layar. Describe your typical day.

My work at Layar is never the same each day. I started operating the office and while the team started to grow I quickly had more work on the HR level. Now, one year later, I make sure that each new employee has a perfect on-boarding experience at Layar. In many other companies a new hire has to find his own way the first days and that’s tiring. I try to answer most of the general questions so a new member can fully focus on his or her new role! Anywhere the Management Team need assistance I’m also in charge of that.

What do you like best about working at Layar?

My role changes as the company changes quickly and I love this variety in work and days. That’s sometimes also difficult but challenging to me!

Be sure to check out the Layar Jobs page to see our list of vacancies!

Outside view of the Layar Augmented Office.

As we mentioned last week, Layar is attending the 2011 GSMA Mobile World Congress conference/exhibition in Barcelona from 14-17 February, and we weren’t about to show up empty-handed.

Each afternoon at MWC Fountain, Layer is holding an Augmented Reality meetup where we show off our new Augmented Office layer, an interactive 3D model that you can literally walk into and access information about the company, layer content, job openings and more.

This layer was created especially for MWC, so it is only visible from Barcelona, but there is also a public version that can be viewed from anywhere in the world.

The 3D office combines elements of virtual reality with AR, enabling a 360 degree view of the space. You can look up at the multilevel ceiling, down at the tile and wooden floors, and around through the many windows where you can still see the “real” world.

Turn or walk around in the office and you see posters on the walls of some of our Layar Partner Network members, where you can touch the pop-up screen to visit their website, email them or follow them on Twitter. You also find portraits of our co-founders and our reps at MWC that you can contact or connect with on Twitter right from the layer.

Inside view of the Layar Augmented Office.

Continuing the office tour, you see posters on the windows for five of our coolest international layers that you can launch directly from inside the Augmented Office layer (A layer within a layer? Now we’re approaching Inception theory—be careful!).

Finally, near the doorway, you see a monitor on the wall that says “Layar News & Jobs” where you can see the current job/internship opportunities and read the latest news on our blog.

The concept of an “augmented office” allows any company to become an international company. You can place an office in the heart of Tokyo, Dubai or at Time Square in New York City.

But just as easily as you can place an office, you can place a store, selling merchandise through Paypal in AR! Case and point: Hostage Wear Shop. Hostage Wear is Layar’s first AR store, selling hats, t-shirts and other urban skate/streetwear products directly from the layer—there’s even a half-pipe in the store! (Although we don’t recommend trying to skateboard in AR… yet).

Outside view of the Hostage Wear shop.

Funnily enough, the Hostage Wear Shop layer actually started out as a joke. Herve Pellarin, creator of both Layar’s Augmented Office and Hostage Wear Shop (and the concept of virtual commerce in general), originally made the layer for his best friend to, in Pellarin’s words, “shut his mouth” about the frustration and expense of constantly having to make the tradeshow circuit to gain brand recognition and sell merchandise.

As anyone working in AR knows, monetization is a major issue at the moment, so virtual commerce is an exciting and much welcomed new element to the platform.

Pellarin is the man behind French development company HPSC, a member of the Layar Partner Network. He has made virtual commerce his primary focus, embarking on several new [mostly confidential] projects, and continues to push the boundaries in AR. Pellarin may still wear the coding hat, but assures us “I’m not a programmer. I’m a dreamer; an AR-chitect.”

You can contact Herve Pellarin at nocomp@gmail.com or follow @nocomp on Twitter.

Last week, we opened up a beta release of Layar 5.0 for Android featuring new sharing and animation capabilities (as well as a few other handy improvements). We were very excited to get this version of the Layar client in the hands of developers to see what wonderful things they could come up with using these new features, and already we’re seeing some great stuff.

Developer and former Layar intern Anthony Maës just recently put together a nice looking layer that shows off the new animation functionality. If you’re running the beta on your Android device, search for “Ferris Wheel” and check out Anthony’s work. Or just watch this YouTube video:

The layer features a 3D model of a spinning ferris wheel with balloons floating around it as carnival music plays in the background. It’s a terrific example of some of the possibilities that Layar 5.0 will introduce for developers.

Anthony created the ferris wheel with two separate 3D models; the wheel and the supports. Being careful about how he designed the models allowed him to use Layar 5.0’s rotation attributes to simulate a spinning ferris wheel. To hear more from Anthony and see the source code, check out his post on the Layar Developer Support Forum.

As another example of animation in Layar 5.0, the ARcade layer has updated its 3D icons to include animation as well. Now the game’s tokens spin in the air and those ever familiar PacMan ghosts have shifty eyes.

If you’re running the beta client, have a look at these layers and let us know when you find other great examples of 5.0 features in the wild!

Perusing London’s wide array of art museums, a personal tour guide is the ultimate way to augment your experience; so when a charming British artist dandified in a variety of custom suits appears before you at each of London’s top museums offering commentary about its history and architecture as well as a list of exhibiting artists, you find his “presence” pleasant and helpful despite his disarming lack of flesh and bone. 

As you progress from museum to museum, however, you begin to question this “invisible artist’s” motives. 

Artist and Derby University professor John Goto came up with the concept for The Invisible Artist in a period of frustration after being dropped from a gallery’s books. Ruminating over the politics of the art world, where an artist’s visibility requires the approval of a small group of “gatekeepers,” Goto began sketching the headless figures that would eventually become the 3D models in his Invisible Artist layer.

The nature of Goto’s frustration fit perfectly with Augmented Reality’s open space platform because Goto could place his art at any location—or in this case, at any museum he desired, without permission, and anyone (with the Layar app, that is) could see it. The result was a subversive layer satirizing the bureaucracy and lack of diversity of London’s contemporary art scene (notice how the list of exhibiting artists contains the same few names at every museum).

While its derisive nature is clever, the “must-see” factor in this layer is its exquisite 3D modeling. Peering through your mobile phone at these life-sized figures, you can see the shadow behind every fold in the artist’s clothing, the texture of each material, and the soft glow of London’s cloudy sky gently reflected off of each garment.

The Invisible Artist is an excellent example of what can be achieved on the Layar platform with the right combination of skills in the artistic as well as the technical fields. In order to build this layer, Goto utilized his artistic talent to create the 3D models, then colleague Matthew Leach (from whom Goto first learned about Augmented Reality) used his development skills to set up a server, place the models, and program functionality to make for the best possible user experience.

The Invisible Artist is Goto and Leach’s second layer in their Augmented Reality repertoire; their first, West End Blues, explores the history and sounds of London’s jazz and blues musicians. The two have recently become Pioneers in the Layar Partner Network, and you can look forward to more groundbreaking AR content from them in the future.

Every year in Davos, Switzerland, the world’s leaders gather to talk about ‘improving the state of the world’ at the World Economic Forum - which interestingly was themed “The New Reality” this year. Layar, being nominated as a Tech Pioneer, was invited to join in the discussions. I had the honor of representing our company to meet, converse with and inspire the world’s leaders, and, of course, be inspired by them. It was an unforgettable experience; a unique possibility to peek into the world’s decision making and an amazing chance to talk about Layar and Augmented Reality with the key decision makers in our industry.

I got to spend an hour in a small group with Bill Gates, shake the hand of Bill Clinton, sit next to the president of Chile at dinner, brainstorm real solutions for the World Food Program, have all the CEO’s in the media and IT industry listen to me while I spoke to them at an invitation-only dinner, and simply bump into the most amazing and inspiring people from all across the globe.

The setting for all this was almost surreal: a cosy Swiss mountain village covered by a layer of fresh snow, clear blue skies, skiers and boarders walking around, but also security everywhere, cars in sizes: large, very large and ridiculously large, and very efficient organization.

For those who followed my twitterstream during the conference, you could already feel my excitement. Here are my reflections after 10 days of digesting…

Warning: long blogpost up ahead. Management summary is in the titles of the subsections :-)

Davos: not one single event

There are many parallel ‘Davoses’ taking place - next to the main program there are the of ‘Governors meetings’ with leaders of the various groups of industries, cross-disciplinary sessions and of course many private meetings. Everybody experiences his or her own ‘Davos’ - no two stories will be the same. And as there’s so much going on, there’s simply no way you won’t miss anything, so it is a question of setting your own priorities.

My program was fully focused on my three public speaking opportunities, the specific events I was invited to participate in, and my business-related one-on-one meetings. Next to that, I had to manage my own energy well, since I am also pregnant with my second child (during the Davos meeting, nearly halfway the pregnancy). And still, every day, I found my head dizzying from all the impressions and didn’t get the chance to sleep before 1am or 2am.

Layar, a 2011 WEF Tech Pioneer

The World Economic Forum has historically grown into the yearly gathering of decision makers in politics and industry. The WEF organization recently started to invite other groups of leaders to deepen the discussion and to inspire the ‘traditional’ and the ‘new’ leaders both ways. Next to the Social Entrepreneurs and the Young Global Leaders, there are also Technology Pioneers. This is a group of 25 companies, from all technology sectors, selected by a committee of industry advisors and experts.

In line with the foundation’s commitment to improving the state of the world, the Tech Pioneers are integrated into its activities with the objective to identify and address future-oriented issues on the global agenda in proactive, innovative and entrepreneurial ways. By bringing these executives together with scientists, academics, NGOs, and foundation members and partners, the foundation’s goal is to shed new light on how technology can be used to, for example, find new vaccines, create economic growth and enhance global communication.

This year’s group of Tech Pioneers included companies producing plastics from mushroom, producers of CO2 neutral cement, many biotech companies on top of breakthrough innovations in pharma, and of course IT companies in for example mobile banking and social sharing. All pioneers were incredibly inspiring in the way they are dealing with disrupting their industries, and it was nice to discuss the challenges we are all facing in setting your priorities right, getting funding, managing growing teams etc.

The program for Tech Pioneers consisted of a workshop and dinner to which also many journalists and industry CEO’s participate. Highlight was an intimate session of only the Tech Pioneers with Bill Gates on Saturday morning. He spoke to us in a very relaxed and insightful manner on his lessons learned, good advise and took a lot of time to answer our questions.

I asked him, as a key person in creating the previous mass medium of the internet, if he believes that AR will become the next mass medium. And if so, if he had some good advice for us. He confirmed the statement of AR as the next mass medium (‘there’s no way this is not going to happen’), and he had good advice on patents, timing and quickly reaching critical mass. He also stated: “You are in a good position.” That was good to hear!

Sharing our vision: AR to become the next mass medium

One of the sesions on the main program was that of ‘Digital Convergence’, facilitated by David Kirkpatrick and with panelists Prof Inakage, Rob Tarkoff of Adobe, Loic le Meur of Seesmic/ Le Web and me.

Even though I’m generally not a big fan of (being on) panels, I liked this one a lot. We all got to present our story in 6 mins, the crowd was very energetic and the moderation was of extremely high quality. Unfortunately the session itself was ‘off the record’ so no public sharing of its contents, but I was allowed to share the video of my presentation (recorded by Robert Scoble and uploaded by Loic le Meur).

The Governor’s session of the Media, Entertainment and Information industry (with CEO’s of about 50 companies such as Time Warner, Google, Washington Post, JC Decaux, WPP, McKinsey, Forbes, plus regulators such as Mrs. Neelie Kroes (of the European Committee), took place all day on Thursday. It was a great opportunity for me to participate in this session and hear what issues are being discussed.

The program for this Governors session ended with a dinner, themed “Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality.” I had the honor of talking to all these CEOs about the long-term vision for AR and how this is impacting their and our business. It was quite challenging to talk about AR without the opportunity to use visual support - so I did a spoken visualization exercise which was well received.

In between, I was also asked to participate in a table discussion during another Governor’s session, that of the Travel Industry. Together with Padmasree Warrior of Cisco and Nikesh Arora of Google, we discussed how the ‘new consumer’ is changing the industry with the CEOs from hotels, airlines and hospitality.

All three sessions resonated really well - all my main messages were being tweeted and re-tweeted by the audience. I got many positive reactions and good discussions going, and lots of business requests based on them. Mission accomplished :-)

Media Madness

At some moments, I had the impression there were as many journalists as ‘normal’ attendees. Everywhere you looked in the Conference Center, there were camera crews reporting and interviewing. CNN, CNBC and Reuters were reporting full-time and had their own fully equipped studios on top of the conference hall.

I also couldn’t avoid the media circus and found myself being interviewed on various channels, ranging from the Polish CNBC to the Spanish TVE evening news!
(Yes, they really insisted on my doing the interview in Spanish - I had to laugh at myself and my “lively hand movements to cover up for my lack of Spanish vocabulary” too…)

Funnily enough, there was almost no reporting from my home country, the Netherlands, except for a few print journalists and a slightly strange and very short radio interview with me.
(which was almost the only coverage of the entire WEF!) - but nothing on TV. Too bad the Dutch missed out on all the fun and excitement…

Tunisia & Egypt: feeling the power of the people

Just before the WEF, the people of Tunisia had managed to shift power in their country by organizing massive demonstrations, making use of social media. The situation was discussed a lot during many WEF sessions - from what I could follow on Twitter.

The protests in Egypt started during the WEF. It was odd and interesting to experience reactions on this from decision makers, from very nearby.

On Tuesday afternoon, when the world (at least I) was not yet aware of the heating situation in Egypt, I was sitting in the lounge area, waiting for my next appointment. A gentleman sat down next to me (but facing backwards, I couldn’t see who he was) and was immediately being approached by a bunch of journalists, asking him questions about the situation in Egypt. They asked him what was happening in his country, and if it was just a minor ‘nuisance’ or something bigger. The gentleman (I suppose he was a minister but am not sure) confirmed this was just a minor uproar - and shouted out ‘Hello Kofi!’. I turned around and saw him shake the hand of Kofi Annan.

A few days later on Friday, the CEO of Vodafone who was also speaking at one of the lunches I attended, talked about having had a sleepless night because of the situation in Egypt. He hinted at having to take very tough decisions and trying to balance everything, and acting within the law. The next day, Vodafone submitted an official press statement on being put under pressure by the Egyptian government to close down all telecommunications.

It was quite interesting to hear from so close what major decision makers are going through - it is hard to imagine having to stand in their shoes having to decide on this level about human rights, the safety of your employees, your own integrity and business.

It also demystifies decision makers. In the end, they are all human.

Shifting powers: from West to East/ Evenly spread

The WEF started out as a European initiative in the 70’s, quickly followed by many USA leaders. I was warned upfront that the WEF is quite ‘West/USA- focused,’ but this is not really what I experienced. I felt the shifting powers and the enormous potential ánd challenges of countries such as China and India were being discussed very frequently. India had a massive presence in Davos and some Indian companies were the most enthousiastic and actionable about doing things with Layar and AR.

Many billion dollar companies indicated that their major R&D centers are now in China and India, away from (or next to) Silicon Valley and other traditional tech centers. Their main challenges are on how to make these all work well together.

To me, it is very clear that ‘the new world’ is not being led by one major power (the USA and to lesser extent the EU) anymore, but has very strong powers almost equally spread across the globe.

The world is changing: female/ feminine leadership needed

There was much ado about “women” at this year’s WEF…

For the ‘strategic partners’ (the large companies participating in the WEF), there was a quota in place: every 5th attendee had to be a woman and this apparently caused a lot of discussion.

There were some ridiculous articles in the press on women at the WEF (especially this one was totally besides the reality as I perceived it), and my interview on the Spanish TVE interview was not at all about my company or the content of my story, but mainly on the fact that I was one of the only (business) women in Davos.

On Friday, there were some women-only events - and I was quite hesitant on what to expect. I have always had a love-hate relationship with women-only events as well as with ‘women leadership’ issues and articles. I don’t like the ‘us women are/do…’ talk and usually don’t recognize myself at all in all the ‘problems’ women are facing - but I also recognize that there are simply too few women in leadership positions.

Much to my own surprise, these “women-events” were highlights of my entire Davos experience. By far. Why? The energy, passion, level of conversations, sharpness, engagement and drive to change the world, plus the type of conversations were totally unlike the other meetings I had attended or participated in during the preceding days in Davos.

I attended a women-only discussion with 18 female leaders (incl those of Kraft, Coca-Cola, Nielsen, the European Commission, plus Mrs. Chery Blair) and in only 1.5 hours we managed to achieve some truly usable and amazing results, which will be taken on board by the WFP.

It was in such contrast to the other meetings, lunches and dinners with the ‘traditional’ leaders - which were quite low on energy, with lots of men in grey suits - all very kind, interesting and engaging in personal talks but in the group interaction not much happened. I didn’t have the feeling that these unique gatherings (how often do you have all the decision makers in your industry together in one room?) lead to any big steps or changes, which started to feel a bit frustrating after a couple of days. There are so many challenges in this world and in our industry and the discussions didn’t feel to go any deeper than ‘passing on the microphone’. The world around is is screaming and shouting for a different kind of leadership.

But the good news is: change is up ahead! To my (and Layar’s) opinion, modern leadership has a lot of feminine elements. It is not so much about power, control, top-down thinking and ego, but much more about inclusiveness, intuition, the will to move ahead, looking for win-win (for both parties) rather than ‘I win, you loose’. Today’s society is changing and moving so quickly - top-down thinking and leadership based purely on ratio is not sustainable. Organizations sticking to old principles and old styles of leadership will simply be bypassed by fast movers and disruptors

The WEF itself also takes the subject very seriously and launched the ‘Gender Equality Project,’ which provides guidelines for companies on this subject.

The best we can do ourselves is to set the right example. At Layar, we already have > 40% women (Amsterdam office) - not because we have a pro-women policy, but somehow they simply knocked on our doors. My male co-founders Raimo and Maarten, as well as the rest of the MT are ‘real men’ but all with lots of the ‘female’ qualities I mentioned above. Whether we will be successful at Layar, it is still way too early to tell. But it feels good - let’s see how far this will take us!

To conclude, Davos was an unforgettable experience and it was great to be able to participate on this level. I look forward to more…

Claire Boonstra
Co-founder