LIVE from AWE 2026 ft. Malia Probst, Mary Matheson, and Shelley Peterson

About this episode

Recorded live from the AWE main stage in Long Beach, Charlie Fink and Ted Schilowitz are joined by three veterans of the XR industry for a wide-ranging conversation about where the industry has been and where it is actually headed.

Malia Probst, founder of Scout House and a decade-plus in creator and developer programs, Shelley Peterson, former head of XR at Lockheed Martin and now running her consultancy Wizard Wells, and Mary Matheson, head of production at Agog and a multi-award winning immersive documentary director, bring three distinct vantage points — enterprise, consumer, and social impact — to the same set of questions.

The result is one of the more honest conversations about the state of XR that the show has done.

The panel covers the Snap Spectacles launch happening steps away at the same conference, why $2,300 does not make something a consumer device no matter what the marketing says, and what Google Glass actually got right when nobody was paying attention. The group digs into Meta's slow pullback from the metaverse and whether losing the big-pocketed backer is a crisis or a correction. World models come up as the technology that may finally make immersive content creation accessible without years of game engine training. And the conversation lands on a question that cuts across all of it: is the AI backlash really about the technology, or is it about who owns it?

The closing question — what do we know now that we didn't know 10 years ago — produces the three best lines of the panel. Mary says the people behind XR are still here and that's what she couldn't have predicted. Malia says the only constant is change, and there has never been a better time to be a creator. Shelley says you are going to pivot whether you like it or not.

Key Moments:

[00:05:45] Snap Spectacles debut at AWE

[00:17:45] Meta's metaverse pullback

[00:22:00] Ted asks the uncomfortable question; the panel actually answers it.

[00:25:00] Enterprise as the real XR business

[00:32:40] The Google Glass parable

[00:40:15] Five years out — world models, quantum computing, AI on your body, and the race to be your 24/7 agent

[00:50:20] AI backlash

[00:57:53] What 10 years taught us — Mary, Malia, and Shelley each close with something worth writing down

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