{"461381":{"#nid":"461381","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Alumni Spotlight: The Virtual Worlds of Guy Primus","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EVision\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStory by Van Jensen\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EThe virtual worlds of Guy Primus\u2014engineer, entrepreneur and Hollywood revolutionary\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003Cstrong\u003EORIGIN STORY\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis kid grew up in the 1970s and \u201980s in east Pittsburgh, a blue-collar neighborhood. His mom was a teacher; his dad worked the late shift. They named their son Guy\u2014Guy Primus\u2014and with a name like that, it\u2019s no wonder the kid had dreams.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn high school, Guy worked at his cousin\u2019s convenience store. Saturday would come, and he\u2019d pick up his $20 for the week and head down the street to Stedeford\u2019s Record Shop, where he dropped every last cent to buy four 12-inch singles.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy dreamed of music. He wanted to be a DJ, so he built up his record collection, bought a turntable, taught himself to spin. But he wasn\u2019t content to be just another DJ. He wanted to be great.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo Guy built his own setup, decked everything out with fabric and lights. He disassembled a telephone handset and rebuilt it to be his earpiece, a little touch of style to set him apart.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs much as Guy loved the music, the mechanics of the equipment fascinated him even more. His turntable broke, so he picked it apart, fixed it. Same with the TV at home\u2014well, except he never could get that working again.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis dreams changed, and he saw himself designing and building speakers, a scientist with style, just like Amar G. Bose, the MIT professor whose eponymous company was overtaking the sound system industry.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo Guy would be a physicist. And to excel at that, he\u2019d have to head south, to Georgia Tech. It was 1987, and fresh out of high school, he moved away from Pittsburgh for the first time\u2014off to Atlanta.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe stepped onto campus, just another freshman. But he had conviction. He believed he would do something great. He had imagined it, and now he would set about the work of making it so.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EFAITH\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESuspension of disbelief.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge first coined the phrase in the early 1800s. Writers of the era were obsessed with reality, believing readers couldn\u2019t possibly engage with fiction featuring supernatural or fantastical elements.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EColeridge disagreed. Reality couldn\u2019t contain his imagination, and he focused his efforts into building new realities. But Coleridge knew he must invite his readers to cross into the world of his mind, that he must make his work familiar and true.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe must \u201cprocure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe onus is not on the audience to set aside its skepticism. It is the visionary who bears the responsibility for guiding others into his dreams.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EREVOLUTION\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe office is in old Hollywood, an unassuming high-rise, built maybe in the 1920s. You walk through, and you can still almost hear the clack of typewriters echoing off the tile\u2014forgotten screenwriters creating the golden age of movies one keystroke at a time.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou take the elevator to the ninth floor, past the offices of production companies where people are hard at work on the latest superhero movie, or the next episode of Dance Moms.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou step into the office, and the first thing that hits you is the view, a vista of downtown Los Angeles rising from the city\u2019s unending expanse. But the office feels more tech startup than Hollywood. Ikea desks sit in tight formation, holding computers and other high-tech gear. A whiteboard along one wall seems to sag, it\u2019s so laden with diagrams and equations labeled with phrases like \u201ccross-collateralized.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy Primus stands over a desk, next to a colleague, scanning data on a screen. He sees you, walks over, shakes your hand.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy is in his 40s now, his hair graying, but otherwise with the same tall build, the broad, bright smile. He welcomes you to his latest venture, The Virtual Reality Company, which is creating some of the first content for the nascent VR devices that soon will be widely available to consumers for the first time. He is now the company\u2019s chief executive officer.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy has worked at some of the largest companies\u2014Starbucks, Microsoft\u2014and with some of the largest names\u2014Will Smith, Sean Combs\u2014in the world. He has enjoyed success beyond what some can fathom. But, as he says, \u201cI wasn\u2019t going to establish a legacy, working for someone else.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo he\u2019s taking what is just the latest in a long series of risks, building up an industry that doesn\u2019t yet exist.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cVirtual reality is revolutionary,\u201d Guy says. \u201cThere is no seminal work of VR. Being there at such an early, foundational stage is daunting, but it\u2019s a great place to be at. I wouldn\u2019t trade it for the world.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy asks you to imagine the future of entertainment, a world transformed, of revolutionary technology partnered with world-class content.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut you don\u2019t have to imagine it. You can see it.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECOURSE CORRECTION\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe vision grew hazy, obscured. It wasn\u2019t so simple as just learning to build the world\u2019s best speakers. Most physics majors ended up working in the federal government, not a path Guy wanted to walk.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy struggled to stay interested in his classes, and he questioned himself, his vision of the future. He didn\u2019t know what he\u2019d do. Then he heard the song.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI\u2019m a Ramblin\u2019 Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an engineer.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhat the hell was he doing at Georgia Tech if he wasn\u2019t going to be an engineer? He cast around, examining schools, programs. Industrial and systems engineering struck his interest.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIndustrial engineers don\u2019t really create things, but they like to work with people, not stuck in a lab all day,\u201d he says. \u201cOptimization was really appealing.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDuring the first quarter of his senior year, he enrolled in a distributions systems class under Don Ratliff, now the Regents\u2019 Professor Emeritus of ISyE. Even among some fifty students, Guy stood out, \u201cby far the best student in the class,\u201d Ratliff remembers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne day they talked, and Guy revealed he wasn\u2019t sure what to do after graduation. He told Ratliff that the course was the first one he\u2019d really liked. Ratliff suggested graduate school, but Guy worried his grades weren\u2019t good enough. \u201cI said, \u2018That doesn\u2019t make sense. You\u2019re the brightest guy in the class, the top score on everything,\u2019\u201d Ratliff says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe grades were subpar, but Guy had been involved in more organizations and activities than Ratliff could count, and was a leader in many of them. Ratliff saw that Guy could succeed when he was working on something he was passionate about, so he went to the head of graduate studies and lobbied for Guy\u2019s admission.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cNormally, I didn\u2019t do anything like this,\u201d Ratliff says. \u201cBut I thought this guy was special. I personally vouched for him. They let him in, and he did great; he made all A\u2019s.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter graduate school, Guy joined Ratliff\u2019s software company, Caps Logistics. During his two years there, Guy saw a new world open up, one beyond the blue-collar setting of his youth. He also felt the familiar tug of ambition, to explore the world of management.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe took a job as a consultant at A.T. Kearney, solving business problems using analytics. The firm offered to send him to business school, and he went to Harvard. There, he remembers talking to famed professor Carl Sloane, who told him, \u201cYou\u2019re at the West Point of capitalism. You can do anything you want to do. Follow your passion, and the money will come.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy realized he\u2019d gotten away from his first love\u2014music\u2014thinking he had to choose between entertainment or a career in business.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI stepped back and said I had always wanted to work in entertainment, but I had this analytical bent,\u201d Guy says. \u201cSo how could I combine them?\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe set his imagination to work, combining his passions. While others saw the worlds of art and technology as wholly separate, he saw a way to unite them. He would be a bridge.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EARTIFICE\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOn one desk sit a pair of what looks almost like ski goggles\u2014it\u2019s a brand-new pair of Rift virtual reality glasses built by Silicon Valley darling Oculus. Guy picks them up, hands them to you.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou pull on headphones, then the glasses. The world goes black, disappears.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThen it reappears, but, no, this isn\u2019t the same world. You tilt your head left and right, up and down. You stand on an island. And the island floats in the sky. In the near distance are other islands. A whale rises suddenly from the ether, and you instinctively reach out to touch it as it flies past.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou\u2019re in a dream, except it\u2019s real. No matter how hard you look for a crack, a seam, you find none. There\u2019s a rustle of wind in your ear, and the knee-high grass undulates with the breeze.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou follow a small girl, running from something now, something dark. She leads you out onto a rickety wooden pier, which extends out into the sky, then stops. The girl leaps, disappears.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou\u2019re at the edge of the pier. You have to jump, or the dark thing will catch you. You look down at the drop, down and down forever.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou\u2019re afraid of heights. Your whole body tenses. Your stomach churns. But the momentum takes you. You leap into the blue.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThen the glasses come off, and the old world returns. And you wish you could go back, to see what comes next.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECUTTING EDGE\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOut of business school, Guy began using the analytics training he\u2019d picked up at Georgia Tech and applying it to the world of marketing. That drew the interest of Bad Boy Entertainment, the media giant run by Sean Combs, the producer and rapper formerly known as Puff Daddy.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThere, Guy learned the power of tastemakers first hand. Combs had street teams, people who knew what parties to be at, to get a feel for what the crowd wanted, what was becoming popular. Bad Boy also leveraged connections to DJs, getting their feedback, testing out music before widely releasing it.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt\u2019s not enough to just put out a great product,\u201d Guy says. \u201cYou have to market it, you have to promote it, you have to connect it to the tastemakers.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFrom there, he went to Microsoft, where he saw early the rise of digital music and leveraged it across the company\u2019s platforms like MSN Messenger. Guy reached out to his friends in the music industry to create the Microsoft DJ Summit, which led to a series of playlists from DJs like DJ Spooky and a young Kanye West. The effort won a major advertising industry award. It also confirmed Guy\u2019s theory that the key to success is finding the best content and then using emergent technology to bring it to consumers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt Starbucks, Guy continued to work in music, developing a partnership with Apple that gave customers download cards for new songs, a different track every week. It became the company\u2019s Pick of the Week program, which is still running strong, almost eight years later.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy moved his family from Seattle to Los Angeles to become the chief operating officer of Overbrook Entertainment, the production company of film star Will Smith. Though Guy says he\u2019s never been in awe of celebrities, there\u2019s a definite benefit to working with big names.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI\u2019m not the most talkative person,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I choose who I work with. People know Sean Combs. They know Will Smith. Microsoft and Bill Gates, everyone knows. It opens a door a lot more quickly.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut, after several years at the company developing its interactive portfolio, Guy felt a familiar pull. He wanted to stay on the cutting edge of technology, as he had his entire career. But he also wanted to build something of his own. Again, it was time to reflect on the vision, to see where it would lead next.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy started a handful of companies and worked as an adviser to startups. It was a systematic approach to testing out opportunities, seeing what resonated. It was also exhausting.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI was stretched too thin,\u201d Guy says. \u201cI was finding myself shortchanging projects that deserved attention and putting too much effort into things that weren\u2019t going anywhere.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne project that did well was the Marvel Experience, a virtual tour through the company\u2019s world of superheroes that Guy helped develop. Through it, he saw the power of taking people through an immersive experience. He saw the future, and it looked virtual.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EARTIFICE\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EVirtual reality.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe term first appeared in a 1938 book by French playwright, actor and director Antonin Artaud. He described theater as \u201cla r\u00e9alit\u00e9 virtuelle,\u201d a space where actors, directors, playwrights, set designers take part in an alchemical process, uniting to create a new reality.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut it is not just those who take part in the process that are transported. No, this new plane of existence is one that the audience enters and experiences.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EARRIVAL\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou know a little about virtual reality, that it\u2019s been around in some form since the 1980s, when technologists commandeered the term for the new computer-designed virtual spaces they were constructing. You know that since then, VR has grown and developed in fits and starts, used mostly for training simulation.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhile it hasn\u2019t taken off, the signs of its potential are there. You read a recent study by researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory that says virtual reality is a very effective treatment for people who suffer from fear of flying. It allows them to go through their fears, to process them, and to learn to cope. It\u2019s powerful, you see, but relatively untapped.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut VR has never taken off as a form of entertainment. In part because the technology has been too expensive for broad adoption, and in part, Guy tells you, because VR lacks the powerful stories that draw readers and viewers to other media.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cTed Turner took the best of content and had this distribution that was novel,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t know what to do with cable TV, but he did know what to do with it. He made the Braves America\u2019s team just because he knew what to do with emergent technology.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe\u2019re in the same space today. There\u2019s this really great technology platform that exists, in virtual reality, but there\u2019s no content. There\u2019s zero content. Most of the content being created is very gimmicky. We\u2019re looking to create really immersive, story-driven, character-driven content. It feels like you\u2019re there, as opposed to sitting there and watching.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou think it\u2019s a risky plan, relying entirely on a technology that remains mostly foreign to consumers. But, you realize, the same could be said for the television, or the computer.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSilicon Valley only invests in technology,\u201d Guy admits. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge for us. We\u2019re in a tech-driven form of media. Billions are going into VR tech. But no one will buy a headset without content.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou look at Guy\u2019s three partners in the business, and you think that if anyone could pull this off, this would be the group to do it. The VR you just watched is a preview of There, a fantastical story from the mind of the chief creative officer, Robert Stromberg, who created the virtual world of Avatar and directed the recent Disney hit Maleficent. The chief production officer is Chris Edwards, head of Third Floor, a firm that has created a revolutionary way to streamline the filmmaking process. And the president is Joel Newton, a producer whose credits include the film The Kids are All Right.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETheir advisers include former Tech president G. Wayne Clough and Steven Spielberg. You\u2019ve seen all of his movies.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt wasn\u2019t his name,\u201d Guy tells you. \u201cIt\u2019s that he has a vision. He can make a project that still resonates, 40 years later.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou hear that Spielberg is developing a story for the Virtual Reality Company, a family-oriented project. You make a note, to make damn sure you experience it. You hear about other projects in development, including a documentary about Jerome Bettis, the NFL running back recently inducted into the Hall of Fame, as well as one called The Museum of Supernatural History, and another that\u2019s a virtual concert venue, allowing you to experience a show and even go backstage, all from your living room.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSomething about being in the world, it connects you more deeply,\u201d Guy says. \u201cYou feel it.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYou ask Guy about the stories he likes. Family, he says. He lists off a string of shows and movies: Frasier, Scarface, Godfather, E.T. All stories about families, the blood-relation kind and the kind we create.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGuy has a young daughter, and he talks about her, how she\u2019s brought into focus the importance of women\u2019s issues, how technology still has so far to go to be as diverse and welcoming as it can be.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWomen and people of color, historically, we\u2019re always playing catch up,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want to have women and people of color involved in the creative process, and to make sure the content is connected to them, that it speaks to them.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe vision grows, changes, evolves. But it is clearer now, crystal. You can see that Guy knows it, that he sees his moment has come.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI literally have been waiting for this moment in time since 1988,\u201d he tells you.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe dreamed it, then made it so. Turned his vision into a new world, one that\u2019s right there, just ahead. Would you like to see it? \u25aa\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThis story was originally published in \u003C\/em\u003EEngineers\u003Cem\u003E, the Georgia Tech College of Engineering magazine.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"ISyE graduate Guy Primus is making VR a reality."}],"uid":"28766","created_gmt":"2015-10-22 09:10:36","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:47","author":"Shelley Wunder-Smith","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-10-22T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"461331":{"id":"461331","type":"image","title":"Guy Primus -- Engineer, Entrepreneur, Hollywood Revolutionary","body":null,"created":"1449256373","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:12:53","changed":"1475895206","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:26","alt":"Guy Primus -- Engineer, Entrepreneur, Hollywood Revolutionary","file":{"fid":"203609","name":"guy-primus-6420-color-001.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/guy-primus-6420-color-001_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/guy-primus-6420-color-001_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":41576,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/guy-primus-6420-color-001_0.jpg?itok=-TsN2cvo"}}},"media_ids":["461331"],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[{"id":"130","name":"Alumni"}],"keywords":[{"id":"12549","name":"Guy Primus"},{"id":"426","name":"isye"},{"id":"145251","name":"virtual reality"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EShelley Wunder-Smith\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECollege of Industrial \u0026amp; Systems Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404.385.4745\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["shelley.wunder-smith@isye.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}