Podcast #25: Elizabeth Spiers is Multi-dimensional
Podcast #25: Elizabeth Spiers is Multi-dimensional
Image courtesy of Elizabeth Spiers
From digital journalism to virtual reality: this week, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade talk to Elizabeth Spiers, whom Paul describes as “both a human being and essentially a human media platform.” (Elizabeth scales the description back a bit with “digital media nerd.”) She chronicles her career, from founding editor of Gawker to “launch consultant” for digital products, and they discuss her brand-new company, The Insurrection, a research firm that specializes in VR.
Elizabeth: For the first five months [at Gawker], I was writing every day, and I was doing twelve posts a day.
Paul: Whoa. So you set that pace?
Elizabeth: Yeah. Well I didn’t really set that pace. Nick [Denton] was like, “It’s got to be twelve posts a day.” And, you know —
Rich: What’s the premise? Like you’re writing twelve posts a day. It’s called — Gizmodo, yeah, OK, fine.
Paul: Do you ask the guy in the locomotive, who’s like, shoveling the coal in, what the premise is? He’s got to just — there’s a fire!
Rich: Can I share a VR experience and you tell me if I did this wrong?
Elizabeth: Sure.
Rich: So it was the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, came out with a VR app. And it’s one of those —
Paul: Yeah, you did this wrong.
Rich: Wait, hold on. It gets better. So I get the app and then I pick a girl. And then when you pick the girl, it tells you, “OK, put your phone in the goggles,” or whatever. And I put them on and it was, it was me in my backyard on a lounge chair, and I could look around and see the backyard and there were other, like, there was backyard furniture and a barbecue. And over to the left was one of the swimsuit models showering in an outdoor shower.
Paul: OK.
Rich: OK. But that was it.
Paul: Is this a dream, or an experience —
Rich: No! No no, and the thing was, I couldn’t — I couldn’t do anything!
Paul: OK.
Rich: So —
Paul: What did you want to do?
Rich: I wanted to get out of my chair!
Paul: OK.
Rich: I want to get up in the backyard and walk over to her and say, “Hey, you look pretty clean.” [laughter] Or something! Right?
Track Changes is the weekly technology and culture podcast from Postlight, hosted by Paul Ford and Rich Ziade. Coordination, research, and management by Elizabeth Minkel, who also prepared the summary of this episode. Production and editing by Tom Meyers. Podcast logo and design by Matt Quintanilla of Postlight. We record with Paul Ruest and Noriko Okabe at Argot Studios. Listen to more episodes here.
