WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:00.964 --> 00:00:06.574 Shannon Putman: Hello, good day and welcome everybody to another episode of Putin's podcast. 00:00:06.574 --> 00:00:11.764 Pops, I could not be more thrilled and excited for today's episode. 00:00:11.764 --> 00:00:14.074 We have a special one for you today. 00:00:14.374 --> 00:00:24.814 We have Vijay Rin, the CEO, and founder of Florio, and I'm going to let him introduce himself and brag about himself because he deserves to. 00:00:24.814 --> 00:00:25.594 Vijay, welcome. 00:00:25.594 --> 00:00:26.164 How are you? 00:00:27.154 --> 00:00:30.214 Vijay Ravindran: I'm doing well, and thank you so much for having me on. 00:00:31.249 --> 00:00:31.879 Shannon Putman: Absolutely. 00:00:31.879 --> 00:00:32.989 Thank you for joining us. 00:00:32.989 --> 00:00:37.099 I feel so honored and just truly blessed that you decided to join us today. 00:00:37.099 --> 00:00:37.879 So thank you. 00:00:39.634 --> 00:00:40.444 Vijay Ravindran: Yeah, no, it's great. 00:00:40.444 --> 00:00:40.924 It's great. 00:00:40.924 --> 00:00:45.884 It's been it's been exciting to work with you over the last year-ish now, I think over a year I think. 00:00:45.884 --> 00:00:48.094 A year and a half, so, great. 00:00:48.094 --> 00:00:52.624 So for your audience, my name is Vijay Ravinder and I'm the CEO and founder at Florio. 00:00:52.654 --> 00:00:56.184 And I excited to be here and tell you more about Florio. 00:00:56.454 --> 00:01:03.984 You know, for quick background, I'm a software engineer by background and was an early engineer at Amazon joining in 1998. 00:01:04.634 --> 00:01:11.054 And then more recently a technology executive at the Washington Post as its Chief Digital Officer and. 00:01:11.489 --> 00:01:16.449 You know, the story with Florio really starts from my experience as a parent of an autistic child. 00:01:16.499 --> 00:01:26.229 During that time was at Wash at the Washington Post and and excited to share how I got started, you know, developing solutions for the neurodiverse and virtual reality. 00:01:28.464 --> 00:01:33.384 Shannon Putman: Absolutely how very diverse background, but yet all kind of intertwined. 00:01:35.169 --> 00:01:35.799 Vijay Ravindran: Absolutely. 00:01:35.859 --> 00:01:36.189 Yeah. 00:01:36.219 --> 00:01:47.219 No, my, my tech experience at Amazon has helped helped launch several different opportunities for me to apply that, but also find missions and ways I can make impact that feel special. 00:01:47.719 --> 00:01:48.439 Shannon Putman: I agree. 00:01:48.439 --> 00:01:49.099 One of the. 00:01:49.174 --> 00:01:58.174 Things I always say at Putman Consulting, you know, it's what it's about, what's best for students and so having that kind of purpose-driven mission seems to just hit a little bit harder. 00:01:58.174 --> 00:02:08.394 So you had kind of briefly alluded to it, but could you kinda let us know a little bit more about what inspired you to create Florio and kinda just a little bit about what actually is Florio. 00:02:09.384 --> 00:02:10.164 Vijay Ravindran: Sounds good. 00:02:10.284 --> 00:02:22.029 So, as I mentioned I'm the parent of an autistic child and have seen all the different therapies and interventions to help in that area. 00:02:22.089 --> 00:02:31.179 And, you know, the origin story for Florio started with my discovery of virtual reality headsets. 00:02:31.239 --> 00:02:39.309 I was leaving my role at the Washington Post and experimenting with new technology to kind of figure out what did I want to do next. 00:02:39.769 --> 00:02:56.609 I was talking to some big tech companies and kind of more traditional big tech jobs, and I got an Oculus developer Kip two and hooked it up to my PC and started going through steam and trying out different you know, experiences. 00:02:56.609 --> 00:02:58.709 You know, there weren't really full fledged games back then. 00:02:58.709 --> 00:02:59.759 You were just trying out. 00:03:00.539 --> 00:03:11.809 Snippets and vignettes and and was starting to really like what I was seeing this was in late 2015 and a few weeks later, the Samsung Gear VR came out. 00:03:12.409 --> 00:03:23.479 And so even though I was an iPhone user, I bought a Samsung phone, got the Gear VR headset, and started experimenting with it as well to try to understand where is this all going? 00:03:24.859 --> 00:03:37.909 If you remember all the way back to then, you know, this coincided with roughly around the time that New York Times had done the Google Cardboard promotion and included a card cardboard headset in the Sunday Times. 00:03:38.509 --> 00:03:43.519 And so there was some, you know, awareness of Google Cardboard as a VR mechanism. 00:03:44.039 --> 00:03:49.044 And then you have these different headsets showing up that had, and the rif being, you know. 00:03:49.434 --> 00:03:52.824 What would actually be the ref being, you know, highly capable? 00:03:52.944 --> 00:03:54.624 HTCV was not out yet. 00:03:54.904 --> 00:04:02.954 And so I started trying out different experiences and my son saw me trying VR and expressed that he wanted to try it. 00:04:02.954 --> 00:04:09.254 He was only six years old at the time and he spent about 30 minutes in the vr. 00:04:09.304 --> 00:04:22.414 I tried like a dinosaur experience on the DK two and, google Street, UVR had come out on the Gear VR and cross EV, the A play on Crossy Road on Google Cardboard. 00:04:22.684 --> 00:04:34.009 And so he tried out several different experiences and it seemed to lead for him pretend playing in new ways and engaging with his toys in something that was different than he had done before. 00:04:34.489 --> 00:04:35.839 And it was a light bulb moment. 00:04:35.929 --> 00:04:38.869 It made me think, Hey, there's something special. 00:04:39.544 --> 00:04:47.994 Happening with VR and I started exploring this as a basement project kind of drawing out a napkin design. 00:04:48.294 --> 00:04:56.779 You know, I was blessed from my time at Amazon and elsewhere, so I could fund something separately and not worry about, you know, finding other people to help fund. 00:04:56.824 --> 00:05:02.584 So, you know, I spent basically the next year building out a prototype. 00:05:03.019 --> 00:05:17.809 Bringing in a therapist and a developmental pediatrician, an engineer, a 3D artist, to create that first version and basically fell in love with the idea that this could be a real way to impact lives in a positive way. 00:05:17.849 --> 00:05:22.289 And eventually by 2017, dedicated myself full time to. 00:05:22.574 --> 00:05:26.384 Starting the company, I'm sure we'll have opportunity to talk about the company and the product more. 00:05:26.384 --> 00:05:34.054 But, you know, a brief kind of what is Florio Florio's, a virtual reality therapy system that can help teach social and life skills. 00:05:34.504 --> 00:05:47.144 It is being currently used both in a healthcare context by autism therapy, healthcare providers, as well as by, by special education programs in schools, which is how we've had the joy of working with Dr. 00:05:47.144 --> 00:05:57.504 Putnam and, that we also have a growing cadre of parents using it directly as a home-based solution to augment whatever other services they're receiving through schools or healthcare. 00:05:57.924 --> 00:06:00.784 And and all of those are growing and exciting. 00:06:00.784 --> 00:06:09.354 And and at the core is a growing library of immersive VR lessons to teach different types of social and life skills. 00:06:11.349 --> 00:06:12.489 Shannon Putman: Absolutely. 00:06:13.029 --> 00:06:13.959 Unbelievable. 00:06:13.989 --> 00:06:29.439 And I always tell people it's this technology is truly life changing and we're very, we have some similar crossroads in that, you know, that I started with the DK two kit and it was my student who had autism who had never been out to dinner and as a family. 00:06:29.439 --> 00:06:35.949 And so, you know, big up o Charlie's, if you wanna sponsor the podcast, they made it on Free Pie Wednesdays, which they should bring back. 00:06:35.949 --> 00:06:38.009 But it truly changed their lives. 00:06:38.069 --> 00:06:40.949 And I had been a believer ever since in. 00:06:41.494 --> 00:06:45.934 Yes, there's always flash in the pan things and people, oh, it's gaming or this, that, the other. 00:06:45.934 --> 00:06:51.124 And I'm like, no, it's truly life changing when used in those ways. 00:06:51.664 --> 00:06:54.154 And so that's what Florio kind of gets at. 00:06:54.154 --> 00:07:04.804 And I know that a lot of times people look at life skills, like especially being a special ed teacher, they considered life skills like not as important in some way or something, you know, like, oh, that's that, whatever. 00:07:05.074 --> 00:07:06.874 And it's literally the core of everything. 00:07:07.126 --> 00:07:12.056 And so have you seen it already, like, you know, start to make any difference with your son? 00:07:12.086 --> 00:07:14.486 You know, has he been involved in the process at all? 00:07:14.486 --> 00:07:14.936 Like, is 00:07:14.936 --> 00:07:15.206 Vijay Ravindran: You know, 00:07:15.256 --> 00:07:15.826 Shannon Putman: advisor? 00:07:15.826 --> 00:07:16.246 What's his 00:07:16.496 --> 00:07:18.826 Vijay Ravindran: He is more of an employee and advisor at this point. 00:07:18.826 --> 00:07:27.226 I mean, in the early days, he sampled a lot of VR experiences to help me develop some of the insights on what the product should be. 00:07:27.526 --> 00:07:33.276 And kind of what capabilities of elementary school kids could be 'cause that wasn't obvious. 00:07:33.276 --> 00:07:45.066 So a lot of the early design decisions around streaming a live view to a companion application so that you could see what the child is seeing and provide feedback that came from working with him. 00:07:45.096 --> 00:07:53.136 And also the decision not to try to chase hand controllers and simply stay gaze based in the design. 00:07:53.186 --> 00:08:01.826 That was because we wanted this to be very accessible across all abilities, and it became clear that the hand controllers were complicated. 00:08:02.216 --> 00:08:02.966 One day. 00:08:02.996 --> 00:08:07.296 Hand tracking and hand gesturing will be so good that we could potentially rely on it. 00:08:07.326 --> 00:08:11.026 I don't think that day has come yet, so we're still waiting, but we're getting closer. 00:08:11.126 --> 00:08:18.486 And and so yeah, so a lot of those initial insights into the MVP or the minimal viable product came from. 00:08:18.846 --> 00:08:20.436 My explorations with him. 00:08:20.616 --> 00:08:24.706 You know, he he has been influential as he's an inspiration for the company. 00:08:24.706 --> 00:08:37.231 And and, you know, I'm proud to say that the company has gone way past us, any single child and is working with so many families, both through caregivers and and parents and therapists and teachers. 00:08:38.526 --> 00:08:52.216 Shannon Putman: I think that's such a critically important point that you know, you just made, and that I don't want anybody to overlook in that you actually, you designed a product for a certain population and you included that population in the design of the product. 00:08:52.216 --> 00:08:57.876 I, I. Think so many times people design things, and I see it all the time in deaf ed. 00:08:57.876 --> 00:09:03.006 You know, hearing people love to design things for deaf people and never ask 'em if they want it or even need it. 00:09:03.456 --> 00:09:10.536 And so the fact that you actually included them in it can only serve to make the product better and it's what should be happening. 00:09:11.261 --> 00:09:11.651 Vijay Ravindran: Yeah. 00:09:11.651 --> 00:09:15.031 And I think to pick up on that it's been important to. 00:09:15.531 --> 00:09:19.221 Seek and recruit Neurodiverse employees to be part of the company. 00:09:19.291 --> 00:09:40.676 To have them in roles where they can influence where the product goes and how the content is shaped and to, you know, it's a really important aspect of the identity of the company that we can not only be dignified and respectful, which we need to be, but but be inclusive and you know, clearly have a foot in the community. 00:09:42.116 --> 00:09:42.896 Shannon Putman: Absolutely. 00:09:43.226 --> 00:09:43.406 And. 00:09:44.051 --> 00:09:57.451 Also, the other thing that I really like is that you said, you know, you have parents using it and teachers and educators and the whole spectrum because you know, a lot of the times as educators, those of us that you know, truly care, we consider them our kids. 00:09:57.511 --> 00:09:58.291 We really do. 00:09:58.321 --> 00:09:59.731 But at the same time. 00:10:00.126 --> 00:10:08.256 We always had a joke in my room that, you know, four o'clock comes every day because four o'clock comes every day and you get to, you know, send the kids home so you get your break. 00:10:08.256 --> 00:10:11.196 Whereas parents, you don't really have a four o'clock that ever comes. 00:10:11.196 --> 00:10:15.966 So there was times where I would be talking to my mom or something and I'd be like, oh, you know, like whatever. 00:10:15.966 --> 00:10:18.786 And she's like, Shannon, you're also not a parent. 00:10:18.786 --> 00:10:19.026 You know? 00:10:19.026 --> 00:10:20.796 And she'd have to kind of bring me back down to reality. 00:10:20.796 --> 00:10:21.276 So. 00:10:21.771 --> 00:10:28.011 It would give me insights in some of the programs, like especially out in the community, would give me insights into what the parents go through. 00:10:28.311 --> 00:10:38.931 And then so are you seeing that like, you know, kind of parents understanding more about what educators are going through, like I feel like it's a great opportunity to just show people other people's perspectives. 00:10:40.156 --> 00:10:43.136 Vijay Ravindran: Yeah, I think the enthusiasm can be bi-directional too. 00:10:43.166 --> 00:10:57.226 I think what we see out there is that parents are able to see the technology and action being used by a school or a clinic and then feel like they're trying everything they can to help my kid. 00:10:57.616 --> 00:10:57.826 Right? 00:10:57.826 --> 00:10:59.836 So that goes a really long way when you're a parent. 00:11:00.331 --> 00:11:18.391 It investing the time and energy and logistics and sacrifice, you know, you know, the average neurodiverse household drops in household income by 35% because one of the, one of the parents goes part-time at that point once they get a diagnosis, right? 00:11:18.391 --> 00:11:22.951 So there's there's immense sacrifices happening in the community and and so. 00:11:23.506 --> 00:11:44.866 The first thing you see right away is just there's tremendous enthusiasm for technology being explored to help and that there's energy around that and it comes from the parents and it often is then conveyed and motivating to the professionals working with a, yeah, I should be trying this new technology out. 00:11:45.326 --> 00:11:47.336 And then conversely. 00:11:47.711 --> 00:11:56.651 When there's milestones hit or progress that's conveyed to the parents, and the parents really feel good about that no nothing's being spared to help my child. 00:11:56.651 --> 00:12:02.771 And so I think those, they really, you know, I think we owe it to the families to. 00:12:03.191 --> 00:12:16.391 To be innovating and finding new solutions, and that the teachers and therapists are open-minded to exploring these solutions and using rigor to make sure that they are clinically beneficial, but then adopting it. 00:12:17.891 --> 00:12:18.221 Shannon Putman: Yep. 00:12:18.311 --> 00:12:19.421 Yeah, definitely. 00:12:19.421 --> 00:12:29.631 And the whole, the other thing that I love about virtual reality in general, but also what you guys have thought about in Florio, is that life isn't life like, it's never predictable. 00:12:29.631 --> 00:12:37.761 And that's what can be so hard with some of our students because, you know, teaching them multimodal communication classroom, it was students who were all you know, had different. 00:12:38.346 --> 00:12:39.791 Struggles orally communicating. 00:12:39.876 --> 00:12:41.406 So they're basically nonverbal. 00:12:41.646 --> 00:12:51.636 And so it's like, okay, well you're teaching a kid to say hi to their friend and you finally teach 'em to wave to a kid in the hall, and instead the kid just gives 'em a head nod and it's like, what do you do now? 00:12:51.636 --> 00:12:51.966 You know? 00:12:51.966 --> 00:12:58.866 So Florio is a uniquely set up, and I'd love you to kind of highlight that, that you guys can prepare for the unexpected. 00:12:59.466 --> 00:12:59.766 Vijay Ravindran: Yeah. 00:12:59.766 --> 00:13:08.256 I think one of the beauties of VR is once you build a scene, you can layer so much nuance into it. 00:13:08.256 --> 00:13:13.876 So, you know, as Dr. Putnam mentions, we have lessons where we teach basic greetings. 00:13:13.876 --> 00:13:17.356 It's one of kind of the earliest set of conversational skill building that we have. 00:13:17.926 --> 00:13:23.236 And you know, like sometimes you say hi and they say hi back, which is kind of what adults do. 00:13:23.941 --> 00:13:35.111 But we have, you know, characters that, you know, use tween appropriate expressions of the head nod or a wave or nothing at all. 00:13:35.111 --> 00:13:47.641 And that all of those are things that we need to help prepare for because, you know, we, the neurodiverse population, the autistic population specifically as a focus, the. 00:13:48.241 --> 00:13:52.651 The thing you see is that prac more practice leads to better performance. 00:13:52.651 --> 00:13:53.851 It's like anything else. 00:13:53.951 --> 00:13:59.251 And our kids need a little bit more practice than the neurotypical population. 00:13:59.251 --> 00:14:08.491 And this is a repeatable practice environment that is engaging because of animation and cutting edge technology that draws the children in. 00:14:09.716 --> 00:14:10.316 Shannon Putman: Exactly. 00:14:10.316 --> 00:14:16.886 You know, I mean not, you know, you hold the door for somebody and they don't say thank you, and then I start having a conversation like, oh, you're welcome. 00:14:16.886 --> 00:14:18.086 Yeah, thank you for holding that door. 00:14:18.086 --> 00:14:20.306 You know, the sarcasm that comes out. 00:14:20.306 --> 00:14:23.606 You know, I always used to joke that I would teach my, I had to teach my kids sarcasm. 00:14:23.636 --> 00:14:30.476 'cause sometimes it was appropriate, you know, and I'm like, you have to be able to express yourself in, you know, socially appropriate ways. 00:14:30.476 --> 00:14:31.796 And sarcasm is one of those. 00:14:32.266 --> 00:14:32.686 Vijay Ravindran: That's right. 00:14:32.776 --> 00:14:37.196 Another great example of that is that we have lessons on bullying. 00:14:37.766 --> 00:14:40.016 And bullying can take a lot of different forms. 00:14:40.691 --> 00:14:41.861 And it's complex. 00:14:41.891 --> 00:14:49.691 It's also the type of thing that it's kind of hard to teach because you can't have a teacher bully a kid in play acting easily. 00:14:49.691 --> 00:14:49.991 Right? 00:14:49.991 --> 00:14:51.461 It's gonna feel inappropriate. 00:14:51.831 --> 00:15:07.771 And so in the Florio bullying lessons, there's actually levels, and not every level requires the highest level of escalation to the authority, so to speak, as far as you know, teachers or administrators at a school. 00:15:08.581 --> 00:15:12.001 And in some cases there's just teasing. 00:15:12.211 --> 00:15:18.631 And the teasing is just a banter that might not feel comfortable but is not crossing that line. 00:15:18.631 --> 00:15:26.181 And those are the types of nuances that are kind of hard to get similar to sarcasm that that we get, we start to get to in the Fluor lessons. 00:15:27.106 --> 00:15:37.966 Shannon Putman: Yeah, I love that you build those in there and that you also mentioned the teachers and stuff because you know, as educators, we don't ever wanna think of ourselves as bullies, but we're human and. 00:15:37.996 --> 00:15:49.186 You know, we might have bad days or we say something that we didn't, you know, mean it to be that way, or we weren't just weren't thinking, you know, kids in my class, when they came into my classroom, if they didn't wanna wear their shoes, they didn't have to. 00:15:49.186 --> 00:15:51.976 And one day I made a joke about a kid's, you know, stinky socks. 00:15:51.976 --> 00:15:59.356 Like, 'cause we always joked to, he didn't actually have stinky socks, but I didn't never even realize that he would've, and it hurt his feelings and I just felt awful. 00:15:59.356 --> 00:15:59.626 You know? 00:15:59.626 --> 00:16:06.676 So sometimes it's also about presenting things in a way that when you can actually experience that happening, you're like, oh. 00:16:07.131 --> 00:16:14.021 That's how I said that, you know, and kind of take some of those walls down about how we're coming across in a communication sense. 00:16:14.921 --> 00:16:15.401 Vijay Ravindran: that's right. 00:16:15.401 --> 00:16:15.911 That's right. 00:16:15.971 --> 00:16:18.281 And the perspective taking that's possible. 00:16:18.771 --> 00:16:22.251 We've only dipped into this a little bit and I don't think you've actually seen. 00:16:22.751 --> 00:16:30.981 'cause we don't offer this into schools yet, but you know, we've also developed nurse and doctor training with Nicholas Children's Hospital out of Miami. 00:16:31.481 --> 00:16:40.521 That can be used for preparing doctors and nurses to be more ready for the challenges for the Neurodiverse when they're in a hospital setting. 00:16:41.271 --> 00:16:44.151 Weird noises and distractions and 00:16:44.581 --> 00:16:45.841 Shannon Putman: Fluorescent lighting. 00:16:46.226 --> 00:16:46.806 Vijay Ravindran: That's right. 00:16:46.806 --> 00:16:47.186 Oh yeah. 00:16:48.781 --> 00:16:49.861 Shannon Putman: That's fantastic. 00:16:49.891 --> 00:16:51.391 'cause I know in in the. 00:16:52.016 --> 00:16:53.336 Sweet that you already have. 00:16:53.366 --> 00:17:07.626 There's also community interactions and so you have TSA and you have the, you know, the police and in today's society, you know, that's incredibly important and I would always, you know, when I would be working with my students if they would get upset or whatever, and people would tell me, well, they need to control it. 00:17:07.626 --> 00:17:08.016 And I'm like. 00:17:08.856 --> 00:17:09.126 Yeah. 00:17:09.126 --> 00:17:09.486 Okay. 00:17:09.486 --> 00:17:12.366 And my line is always, do you tell somebody with diabetes to make more insulin? 00:17:12.366 --> 00:17:13.956 Like it's the same thing, you know? 00:17:13.956 --> 00:17:18.726 But they're like, well, if they get in the real world and they talk to the police that way, I'm like, yeah, there's logical consequences. 00:17:18.996 --> 00:17:20.406 So we have to teach them those. 00:17:20.406 --> 00:17:25.596 But kind of like you said before, we can't always bring in police or you know, some of those high stress situations. 00:17:25.596 --> 00:17:28.806 How do we ethically train our students in those? 00:17:29.136 --> 00:17:31.176 And Florio does a fantastic job with that. 00:17:31.626 --> 00:17:32.736 Vijay Ravindran: No, I appreciate you saying that. 00:17:32.736 --> 00:17:32.946 Yeah. 00:17:32.946 --> 00:17:33.576 It's interesting. 00:17:33.576 --> 00:17:37.721 We had, you know, when I was first building Florio, I had in my eye. 00:17:38.901 --> 00:17:40.461 What would my son benefit from? 00:17:40.461 --> 00:17:46.251 So the lessons were very much geared towards younger kids and a lot of those early intervention areas. 00:17:47.901 --> 00:17:57.051 When I started demoing Floria, one of the first areas that we exhibited Floria was at a children's science museum in Toronto as part of a VR conference. 00:17:57.111 --> 00:18:06.681 And I had a family come up to me and said, I'm really afraid that I'm gonna spend all this time helping my child with being independent. 00:18:07.116 --> 00:18:09.696 But they're not gonna be able to handle a law enforcement encounter. 00:18:10.446 --> 00:18:23.766 And it coincided with the time when there had been a really regrettable shooting outside of Miami where a therapist was trying to help an adult who was autistic, get back to his group home and someone called the police. 00:18:23.766 --> 00:18:28.926 And, you know, a toy train was mistaken for a gun based on reports. 00:18:28.976 --> 00:18:32.186 And the therapist was shot and thankfully survived. 00:18:32.801 --> 00:18:37.051 So there was quite a bit of fear, fear in the community that that these encounters could be dangerous. 00:18:37.291 --> 00:18:57.451 We were really fortunate, we found a great partner in Children's Hospital, Philadelphia to research and build those lessons with, and we were able to work with both the Montgomery County Police Department here outside of DC and in the second phase, the Philadelphia Police Department to get the dialogue right and understand the exact police procedures on a. 00:18:58.021 --> 00:19:04.426 Street encounter and then be able to build the curriculum from starting with what would actually happen in the real world. 00:19:05.395 --> 00:19:06.834 Shannon Putman: And that's so incredibly important. 00:19:06.834 --> 00:19:18.564 'cause I know, you know, educators, police, everybody, there's, you know, there's bad people in every profession, but, you know, my father was a police officer, and I overall believe that people don't get into these professions because they want to hurt people. 00:19:18.624 --> 00:19:23.154 You know, in general, most people want to help people and I think it just comes from not knowing. 00:19:23.624 --> 00:19:26.894 And so if they can be taught, oh, okay, how can I work with this person? 00:19:26.894 --> 00:19:28.064 How can I help this person? 00:19:28.424 --> 00:19:32.204 I found that most everybody has been receptive and. 00:19:33.154 --> 00:19:34.864 Willing to offer that help. 00:19:34.864 --> 00:19:36.664 Like, yeah, help me so I can help them. 00:19:37.989 --> 00:19:38.804 Vijay Ravindran: A Absolutely. 00:19:38.864 --> 00:19:40.394 And so we, you know, we worked with both. 00:19:40.934 --> 00:19:44.194 The community and with the police and to develop the lessons. 00:19:44.194 --> 00:19:50.554 The lessons, help a child or teenager or adult be able to navigate the encounter. 00:19:50.654 --> 00:19:56.024 And then to pay special attention to some of the behaviors that could be unsettling to the officer. 00:19:56.054 --> 00:20:00.164 The officer doesn't know that someone is autistic versus. 00:20:00.594 --> 00:20:04.074 On a substance or some other issue going on. 00:20:04.074 --> 00:20:09.084 And, you know, this is one of a zillion situations that they encounter on the street. 00:20:09.084 --> 00:20:13.924 And so, you know, what we're trying to do is help and and try to make a positive difference there. 00:20:15.064 --> 00:20:15.354 Shannon Putman: Yeah. 00:20:15.789 --> 00:20:29.919 And now for any of the actual educ, you know, school-based educators listening and things like that, are you seeing that people are able to use Florio in some of the, you know, the, because you have great data and everything else, are they using it for some of these IEP goals and like behavior objectives? 00:20:29.919 --> 00:20:35.349 How are you seeing it really being utilized to help make an educator's job easier? 00:20:36.109 --> 00:20:39.589 Vijay Ravindran: Yeah there's a couple of different modalities we see out there today. 00:20:39.639 --> 00:20:43.659 The first is, hey, school district has a therapist on staff. 00:20:44.109 --> 00:20:46.629 They do one-to-one breakouts based on the IEP. 00:20:46.659 --> 00:20:48.609 Might be a speech therapist. 00:20:48.969 --> 00:20:53.229 Working on social and communication goals, Florio has great lessons to support that. 00:20:53.629 --> 00:21:08.179 In some cases the special education teacher is wanting to teach different situations in a in the small classroom, and they might be using Florio and one kid's in vr and they're using screen sharing of the coaching application to create a group experience from that. 00:21:08.929 --> 00:21:14.749 I hope soon to have a, you know, we'll be able to develop a group, group VR capability as well. 00:21:14.749 --> 00:21:17.269 And so that's something that we're trying to strive for over the next year. 00:21:17.779 --> 00:21:19.339 The one you mentioned is a key one. 00:21:19.339 --> 00:21:29.389 So obviously the individualized education plan lays out, agreed upon goals for development between the school and the family on an annual basis. 00:21:29.419 --> 00:21:32.479 And so, there's opportunities to line that up. 00:21:32.479 --> 00:21:34.789 And so what we've done in every Florio lesson is. 00:21:35.339 --> 00:21:48.209 State some of the potential IEP goals and the feature I'm really excited about that's available now to every Florio customer is we have an AI recommendation engine that can take freeform text. 00:21:48.209 --> 00:21:56.949 So you could take a snippet of the IEP such as the goal, ask the Florio chatbot you know, does Flo have lessons for this specific IEP goal? 00:21:57.039 --> 00:21:58.029 And it'll give you an answer. 00:21:58.149 --> 00:22:00.249 It'll, it's been trained on our 200. 00:22:00.879 --> 00:22:02.879 Person lesson plus catalog. 00:22:03.249 --> 00:22:10.059 It's also been trained on the history, five years of history of Florio usage by teachers and therapists with kids. 00:22:10.389 --> 00:22:19.749 And so based off of that, we've, you know, we've built this capability that's in the Florio portal for creating instant lesson plans based on needs. 00:22:20.184 --> 00:22:24.724 And then you can essentially save that and make it available when you're in session with the child. 00:22:24.724 --> 00:22:38.669 And so we're really excited about that because it, you know, as we add more and more lessons, it becomes harder and harder for someone coming in new to understand what all the lessons are and for every kid in their roster to figure out, well, which lessons make sense for this kid. 00:22:39.179 --> 00:22:43.349 So we're trying to make that easier and make it so that you can take all or some of the IEP. 00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:46.709 And ask Florio at that point. 00:22:46.859 --> 00:22:47.729 Hey, what do you got? 00:22:47.759 --> 00:22:49.589 This is the IEP and we can tell you. 00:22:50.784 --> 00:22:52.824 Shannon Putman: Anything that can help us save some time. 00:22:52.884 --> 00:22:53.634 That's amazing. 00:22:53.634 --> 00:22:55.044 So that's awesome. 00:22:55.044 --> 00:23:03.884 And then I kind of briefly hinted to it, but can you kinda just give us a little bit about what data, as an educator, when I'm using it, what data will it provide me at the end? 00:23:03.884 --> 00:23:05.354 Like what am I gonna learn about my students? 00:23:05.354 --> 00:23:05.414 I. 00:23:06.199 --> 00:23:06.499 Vijay Ravindran: Yeah. 00:23:06.499 --> 00:23:09.629 So, every lesson has tasks that are. 00:23:10.129 --> 00:23:15.979 Built into the lesson and success criteria for achieving the task. 00:23:16.549 --> 00:23:21.229 And those are saved away and available for download. 00:23:21.329 --> 00:23:31.269 So you can also then look at trending within a given lesson and start to understand whether the child has achieved mastery to move on to other lessons. 00:23:31.824 --> 00:23:32.964 And more coming on the way. 00:23:33.024 --> 00:23:36.234 I mean, this is also an area that we're very excited about developing new products for. 00:23:36.594 --> 00:23:42.844 So, we did a research study funded by Meta where we've created assessment oriented lessons in vr. 00:23:42.844 --> 00:23:45.634 So these aren't available yet to customer, but coming soon. 00:23:46.024 --> 00:23:48.374 And and so these are for school-based. 00:23:48.404 --> 00:23:52.064 I think the term specifically is a, it's a progress indicator. 00:23:52.464 --> 00:23:53.654 So, because we. 00:23:54.119 --> 00:23:56.919 We also have a healthcare facing part of the company. 00:23:56.919 --> 00:23:59.949 So we have to be careful with terms like diagnosis and assessment. 00:23:59.949 --> 00:24:04.849 And those have connotations that sometimes are beyond what we wanna state based on where we're with the research. 00:24:04.849 --> 00:24:08.489 So, it's a learning progress indicator lesson that we've been working on. 00:24:08.799 --> 00:24:13.339 It's specifically geared to towards schools to be able to get a sense of a baseline on where a child is. 00:24:13.879 --> 00:24:17.959 It also dovetails with technology that we acquired last year. 00:24:18.229 --> 00:24:27.269 From Cleveland Clinic where we have technology to assess the severity of autism using eye gaze tracking. 00:24:27.929 --> 00:24:39.519 And we have a working prototype now running on a Pico Neo three I pro that that can essentially take a score based on eight minutes of VR experience. 00:24:40.104 --> 00:24:41.934 All based off of retina level eye tracking. 00:24:41.994 --> 00:24:44.434 And and so really excited about that. 00:24:44.434 --> 00:24:48.934 That's gonna take subsequent research studies before we can put it out into the field. 00:24:49.244 --> 00:24:52.764 But we'll start with schools likely on that and start making something available. 00:24:54.024 --> 00:24:55.224 Shannon Putman: That's phenomenal. 00:24:55.374 --> 00:24:56.874 And that's what I always say about the technology. 00:24:56.874 --> 00:25:04.939 Like there's so many things that we haven't even thought of and I think eye tracking is one of those areas where people thought, oh, it's kind of cool, but then it kind of got, you know, not pushed to the side. 00:25:04.939 --> 00:25:06.109 But it is also expensive. 00:25:06.109 --> 00:25:06.304 It adds. 00:25:06.509 --> 00:25:07.019 You know, a 00:25:07.319 --> 00:25:08.489 Vijay Ravindran: Lot of cost. 00:25:08.609 --> 00:25:09.029 Shannon Putman: Yeah. 00:25:09.029 --> 00:25:12.029 And the VI Pro I is still my favorite headset of all time. 00:25:12.029 --> 00:25:13.439 Like I loved the VI Pro. 00:25:13.439 --> 00:25:14.809 I, so, I get that. 00:25:14.809 --> 00:25:20.779 But seeing all of these new ways and new things to use it for, especially, 'cause we all know early intervention is the key. 00:25:21.229 --> 00:25:27.649 And you know, so anything that can give us a leg up on any of that, it is always just incredibly beneficial for everybody. 00:25:27.979 --> 00:25:34.249 Vijay Ravindran: I'll also add, I think the other reason for our, for my, for the specific community, we're focused on. 00:25:35.074 --> 00:25:50.074 Eye tracking is a really powerful because so many of the kids we work with might not have the dexterity for hand controllers and so, you know, you can see hand tracking getting better and better, especially on like Vision Pro. 00:25:50.154 --> 00:25:55.134 But it's still, even hand tracking is potentially complicated for some of the kids who might not have. 00:25:55.674 --> 00:26:00.414 That type of, you know, muscle dexterity and ability to create predictable gesturing. 00:26:00.414 --> 00:26:10.034 So, I think eye tracking is, especially, is powerful, but there's a lot of other things that are interesting that are unexplored as far as analyzing voice. 00:26:10.354 --> 00:26:26.814 You see the meta Orion prototype and the risk-based monitor that could be measuring sensors, you know, integrating with, smartwatches or the aura ring, which has a lot of really interesting API work happening around it to make it something that could be a, you know, a data intake tool. 00:26:26.814 --> 00:26:28.834 So, there's just so much potential. 00:26:30.084 --> 00:26:30.774 Shannon Putman: There really is. 00:26:30.774 --> 00:26:36.054 I think it's an incredibly exciting time and it's such a joy and an honor to be a part of it. 00:26:36.174 --> 00:26:40.544 And you know, as we're kind of coming winding down here I, first off, I can't thank you enough. 00:26:40.544 --> 00:26:41.384 This has been amazing. 00:26:41.384 --> 00:26:56.914 I. You're an incredibly busy, powerful dude, so I really appreciate you taking the time with little me humble Shannon, because I do know you're doing amazing things and so I just wanna ensure is there anything else that you wanted to say about, you know, Florio or anything? 00:26:56.914 --> 00:27:03.124 Obviously people can reach out to Putman Consulting, but is there any, you know, resources or any places you wanna make sure people know about? 00:27:04.389 --> 00:27:08.859 Vijay Ravindran: Yeah, I think first and foremost, you know, thank you for having me on and you know. 00:27:09.399 --> 00:27:16.129 You are being far too humble because you've been a needle mover in adoption of VR in schools. 00:27:16.469 --> 00:27:27.549 And and you know, I think we've been doing this for a while and we haven't met anyone before or after meeting you who's been as impactful for school-based adoption in vr. 00:27:27.549 --> 00:27:31.439 So I think you gotta keep doing what you're doing and people should be taking notice. 00:27:31.469 --> 00:27:45.019 I think the other, you know, as far as where we're going, you know, obviously we'd love every school in this country to be using VR with their neurodiverse population and checking out Florio to see if we can meet their needs. 00:27:45.299 --> 00:27:52.619 Our product has been researched a lot more than the average education product because of our healthcare healthcare focus as well. 00:27:52.669 --> 00:27:58.329 This is a FDA breakthrough device by designation from the FDA based on the research we've done. 00:27:58.854 --> 00:28:07.194 We're in an FDA pivotal trial to submit later this year to the FDA to become an approved medical device on the healthcare side. 00:28:07.194 --> 00:28:11.744 So for any educator looking at this has way more research than most products you look at. 00:28:11.794 --> 00:28:17.134 And so you should be looking at it and you should feel confident that it has efficacy behind it. 00:28:17.824 --> 00:28:23.314 The second thing is that, we are working on some great new products. 00:28:23.414 --> 00:28:29.384 One that's been released now and been really popular with schools is our AI based persona characters. 00:28:29.384 --> 00:28:38.554 So we're using voice recognition on the VR headset and enabling students to be able to have conversations with AI characters. 00:28:38.554 --> 00:28:44.164 And the characters have been prompt, engineered to be, you know, safe and stay within guardrails. 00:28:44.764 --> 00:28:46.264 Flore is a supervised experience. 00:28:46.264 --> 00:28:49.234 There's full monitoring the entire time, so you can feel a little easy. 00:28:49.444 --> 00:29:02.214 But the really cool thing is that they've, you know, if you want to talk about your favorite subject, and sometimes our autistic kids might want to talk about it a lot the characters will say, I'm ready to move on to a different subject. 00:29:03.144 --> 00:29:03.264 Shannon Putman: It's 00:29:03.324 --> 00:29:06.114 Vijay Ravindran: What else you got or I have an interest. 00:29:06.114 --> 00:29:07.554 Can we talk about that now? 00:29:08.194 --> 00:29:08.944 Which is great. 00:29:09.004 --> 00:29:15.134 And and so we're really excited about where those characters can go and they've been very popular so far in the five months they've been out. 00:29:15.614 --> 00:29:23.924 The other thing we're working on that we're really excited about is we have a new product that just finished a 30 child study with NIH two. 00:29:24.374 --> 00:29:32.554 Help with A DHD, and it's actually designed as a 20 minute exercise that the student can do daily. 00:29:32.884 --> 00:29:37.354 And the first, the study, the initial 30 child study had tremendous results. 00:29:37.434 --> 00:29:44.344 Nearly half 14 of the 30 kids had a 25% or more reduction in A DHD symptoms after 30 days. 00:29:44.344 --> 00:29:48.034 And so NIH is working on the paper to publish this, and so. 00:29:48.314 --> 00:29:56.024 We're really excited about getting the word out once that's done and making that available to schools hopefully in, in the next six to nine months. 00:29:56.324 --> 00:29:59.774 And and so those are exciting new areas. 00:30:00.154 --> 00:30:02.944 But you know, the big thing is come to florio vr.com. 00:30:03.314 --> 00:30:04.394 If you're not already working with Dr. 00:30:04.394 --> 00:30:05.204 Putnam, you should be. 00:30:05.714 --> 00:30:09.344 If you're just looking for solutions, come to florio vr.com. 00:30:10.094 --> 00:30:11.024 Check us out. 00:30:11.074 --> 00:30:16.714 You can sign up for various, you know, you can do trial subscriptions of a single student if you want to get going and get familiarity. 00:30:16.714 --> 00:30:18.244 So we can start as small as you want. 00:30:18.744 --> 00:30:20.964 And there's lots of different options for equipment. 00:30:20.964 --> 00:30:25.174 So, yeah, we're really enthusiastic about where the technology's going and how Florio can help you. 00:30:26.029 --> 00:30:26.719 Shannon Putman: It's amazing. 00:30:26.749 --> 00:30:28.429 I gotta shout out my girl, Mary Grace too. 00:30:28.429 --> 00:30:33.849 I love her to death, so can always reach out to her and connect with her 'cause she's just adorable. 00:30:33.949 --> 00:30:36.139 And I'm gonna make a little plug for myself too. 00:30:36.139 --> 00:30:43.789 Hopefully in one of those future ones, I'll get to work with you guys on creating the experience of how to work with a, an interpreter in a classroom. 00:30:43.789 --> 00:30:44.899 So I haven't forgot about that. 00:30:45.169 --> 00:30:45.529 So. 00:30:47.074 --> 00:30:47.764 Plug in myself. 00:30:47.764 --> 00:30:48.884 But no that's amazing. 00:30:48.884 --> 00:30:50.744 I'm gonna put all the links and everything Of course. 00:30:50.774 --> 00:30:54.254 In, in the episode and whatever the kids say, like, and subscribe. 00:30:54.254 --> 00:30:56.474 I don't know, I don't even know if how many subscribers I 00:30:56.654 --> 00:30:58.064 Vijay Ravindran: Smash the like button. 00:30:58.364 --> 00:30:59.534 Shannon Putman: Smash that like button. 00:30:59.834 --> 00:31:01.334 'cause I don't even look, but I need it. 00:31:01.384 --> 00:31:07.524 Because, and it would not be it would not be a Putin's podcast pop if I didn't hit you with the closing countdown. 00:31:07.624 --> 00:31:08.914 I had a different one. 00:31:08.914 --> 00:31:13.779 I I was gonna ask you, but as we've been talking I changed my mind and so, this is a good one. 00:31:13.779 --> 00:31:14.109 Okay. 00:31:14.379 --> 00:31:17.679 Now you have a vault that you have to break into. 00:31:18.099 --> 00:31:24.069 You don't know if what you're stealing is for good or for bad, but you just know you have to get it. 00:31:24.699 --> 00:31:29.889 What three Marvel characters are you going to use to get that object from that vault? 00:31:29.949 --> 00:31:30.909 Vijay Ravindran: And then. 00:31:31.734 --> 00:31:36.894 You probably need someone to apply ethics to make sure that it is used for good. 00:31:36.924 --> 00:31:45.274 So once you have it out, you know, add Captain America for good measure, to have the best American ideals being used. 00:31:47.434 --> 00:31:47.914 Shannon Putman: I love that. 00:31:47.914 --> 00:31:51.304 That's why I originally, I was gonna originally say a bank, and then I was like, Ooh. 00:31:51.304 --> 00:31:55.374 Let me put a little ethical question in there about who would you include for the ethics of it. 00:31:56.454 --> 00:31:56.694 Vijay Ravindran: yeah. 00:31:56.754 --> 00:31:57.864 Captain American can do no wrong. 00:31:57.864 --> 00:31:58.134 Right. 00:31:58.224 --> 00:31:58.944 Shannon Putman: There you go. 00:31:59.454 --> 00:32:00.174 I like it. 00:32:00.234 --> 00:32:01.914 I cannot hate on those answers at all. 00:32:01.914 --> 00:32:02.604 I wouldn't anyway. 00:32:02.604 --> 00:32:03.654 But those were good. 00:32:04.204 --> 00:32:05.914 honestly, seriously, thank you so much. 00:32:05.984 --> 00:32:09.104 It's been wonderful and safe travels, super exciting for that. 00:32:09.104 --> 00:32:10.889 And I can't wait to work with you some more soon. 00:32:11.659 --> 00:32:12.589 Vijay Ravindran: Sounds good. 00:32:12.589 --> 00:32:13.514 Thank you so much for having me.