‘It would be naive to not acknowledge there are avenues to it’: Why Australia needed a Metaverse Advisory Council

As is usually the case, the truth lies somewhere in-between. The Australian Metaverse Advisory Council (AMAC) launched last month to help separate the potential from the hype. Angus Stevens, chair and co-founder of the organisation, tells Mumbrella why such an organisation is necessary.

Could you explain what it is that AMAC will be offering, and why you thought there was a need for such an organisation now?

I think that part of the purpose of setting up AMAC is: we don’t want to be another lever that’s just pumping up the tires and being part of the hype-cycle and spin. It’s actually about being pragmatic and offering real-world knowledge and examples to organisations so that they can navigate and build out experiences, training, a whole raft of different sort of avenues that leverage the immediate technology — whether it be VR [virtual reality], or AR [augmented reality], or blockchain, or what have you — as well as then being able to have a pathway so that, as the metaverse becomes more sophisticated and more evolved, they’ve already got the infrastructure in place to be able to really leverage it.

The critical purpose of AMAC is to advocate, educate, and advise. What that means in real terms is being able to cut through the hype-cycles. For example, when Apple comes out with a new headset, what does that mean in terms of how businesses will be able to use it, versus Meta’s headset? So you know, having that insight and knowledge around how these headsets will actually be useful in real-world situations, separate to what the tech companies are speculating over how they might play.