The room changes before the schedule does
Chairs fill.
Someone stops checking their phone.
“Startup” is a word that hides timing
It sounds early.
But most teams arrive after long, quiet repetition.
Practice is usually invisible
Slides look clean.
The mess stays backstage.
Backstage has its own economy
Introductions are traded.
Time is borrowed from people who already have less of it.
XR adds friction that doesn’t show on the deck
Headsets need charging.
Tracking fails when the floor is too glossy.
Friction becomes narrative
Teams learn to explain constraints.
Constraints become identity.
On “demo”
A demo is not a product.
It is a promise shaped like a moment.
Attention is not evenly distributed
Some booths become crowded early.
Others stay polite and quiet.
Early crowd creates momentum
People follow people.
Signal looks like certainty.
Quiet booths still matter
They hold the patient conversations.
Sometimes the only honest ones.
Investors ask for clarity, then reward ambiguity
Markets are demanded in numbers.
Yet excitement often arrives as a feeling.
“Tell me the wedge” becomes a ritual
Founders compress years into a sentence.
Listeners pretend that sentence is stable.
Partnership talk sounds simple until it isn’t
Collaboration is proposed.
Integration is deferred.
Integration is where XR becomes real
Devices meet policies.
Procurement meets iteration.
Who owns the moment after the handshake?
Seoul is present in the details
Transit time shapes attendance.
Language shapes who feels fluent.
Local ecosystems build local shortcuts
People know who to message.
Trust travels faster than paperwork.
Metrics arrive late and still feel decisive
Downloads.
Pilots.
Numbers are comforting
They reduce uncertainty.
They also reduce stories.
Stories refuse compression
A pilot fails for a reason no graph shows.
Iteration is not linear.
External references steady the conversation
They give everyone a shared vocabulary.
They don’t remove disagreement.
OECD: Science, Technology and Innovation
The night ends, but the event continues
Follow-ups are promised.
Calendars fill.
Most outcomes happen off-stage
Small emails.
Slow decisions.
The lights go off, and the real work begins again.