Gadgetory

hey everybody welcome to far-sighted it's seen that show about what's coming next tomorrow and way way beyond tomorrow I'm your host Eric Mac in an unusually rainy and snowy New Mexico but I'm joined in the studios in San Francisco by Bonnie Burton Kelsey Adams Jeff Sparkman and Steven Beecham if you want to join the conversation today the chat rooms are live on YouTube just go to youtube.com slash CNET you'll find the far-sighted link right there on the home page right now we're also on livestream at live stream comm slash CNET slash far-sighted or if that's too long just sent a tweet with the hashtag far-sighted and I'll keep an eye out for that too so later on to the show we're going to hear about what went down at Silicon Valley Comic Con from a few of our intrepid correspondents there but first we have a very special guest on the show today who I'd like to introduce by way of a really brief rant and I promise that's a good thing we we talk an awful lot here about science fiction and science fact on this show and as a science writer and a journalist I mentioned before that I have kind of sometimes uneasy relationship with sci-fi because I worry that it's given us a society as a society somewhat unrealistic expectations about what science and technology can do and how quickly and at what scale it can do those things I mean I get really excited when we talk to scientists who have found molecular hydrogen on the moons of Saturn using a spacecraft by the way that was not designed to do that at all but then the response you know I often hear from so many people is well what's the big deal call me when we found the aliens and you can beam me directly there but there is a really rare group of people out there who dedicate themselves to bridging that huge gap and put everything they have and almost always at a high level of risk into making those science fiction fantasies even the crazy stuff from comic books and superheroes stories making that into reality and we've got one of those people with us on the line today via Skype from sale from Silicon Valley his name is Adam Draper he's the founder and managing director of boost VC which is an accelerator investing in startups working on blockchain virtual reality artificial intelligence drones there's a really cool one that connects companies with university researchers and of course one of your startups is even working on a hoverboard Adam Draper welcome to far-sighted and that was an awesome intro thank you for having me yeah well did I get it right what is boost VC in your own words yeah so we invest in startups so we help start a Founders get going we provide its a programmatic approach to investing it's called an accelerator where twice a year we back 20 to 25 startups and we put them through the gauntlet of creating a good infrastructure for that startup we actually provide housing and office space and we invest in the startups that go through a program um the way that I like to think about it though is we're sort of a hub to Silicon Valley for companies from all over the world to connect when working in virtual reality blockchain flying cars what-have-you and we happen to have built out our brand really strongly around blockchain and virtual reality though and so why is that the focus why pick those two areas VR and blockchain specifically you know what do you see in those areas so I mean I like there's a there's a long internet or enter short answer like they're awesome oh yeah that makes sense I mean that's a good reason to invest well long answer is four years ago I was an angel investor I actually my background is I went to use sale at UCLA as an English major I founded a company out of UCLA to help private company private companies raise capital online which was a new concept it would be like where would you go to buy shares of the uber today like we were trying to solve that problem for for like Facebook and Twitter that's everything and then I found that I really enjoyed the mentorship side of helping startups not make the same mistakes I did but how we ended up choosing I was an angel investor before I've started this accelerator and I backed a company called coin biz and so coin base is if you've heard of Bitcoin with the blockchain it's the most financed startup in that space most trusted startup in the Bitcoin blockchain space and now then was one guy in in a basement built building thing and he and he pitched me this really big idea of connecting the world through financial transactions and I bought in hook line and sinker and then we when I found in boost VC which was about two weeks later I ended up dedicating a big percentage of our future towards building APIs Bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem and so then we realized what we do is we build communities around emerging technology we basically when something's early we back a lot of startups and launch the network in the ecosystem like if you know in the most basic of sense and then what we realize is it didn't matter if it was blockchain or some other technology so two two and a half years ago we looked at the market of technologies out there and I tried virtual reality reality and I was like it's here it's happening this is the platform this is going to be the future of computing um let's let's jump in and so two and a half years ago we we jumped into that and we've backed now 180 startups total 55 in the VR space 65 in the blockchains bit Bitcoin space and you know a blimp a flying car a suit of armor so of all the VR stuff you've seen what's what's some of the coolest stuff that you think we could have soon you know really successful looking project oh man you're gonna aim today go buy an HTC vive or an oculus rift and you can have the and experience of different worlds being able to build it what you're showing on the screen right now sculptor VR which is a it's a gravity game which is really fascinating um now it's driving a made it so that you could be built out of a game engine so that other people could build games and then there's I mean are okay my big vision for VR VR is the way that we're going to learn more faster so that's my long-term 10-year vision like VR is the way that we learn because how we learn is through experience and VR allows you to experience more or faster than ever before same way that the Internet allows us to index a lot of information and became sort of this web of information this is indexing experiences and allowing this to consume more experiences faster um which is really really exciting on a huge level for education but in order to get there we're going to go through a gaming like stage of development where people are early adopters gaming and we're going to go through to building that you need tools to create the content right now it's sort of difficult to create content for virtual reality we need more of that and then social like just being there with other people is really really important but so that's pretty awesome I mean I wonder if you can kind of build on that with the you know the other things that you're working on and you know how do you see some of the companies you're working with now changing how life is going to be you know 10 20 years from now you already talked about learning stuff and VR what other things are coming down the pike that are just going to be part of daily life in 10 or 20 years ago so one of the biggest trends and I don't know what the listening audience viewing audience your you guys know about Bitcoin in the blockchain but it's fundamentally going to change the way governments and currencies work and that is a really exciting trend that I'm watching as people are decoupling government from currency and that concept is very very powerful where suddenly you can be in control of your own money your own value and your trust so we're on a big level I think that that's going to be a big change that we can't predict what's going to be happening after that that happens which is exciting um there's a there's a great quote that I quote every once well from Phil Libin you found it ever no he was talking about BOTS but in general I said the future is either gonna look like Star Trek or Mad Max and yeah anytime I can make it look a little more like that Star Trek I invest and that's sort of how I feel but like that's in essence the philosophy that I've consumed along with you know anything that gets me closer to a Iron Man suit we would really like to hear more about that like what do you feel what do you look for in an Iron Man suit what does an Iron Man suit really need oh so uh be oh I'm frozen on your screen I'm actually hopefully you can hear me the UH area yeah so what this video that you're showing right now would I I know this guy record brownie AK in your demo day and he has built his own Iron Man she's flying and this this absolutely blew my mind like I can't actually explain how incredible this but I don't there's a quick clip of me in the background in the front row and it's like I just freak out like this is I mean it's the dream like the ability to just like you I'm over in the corner right there I uh I it's the dream of being a complete freedom and being able to fly and this guy he's hovering a foot off the ground or two three feet off the ground but he could just go it's just there's a lot more dangers that happen oh and so he's uh but he's a fantastic guy really brilliant and he's captured the imagination of like what's possible I feel like ever since this video came out then Larry Page released their pages company I think it's called Kitty Hawk released a flying car a video the like there are a lot of these flying vehicles that are that are emerging right now which is super which I'm very very excited about because I think that changes the way that we think about travel that changes the way it is going to change everything you know a funny story they Richard Browning sent me a press release on March 31st about debuting that suit I made him send me the UK patent number cuz I didn't believe it was real to prove it wasn't an April Fool's joke o told me that he told me that like a lot of people still thought it was fake because he came out on April Fool's said yeah yeah it was the day before and I was dealing with his PR person and I really ran her through the wringer to prove that it wasn't it wasn't fake but yeah there's pretty incredible stuff so it's real I can verifiably if you trust me but you know maybe you should maybe shouldn't but it's written it was the most it was incredible and I'm I'm hoping to be in line to have an Iron Man suit how loud was it because I know with a lot of the jet packs there deafeningly loud and I was just curious how loud is that suit when it's in operation or did was it like you know not so noticeable oh it's a full like audio touch experience like the wind is like chaos leaf throwing dirt all over the place uh and you know the super loud and then this guy's flying and you're freaking out about it yeah but but it's the sound is about three leaf blowers oh maybe a little louder that's actually not too bad cuz this the the jet packs are the ones that sound like you have like a sonic maybe a sonic boom but definitely a lot louder where people you know have ringing in the ears long after yeah we all had ear plugs into so maybe maybe it was that loud no you would know you would know cuz I mean I I remember there's this guy that had a jet pack and he used to dress up like Boba Fett and when I worked at Lucasfilm he we would hire him for special events like a celebration or convention or something and we had to warn the city that we were in that he was gonna be doing this because it's so loud it sounds like a jet engine but you can hear it for blocks and blocks and blocks away and he's also high up I mean he goes up pretty far so it's not like he's just hovering off the ground I mean he's like he comes out of nowhere and then lands and it's super loud so I was just curious with this type of because it's not the same type of equipment it's totally different so I was just curious yeah he's the first one that has done it this way which is sort of like he has to be in super good shape to be able to do it it's wondering about that like what kind of I don't know training they they need to go through so yes do like was it go kinesthetic esthetics like the Rings it like the gymnasts use and right hold the positions yeah and I got cross right yeah and he's in he's in super good shape the guy's a machine he runs like super marathons or something like he's super awesome so Phenom if he didn't if he wasn't strong enough to maintain the right kind of posture would would he sort of get wildly knocked off balanced by the engines and so on so one what is the only thing that's ever happened and you said was I mean he fat so he was a couple feet off the ground and our arm one of the arms basically came loose or the jet like threw him to the ground a little bit but there's a default like Killswitch that everything dies and it wasn't that big a deal um he makes accept his caliph BC he believes that it's safer than a motorcycle well sure which you know I don't know that's the argument you want to make well it could be like safer than hoverboard concerning that a lot of those hoverboards just ignite for no reason so well you're looking on an actual hoverboard though right Adam you got a company that is yeah so we backed a lot being entrepreneur eighteen year old and he's fantastic and like this is what he wants to dedicate his life to and he's building a his envision is a flying car but he is as a segue to that segue bit it's uh it's been pretty awesome yeah and becomes called Airport and it yeah we're super excited about it he's visually what we look for is tenacity in our entrepreneurs and that's what really wins championships so we're we're really excited about all all of our entrepreneurs but like all the technologies were investing in these are the things that in five years we're going to be using and it's divided well maybe for the flying cars and iron suit maybe it's ten but like the like virtual reality we're all going to be using virtual reality it is more efficient to meet someone in VR than it is to meet them in person and that's going to be a huge business use case like we back to company let's do you still like if I'm designing a product and I needed to be manufactured in China or wherever it needs me manufactured I I can show them the object in 3d and I'm you know turning it over and showing them in expanding it and you know I can explain every piece of it so there's less of a communication error than when you're just sending like 2d emails back and forth of one another that's awesome um yeah it so we're using you're good I was just saying there's real use cases for this stuff it's really exciting where do you see the the flying car thing in ten years because you know there's people like vertical takeoff and landing is like one thing that uber is looking into some of those jetpack guys think that they'll have some version of what they're doing that'll just be like personal transportation where do you see that going like like the uber ride-sharing drones are we all gonna have flying cars is gonna be more of a ride-sharing situation what do you think I think it's a really interesting question because first off you need to assume that flying car is that it's a little bit of an assumption because we're not quite sure but you have to assume that flying cars is more efficient than like driving and things like that and for an individual I think it probably will be but gas wise I don't know it's going to be high cost um what's it good for is it mid-range is it that like 50 minute trip or is it the 10 minute trip um what's it replacing in our life so those are like the questions that you'd want to ask uh it will be less efficient for moving huge like cargo it will be more efficient for moving people and so I think yeah I mean I think in 10-15 years we're gonna be the coolest thing ever autonomous cars flying cars so my my daughter who is 3 years old will never need to drive I'm very excited I never thought about that that's a good that's a good at thinking there yeah it'll be interesting to see how much of the flying vehicles or autonomous because I was just thinking oh now I have a way to see car crashes above me because people are notoriously bad drivers even though the tech is so advanced right now it's almost like because we can like text and do things we're not paying attention to our driving even more than before so I'm hoping that if it's air travel people the right either it'll be autonomous so robots who aren't getting it all of a sudden want to pretend they're in Fast and Furious they won't be the ones driving or maybe you know it'll be reserved for emergency purposes so actual police and ambulances and fire trucks can get where they're supposed to be getting quicker that would be great but it'll be interesting to see like who who's actually going to be using and what they're going to be used for at the beginning or if it's just going to turn into Fifth Element and we're all like barely running into each other I'm okay I'm hoping everything is done with magnets because we're seeing all these uh you know quadcopter things and this Kitty Hawk thing we're just watching and they're blowing air around that jet thing though they're blowing air and blowing dust and garbage now my allergies get good by you you walk on targetting yeah flying over your head it's gonna be crazy so we may need like some sort of like allergen helmets to wear so we don't obviously instantly get you know a mouthful of dust but ya know I'm always curious about that because also we've been dreaming about this since sci-fi is existed so I mean not even just Star Wars and Star Trek but in the 50s I mean if you look at illustrations from Popular Mechanics from the 50s and earlier these were things people were hoping for would be already a reality now so it'll be interesting yeah I mean Jetsons the guy is a middle class man who flew uh you know flew a flying plane to work there's a great joke about that too is because of the future of Jetsons no one walks anywhere they're always on escalators or they're always on you know sidewalks that are moving that when they actually have to walk on their own like it uh it was a Harvey Birdman skit I think where they just couldn't get anywhere they were always out of breath because they had to walk places in the Harvey Birdman cartoon words and Jetsons they have to flow they flew everywhere they were on escalators or the Jetsons spaceship is really quiet to listen it just goes like yeah really it's like a Prius no it's not like jet engine wow the Fantastic Four are doing it watching also all the buildings look like you know mid-century modern like and everyone has like a robot helper which we sort of do now but they aren't quite this is just like you know Rosie this is how I want to drop my kid off at school yeah there's leagues right now why'd I have to physically walk them into school and then say goodbye I just want to dump them off of it jettison them out of them yeah literally Jen oh you're being recorded right now you're gonna show this a little later I saw Adam your big comic comics guy right oh yeah I'm a huge comic book bin what are your faves so uh well my but my thesis around investing has been build the Ironman suit so BR you know if we're flying in space the currency of space is probably not going to be paper so we went in the Bitcoin and then you know I'm looking at actual iron in suits but the superhero I grew up on was Peter Parker spider-man and right now my favorite comic book is by a guy named Kirkman uh is it Robert Kirkman idea it's called invincible there isn't a that's a good one yeah I'm a huge con azúcar awesome so so our crew here in San Francisco was was down at Silicon Valley comic-con this past weekend I wonder I wonder how much you guys saw down there that kind of ties into what Adams working on what we've been talking about well I went to the NASA panel that they had and that was the thing that surprised me the most was people ask them are you worried about funding right and they said actually we're getting a lot where things are looking really good for us right now and so we're we're just working hard and getting to Mars and you know they talked about methane and liquid water alkylations and drones and you know it was really great um but you guys did know I was just gonna say yeah they're getting funding cuz Trump just watch Star Wars on Air Force One so the robot he just watch real good so it knows what kind of funding he's thinking about um I love the NASA booth there you know I think NASA should be at every comic book convention the reason that Silicon Valley Comic Cons are different than San Diego comic-con during New York comic-con or other Comic Cons that you might be used to is that they have a whole level of tech and science as well as the usual suspects of comic books and video games and you know the movies and TV stuff that we're all excited about when we go to comic book conventions where it's more of a pop culture convention nowadays and was is really interested in the way that comic books and sci-fi help us plan future science and yeah July's future societies and you know the connection there so it almost felt like a science fair it kind of felt like a bridge between maker faire which is something that happens around the country which is kind of like a science fair on you know steroids it's actually I always call it Burning Man for kids because it's like it's like the coolest science fair ever all these like you know Tesla coils and robots everywhere and of course all the r2d2 astromechs and it's really great to get kids excited about science and tech and engineering and I wish that more comic book conventions had a NASA section I know there's a NASA section at Emerald City Comicon and I think if there's comic book conventions closer to where there's a NASA hub I mean we have NASA Ames which is part of Silicon Valley but I think also you know I'm sure the Houston comic book conventions have NASA there as well so it's just good to see some real-life stuff as mixed in with the sci-fi stuff so I I had a blast I had a pic I had my picture taken in front of that are inside that vintage like was it vintage NASA astronaut astronaut suit I didn't go into the head on display yeah the one they had on display I think you just showed a picture of it of someone was in there um you could get your picture taken inside it looked like you were inside that now yeah there you go the yeah it's funny because there are a lot of little kids trying and the steps didn't quite make it so it's like a lot of little kids are hanging on for dear life trying to get their picture taken and when I took my picture it looked like I was the most excited astronaut on earth are not honored but the new astronaut suits are much more sci-fi than that but I I just love that they're getting kids excited about NASA because I think that's important to always have a real life element yeah they had a whole stem village for kids yeah I didn't go into because I didn't want to seem creepy I'm sure it was good we got we took a lot of pictures down at like the area where they had stuff for kids and one of my favorite parts was the tech your parents grew up on just because because I don't feel old enough already oh did they have Walkmans oh yeah they had like all kinds of DC arc Apple twos the one that really killed me was like they had what you remember the transparent phones that were popular yeah late 80s early yea thick they had basically the phone that I had when I was in high school oh my god no good it's artifact Ya Ya Allah wasn't like a Motorola no it was like not like a landline phone I was like kind of transparent had neon colors I mean every time people talk about how new VR is I keep thinking of that Murder She Wrote episode with Jessica Fletcher trying out a VR video game and she's got the gloves on and a helmet and everything and so I mean we've been working on I regret about it a lot of time with but you couldn't have it in your house before right well you yeah exactly it wasn't not it was yeah it wasn't like everyday use it was something that was very high-tech that you can only get in certain areas but yeah no I I like the Silicon Valley comic-con just because it's the second year they've done it so they're still trying to find themselves and try to figure things out but it's pretty well organized parking is nightmare as with any convention um oh yeah there's did you just show gonna oh that's a really good episode actually if you have Netflix it's on Netflix right now so you can watch that episode it's a murder that takes place in a VR company and shieff has to find clues within the VR game it's very like vector I want to do that yeah it's pretty awesome um needs to be an escape shimmery make that prasena you know that whole season has cell phones and cars too they actually had mobile cart but they're huge oh yeah um but I like that they have like I like that they had like tech we grew up with that Silicon Valley comic-con though I really good idea yeah it was like oh yeah had one of those in school had one of those it's go oh yeah god I'm old why do they have the Castaway the volleyball well that was a separate thing they also had an auction yeah these are all oh this I see the screen-used props and like one of the coolest things that I saw there I don't have a picture of it in the gallery but um I had to get my picture taken with an actual Superman suit that Chris Reeve wore granted it was in Superman 3 but he still wore it still a good mood I still love Superman 3 or you don't allowed to talk about well I don't I I don't think anybody's gonna get in trouble but you know how like when they have props you know for auction they don't want you touching them great you know if they don't want you screwing I won't you grab me little hands all over the space I'll say I was talking to one of the guys who was in charge and he asked me if I'd touch the Superman suit because I was telling him right how big of a deal it was for me to see it in person I'm like no I wouldn't think like I wouldn't even think of touching it because so he took me in there and I got to touch it I was one of the high points of that's pretty exciting did it this energy transfer into your body and I haven't been able to fly yet and I don't have like little Superman spit curl going either ha ha ha we are tracking him just in case yeah just in case we just have a joke at Lucasfilm with that when you would go into Lucasfilm archives and you would touch the Ark of the Covenant nothing might happen so a lot of us were like I'm not touching that even I'll touch the Captain EO suit before I touch those keep your covenant yeah exactly but no matter I like that they had two good makes a prop so it's good so Adam you must I mean if you're building an Iron Man suit you must have some experience with comic-con or cosplay is that right uh yeah no well I've gone to the San Francisco comic-con it wasn't last year it might not be comic-con just kind B but it had been the my throwing a big event um but no I went I went to a big comic book convention I went to one end that was in New York I have not been to the major I haven't been to the Silicon Valley one and I haven't been to the one and now San Diego either Cine know is the one that's like a war zone yeah so this is so Richard browning it is being asked to speak at the in the San Diego one the the Iron Man guy oh yeah so so that you can fly you know to his bang and show people flight it's okay so is your own your own quest to build a suit for yourself is that along the same lines of what he's building or do you have like a different design in mind so it's more partaking in the you know innate but what my whole career is enabling people to do these things and one of the things that I just want to be a part of is the Iron Man suit creation gotcha and so yeah I mean there are a lot of things in the Iron Man movie that he hasn't built yet so yeah and I'm also fascinated with like underwater you know submarine type of things there are a lot of things we haven't discovered underwater so that'd be a cool suit if you were able to go like super deep um rather than up but yeah it's I mean common proves our inspiration for all sci-fi I mean all technology like and and and science fiction Star Trek has created countless things that have been built now for sure totally for sure and Jeff for you I think sci-fi at least with the comic-con was was inspiration to cope with some other issues and you wrote about that for I've seen it want to dive into that at all uh yeah sure um so like I have been reading comic books since I can read and watching kind of like sci-fi stuff since I could watch things which you know um but I don't get to go to a lot of conventions because I mean like nobody really likes crowds but like when you get to the point where you see a lot of people and then you just start like like physically reacting to it um it makes it a little less fun to go um so a lot of times I just kind of like you know watch everybody else go so what I've been doing is trying to kind of kind of hack my way I guess into being able to go to conventions be able to do things that I want to do um so you just you know you can you can read the article and and learn all these things I would just like to point out as I mentioned in there I am NOT a doctor nor do I play one on TV but no it's just like a lot of like simple things like you know you can start it like small conventions um cuz I've noticed like in the last couple years it seems like even like you know like my old home town had a convention and my daughter went in the cosplay contest oh she got third place she was very happy but it's it's a it's a nice place to just kind of like ease yourself into it because it's just kind of scaled really um now to be fair when I when I go into even small conventions if I go into like you know the dealer area where you can buy all the stuff that you don't need but you really want um it's I still like kinda like have like a physical reaction but I need to kind of like you know you push through it and you know it gets slightly easier the more you do it but you're still kind of fighting that initial react one of your tips in there was if you need to move around easily or leave quickly follow someone tall oh yes because they'll usually people will you know get out of their way yeah I I sort of did that at Comic Cons I would go to I would follow people with very large cosplay yes exam weather is chuckles yeah well the problem is you run the risk though if it's good if it's not late they'll stop every five seconds to take photos and then you're surrounded and you're you're caught with a horrible look on your face photo bombing someone so you're gonna be like 20,000 photos looking panicked which could end up being like a court case evidence for something so I you know if you could follow someone tall that's not doing excessively good cosplay something bulky maybe like a crappy Chewbacca yeah or maybe you know someone that's just you know Abraham Lincoln I don't see a lot of those gonna hat your hat that really gives you like yeah um yeah you want to be very careful not to follow around people that are good at cosplay because then you will be stuck yeah forever I always found that following goth kids was good uh-huh because they don't like crowds they don't like the Sun um they're antisocial so Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter would actually be perfect yes but no that's a great article you wrote Jeff I'm glad that you read it because I think a lot of us to the older we get the less anxious we are to I mean the less eager we are to be in the middle of like you know a stormtrooper battalion yeah just want to get to the nacho stand or something and yeah yeah and just like even just something as simple as just grabbing a piece of wall yeah that gives you at least one direction you know you're not going to be in somebody's way yeah now familiarity helps me a lot to like the first time I went I was terrified until I sat in my first panel and then I was like well I'm sitting in a chair listening to a speech I've done that before yeah I know what that's like no I'm that's good and then the next year I was scared again but not as much because I knew I'd done in the previous yeah someone like a meteor sittings another good way to kind of deal with crowds and dealing with overpopulated cons and you just kind of want to go somewhere to relax and not be in the overcrowded concessions area follow anyone with armor because a lot of them have to change out of it and there's special designated areas for storm troopers or for people dressed in like you know King Arthur armor or the Klingons they all kind of know where to go getting out where it's a little bit cooler the lines aren't as bad at San Diego comic-con that's upstairs through the exhibit hall and then you go upstairs not it's the opposite of the entrance yeah and they have their own it's actually really nice over there and that's where a lot of the celebrities are because none of the fans have figured it out yet I probably just ruin it for them but thanks Lonnie but any convention you go to there's always one space where it feels like oh this is where the parents go like this is where we came for the old fogies go to like relax and not get you know strollers running over them yeah I was even able to find I mean not empty spaces but like empty enough spaces even at San Diego last yeah which I can't believe I actually went to cuz yes indeed guys a madhouse I mean it's it's fun to say you went once but it's crazy did we just lose Adam we did we had a bad connection his connection dropped so I just want to say thanks to Adam for being on the show really awesome having you yeah Geoff inspiring I'm gonna check out your site to see what you're investing in because it sounds really fun oh yeah here's this Twitter in case anyone wants to find him at Adam Draper it looks like a visionary here's Buchan hombre you think it's superhero already Glenn yo visionary yeah so go check out his stuff they're working on some cool stuff there's other stuff too that I know we haven't even scraped the surface of what they're working on so I feel like maybe we should have him on as a regular guest every once in a while to find out what he's a tail catch up we don't want to distract him from from investing I know I wish I had money to invest but now see Silicon Valley was fun to answer your question Erik I had fun I was only there on Sunday I was part of it and bullying panels as coaches ask you about that yes called me a superhero in real life um chase masterson he was a Star Trek actress and she's done a bunch of stuff she's really a huge advocate advocate and ending bullying and dealing with bullying and um with both teenagers and adults and kids and I was part of it because I wrote a book called girls against girls which is a preteen and teen ager self-help book about how to deal with Mean Girls but also have not to become one in the process because it's very easy and girls have a totally different way of how they bully each other out a nice ad there i girl them away and quickly that was quick girls have a way of bullying each other different than let's say boys a few was a great show called 13 reasons why on Netflix I highly recommend watching based on a book young adult book and it's about bullying in high school but um this panel was interesting I was just honored to be on there I was there with rod Roddenberry um Gene Roddenberry's son and it you know there's a really eclectic group of people on this panel but one of them cannot remember a name I think it's dr. Scarlett something's in my Twitter on my phone but she was I believe from Russia Russia or Latvia somewhere were there would have been radiation and she moved here as a child um as a refugee and didn't know English didn't know anyone her family moved here and she was bullied because when people found out that she was literally radioactive they bullied her um and she turned to superhero comics specifically the x-men as solace and to find you know relatable characters and of course storm you know and obviously how many characters and superhero comics have a radioactive like that's how it becomes so she you know found some sort of you know disappointed Jeff didn't just actually pop out with another no she found some common ground there actually if you want to hand me my phone I can call up her name phones are dr. Janina Scarlett yeah that's it um she sounds like a superhero uh but she was really inspiring and she came out with a book I think it's called superheroes in real life superhero therapy yep that's it and she goes to schools and teaches kids that they can find positive messages through superhero comics and superheroes and how to deal with um day to day problems through superhero therapy and she's an actual psychologist she has two PhDs I mean she was so inspiring to sit next to I'm like why I have a book I wrote for teen girls and then she goes into this I was worried I'm radioactive I was a refugee and she's like super nice and she's got like two degrees and she's doctor and she heard about superheroes and she's helping kids in school so it was definitely an inspiring panel there was also some cosplayers that um reach out to kids for representation so there's african-american cosplayer from Atlanta who dresses up as Batman then he says that a lot of you know kids um people of color come up to him and go thank you for representing Batman as you like you know say she's like I'm not black Batman I'm Batman and it's a very interesting way to deal with that because a lot of geek on geek bullying happens especially in the cosplay industry or a cosplay community because if you don't look exactly like the comic-book character you're portraying in the movies or TV you get a lot of Hell I mean and there's a lot of curvy girls that like to dress up as Lavely and I don't want to get yelled at because I'm not like a size whatever even Carrie Fisher didn't like being that size like she's like it was a it was hard to stay that size for her so umm it's just interests that panel was interesting because it talked a lot about geek on geek um bullying but also talked about you know how we can all be positive influences how we can all help kids growing up in this kind of scenario where they're constantly being bullied how they can look towards these fictional characters that have overcome massive you know bad huge hugely bad childhood trauma um and bullying and were able to not become villains out of it so it's it was an interesting panel but it was good that they had that and we had a pretty decent crowd even though we were against we're competing against Adam Savage which is always hard and then just as a segue to Adam Savage he dressed up as Chewbacca um and if you know Adam Savage from Mythbusters whenever he does a convention he works on a costume that's a huge elaborate ordeal of a costume he works on all year and then he enter he goes into these conventions incognito so no one knows it's him so the Chewbacca costume that he built and he has many by the way uh this one had an animatronic c-3po that he was carrying on his back but look how good that is that's like a movie ready and keep in mind I don't like he actually killed chubak yeah keep in mind too that Adam worked at ILM I mean he worked in industrial like magic where this was you know we had to do stuff like this well I worked at Lucasfilm when he was there and he knows movie props inside and out if you go to a site tested comm you'll see this video I wrote an article about it on CNET so you can see the video there too but look at that it's awesome but the reason I'm wearing the backpack is because it allows me to distribute the load of Threepio this is about 35 pounds and the Threepio comes courtesy not courtesy I mean I paid him for it Threepio Master Gordon Tarpley he put this together for me in a record amount of time he supplied me with the Threepio parts that were vacuum metallized in gold and pre weathered I built it all into this framework now when you're attaching resin parts like this difficult so I did a couple of structural things I added a web strap that goes out through the thigh across the bottom calf back up through the other thigh so that even if someone that starts to deteriorate from the wear and tear of the floor it will still hold together and he won't catch on fire I mean that's some such as Oliver so he's wearing a very flammable costume and he has a lot of wiring back there sweaty he must be like in that full 35 pound metal backpack yeah so there he is going through I think I walked past him and I didn't realize it um but it's so good I mean it's better than probably Peter Mayhew is costume in the first film now does this are the c-3po move around yeah I did I'm thinking heads ms around the light eyes light up you can sort of see a little bit um he does a bunch of different dialogue um from the movies it's pretty impressive that's pretty and of course he was gathering Kratz paquetes Adams done all different costumes I'm he's dressed up as a realistic bear he's dressed up as the was it Toro from the must oh yeah yeah um he's I mean he really goes all out and at comic-con San Diego's probably the ones where he really tries to get as much bang for his buck but the problem with San Diego comic-con 2 is you're starting to compete with a lot of cosplayers if this is there like livelihood now yeah take a picture with a low budget Chewbacca at CES yeah I wasn't excited I personally I personally prefer low budget Chewbacca's I find them a much more interesting and hilarious when they're made out of carpet uh charm I like it when I mean I love professional looking cosplayers of course right I also like when people are halfway like it's more like a Halloween costume like they love this they've put their resources into it but isn't their actual career and so like there was a girl at SV see see Jedi robes where she was wearing actually a brown cardigan with cable stitching on it and it looked really good you know it fit the aesthetic but it was still also homey yeah I mean I think we're getting to a point now at comic-book conventions where you're seeing people that are making professional-grade cosplay costumes and a lot of them this is their livelihood a lot of them are paid to be at different places or they're on reality TV shows where they're competing I mean you know and a lot of these shows are great too because this is like a calling card for these people to work in actual films um and TV so it's but I have to agree with you Kelsey like I really like seeing people that just love the characters but don't necessarily have the time or the patience or the money to put into the costumes but you still can say you know I'm doing something I'm showing off what I love and I love cross cross-play where women are playing male characters and male men are playing female characters a lot of Lady Captain America's this year yeah I just did a video I just did an article and seen that I think it was this week of Mass Effect beat down boogie put together their remix reel of all the different Mass Effect's from all the different conventions that they've gone to and Mass Effect is great because I mean as a video game it's even so many different types of characters but there's a lot of gender swapping going on and I mean well what you get for either gender yeah yeah this chair this chair so it makes sense but I just I loved seeing all the different commander Sheppard's both male and female obviously you can do that in the game so it was it was interesting but these are all very professional I mean these are the people that like spend years on their costumes and their outfits as opposed to kind of like the half other yeah I don't know I would I can't cosplay like I I'm a crafter so I do a lot of craft books and things but for me I'd rather cosplay as a building I think we were talking about this right before they were we went live of what we would cost play at especially to convention like Silicon Valley Comic Con it's like I I know that Simone Gertz who does the crappy robots she cosplays as Windows like a computer that shows windows I think I saw a picture and so it was like her head that was just a computer box and then she had all black on but then her face was done like the the window I think it was a windows logo I think so um I thought that was hilarious because that makes sense at Silicon Valley Comic Con because you want to have something as like tech so I maybe next year I'll do cosplay as a flip phone or some like old-school tech that no one will understand why I'm dressed like that I feel like that would be I don't know maybe a Walkman I've had a long-running joke for a while that I'm a very hirsute hairy man and so I've had a joke for a world if I continuously shaved all of my head and body hair I could knit it into a sweater I'm thinking maybe I should up that until I can if I shave and collect enough maybe I could knit my own Chewbacca suit there you go you could I mean it's interesting a Steve sansweet who's director of fan relations at Lucasfilm and he has this thing called Rancho obi-wan which is this giant collection that he houses at his place that's a it's a giant used to be a chicken ranch and he refurbished the barn so you can have all his entire Star Wars convention that are at Star Wars collectibles there and it's a non-profit so you can go and visit and you know pay certain amount to to visit it but I asked him what his biggest regret was as a collector that he did not buy and he said that was either a garage sale or a flea market and it was a portrait of Chewbacca done by a barber that basically anytime he cut hair he would collect the human hair and make these elaborate Chewbacca portraits and he's like he just couldn't do it because his human hair and he just felt weird about it but he's always regretted that he didn't buy that because it's actually really well done it wasn't like cheeseball it actually looked good but it was all done with like human hair and beard hair it's just like that's gotta be amazing oh you know even though we know it's on Christmas list sir maybe I'll do a craft tutorial for starters for me the fourth will do shave your beard and make a Chewbacca portrait at the same time if you have your next book idea about eggs I think that's about all the time for we're running a little over we could go on forever probably thanks again to Adam Draper from booth BC for joining us that was really fascinating I think we could have gone on for quite a while talking about everything that they're working on over there thanks again for having him join us and thanks also to the crew there in San Francisco Bonnie Burton Kelsey Adams and Jeff Sparkman our intrepid Silicon Valley comic-con reporters and of course behind the control Stephen Beecham nobody has ever pulled up the jetsons video faster Thank You YouTube thanks everyone for watching check out everything that we talking right but of course on cnet.com and at boost DC that's the website for Adams company there Adams accelerator so uh thank you again this has been far-sighted we will see you next month America