There is a classic line in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar: “But what is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths — are mine the same as yours?”

I find myself musing that much the same thing applies to reality, because there are so many of them about these days. Excluding Carlos Castaneda’s experiments with Peyote as detailed in A Separate Reality and related tomes, we have augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), augmented virtuality (AV), diminished reality (DR), mixed reality (MR), and hyper reality (HR). And people wonder why I drink.

If you are at all confused by any of this, now might be a good time to skim my introductory overview: What the FAQ are VR, MR, AR, DR, AV, and HR?

In order to address this issue, the folks at VR Intelligence — who bill themselves as the world’s leading network of senior-level decision makers in virtual and augmented reality — are now using the term XR Intelligence to embrace the multitude of realities that are heading our way like a speeding train. As I wrote in a recent column, Webinar on XR (Think AR on Steroids):

Almost every industry could benefit from XR technology in some way and the immersive landscape is growing every year with more solutions and use cases appearing on the market. One major problem is that senior managers need to understand the true potential of all this because they are the ones who need to commit their company’s time and resources to ensure that they aren’t left behind in the rush. The reason I say this is a problem is that most senior managers don’t have a clue (this is why the “Management Summaries” at the front of technical documents use a limited quantity of small words to get the point across).

Happily, the guys and gals at XR Intelligence are dedicated to spreading the good word and educating the folks who bask in the opulence of the C-suite, don the undergarments of authority, stride the corridors of power, and while away their days in the executive spa and bar.

As part of this, XR Intelligence, on behalf of Reuters Events, is holding an exclusive webinar — XR for Enterprise: How to Gain Buy-in and Prove its Value — on Wednesday, January 15 (8AM PT / 11AM ET / 4PM GMT).

The team will be joined by Shelley Peterson, Principal Investigator for Augmented & Mixed Reality at Lockheed Martin; Stephen Paul, Visualization and Immersive Technology Director at AECOM; and Earl F. Sison, Sr. Designer, Digital VR & AR Development at Thermo Fisher Scientific. The discussion will be moderated by Mark Sage, Executive Director at The AREA.

You can register for this free webinar to receive exclusive insights and discover how to:

• Prove the benefit: How XR champions, innovation departments, business heads, and HR struggle get budget sign off and the process you need to take.
• Identify the types of ROI that can be shared within your businesses to help your business case.
• Measure and prioritise different ROI metrics including operational costs, learning retention, customer sales, and satisfaction, accuracy and speed of tasks and risk.
• Get insight as to where the biggest hurdles to wider deployment come from and how best to navigate them.
• Turn XR from a “nice to have” into a “need to have” for management.

It’s well worth your time to register, even if you cannot join the live event, because anyone who registers will be sent the recordings once the webinar has ended.

I personally think that the combination of XR with artificial intelligence (AI) is going to dramatically change the way in which we interface with our systems, the world, and each other. I also think this is going to happen faster than most people expect. What do you think? Do you see the potential, or do you think it’s all “pie in the sky”?