Out of the Box

When Sarah Hill first announced she was quitting her job and creating a startup, it was hard to imaginethe equipment in her hands had the potential to revolutionize the technology industry. After all, she washolding a cardboard box.

“My friends and family are often confused when I tell them why I quit my job,” Hill says. “They ask, ‘Wait,you quit your job to sell cardboard boxes?’ But once they see the technology, they get it.”

Hill’s spent so much time with this box that, now, she’s dropped everything else to devote her life to it.

So perhaps it wasn’t just a cardboard box. Hill was carrying Google Cardboard, a virtual reality viewermade of cardboard. This equipment opened the door to her new business, a virtual reality journalismcompany that seeks to “combine story and technology to raise awareness of the stories that hurt ourhearts,” Hill says.

This startup, appropriately titled StoryUp VR, became her full-time project in August, when Hill quit herjob at Veterans United Home Loans. Since then, Hill’s worked tirelessly with Google Cardboard — thecardboard box that changed her life.

The device, built like a pair of goggles and reminiscent of a ’90s-style View-Master, works using asmartphone and smartphone app. When demoing the equipment, Hill taps an app on her iPhone, insertsthe phone along a slit in the Cardboard and holds the device up to her eyes.

Lauren Puckett

September 25, 2015Features,Sub Features:Photography By: Anthony Jinson

In the next moment, she’s in a completely different place.

Swiveling her head to the right, the 360-degree, 3-D VR video follows her line-of-sight to show her amountain range; tilting her head up, a flock of birds; blinking down toward the ground, a rocky plateauon which she “stands” — and a drop-off only inches from her feet.

A new technology, new company, new future

Collaborating with both Google and the VR company Jaunt, Hill uses equipment including GoogleCardboard, Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR and Zeiss VR One. While operating as the sole employer atStoryUp VR, she hires freelance editors and videographers to assist her in her projects. As VR is “at theintersection of gaming and journalism,” Hill says, she requires a lot of technical know-how fromcomputer-savvy groups who can sift through production issues.

Those production issues were an incessant problem in the long history of VR. Initial experiments with VRbegan in the 1950s, according to an article by The Verge, when researchers saw the potential for videoscreens that could closely imitate human vision. However, late ’50s stereoscopic screens were crude. VRdemanded more advanced programming.

Decades later, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, VR found its foothold again. Designers began composingdigital landscapes that simulated immersion in a video. VR companies bloomed across the Unites States,all hoping to grab a fistful of cash when this technology showed promising advances. But the digitalimages weren’t lifelike enough to capture a nation’s attention, and many of the companies went out ofbusiness within a few years.

Now in the 21st century, VR may have finally found the tools to survive. With events such as Facebook’s2014 purchase of high-profile VR company Oculus VR, it seems virtual reality may become the “next bigthing.”

But Hill wasn’t looking to get caught up in virtual experiences when she first picked up GoogleCardboard. In fact, she was interested in something else entirely: she wanted to get aging World War IIveterans out of Columbia and to Washington D.C., where they could see their memorials.

The story that started it all

Hill’s grandfather, a World War II veteran, died before he could see his war memorial. This tragedy stuckwith Hill for years to come, influencing her storytelling until it led her to the doorstep of the Honor Flight.

As a news anchor and reporter at KOMU/Channel 8 for 11 years, she told “Sarah’s Stories” on the air, andseveral of them focused on Honor Flight.

Honor Flight, a nonprofit organization created to fly veterans to visit their memorials, lacked a mid-Missouri chapter when Hill first encountered the program. Hill reached out to the community and askedanyone touched by her stories to help create a chapter near Columbia.

One of those audience members was Steve Paulsell. After having served for 31 years as the fire chief ofthe Boone County Fire Department, Paulsell was looking for “the next big adventure,” he says. He calledHill, saying he’d be willing to help establish a local chapter.

Now, years later, the Central Missouri Honor Flight is alive and well, having produced 34 flights and sentmore than 2,100 veterans to Washington, D.C. Paulsell is the current vice president of the local chapterand has traveled on all 34 flights.

“We’ve seen the impact the flight has had on all of these [veterans],” Paulsell says. “The vast majority [ofveterans] tell us it’s the greatest day of their life.”

But though Hill was consistently touched by the efforts of the Honor Flight, she wasn’t completelysatisfied. Something continued to frustrate her: Not all veterans were physically able to make the trip. Inthe past, she’d tried live streams to bring the Honor Flight experience to immobile veterans, butbandwidth issues made the process difficult, sometimes impossible. Broadcasting a lifelike video streamto older men from miles and miles away wasn’t working. She needed another solution.

So when she had the chance to test Google Cardboard one day, she knew the cardboard box couldchange everything. Immediately after demoing the technology for the first time, she called Paulsell andhis wife and told them, “I have to show you this right now.” She was already en route to their home.

After trying the VR technology for themselves, Paulsell and his wife agreed it could be life changing toveterans.

Using VR technology and grant money from the Veterans United Foundation, Hill collaborated withCentral Missouri Honor Flight to create Honor Everywhere 360, a VR experience for veterans who cannotmake the physical flight. The virtual video allows veterans to turn their heads and see the memorials as ifthey were really standing there.

Although Honor Everywhere 360 is still in the production process, Hill quickly realized her dabbling in VRcould be more than just dabbling.

Now, she’s invested her life and career into VR, moving StoryUp VR into the Missouri Innovation Center atthe University of Missouri Life Science Business Incubator on Aug. 15.

A home base for a world-spanning business model

As the local “safe space” for startup businesses, the Missouri Innovation Center seems the perfect placefor StoryUp VR to call home. Companies such as Hill’s are provided with support, a business model,introductions to partners and even assistance fundraising as they get started.Working with the center, Hill was able to create her business model for StoryUp VR. She plans to useYouTube ads on her spherical video experiences as a starting point, along with selling Google Cardboardon her website. But Hill believes investors will provide the real cash when they see the kind of workStoryUp VR is doing. She also says there’s a possibility for creating paid, branded content that allowsbusinesses to “StoryUp” their favorite cause or charity.

“Smart brands know they need to sell their story, not just their product, if they want to endearthemselves to their customers,” Hill said in an email. “It sounds counterintuitive, but a brand can endearitself to its customers by taking the mirror and turning it away from itself.”

President and CEO of the Missouri Innovation Center Bill Turpin was no stranger to VR when Hill firstapproached him with this model for StoryUp VR. He’d spent 10 years in Texas and 25 years in Californiaworking with technology businesses and had even created his own VR company,The Multiverse Network,in 2004.

Although his startup went out of business in 2010, Turpin knew VR had potential, but he didn’t knowwhen it would bloom.

Perhaps he still doesn’t know the exact moment when VR might change the world, but Turpin says he gota better idea when Hill first stepped into his office.

“There are a few times in my life when I remember seeing something for the first time,” Turpin says. “Oneof those was seeing the Internet when it first came out, thinking, ‘Wow, this is the future.’ I had the exactsame feeling when Sarah showed me her VR technology.”

Turpin is also inspired by Hill’s philanthropic mission to tell stories that “hurt our hearts,” Hill says. Bytraveling around the world, she seeks to raise awareness of causes people might not otherwise knowabout, and Turpin says the Missouri Innovation Center is 100 percent behind her.

“A lot of a startup is the person who starts it, and [Hill] is a person I would bet on,” Turpin says.

‘Stimulating reality by capturing reality’

From Oct. 24 to Nov. 4, Hill plans to travel to Zambia, where she will record VR video of Zambianresidents who lack mobility.

Forced to crawl on the ground using their arms, these people are often the result of tragic accidents orbirth defects, and their lack of mobility can make them ostracized members of their communities.

Hill will film a fully immersive, first-person VR video from the perspective of one of these citizens. Shehopes viewers will be prompted to empathize — and with VR 360-degree technology, they literally won’tbe able to look away.

“There are compelling reasons to use VR that can make a difference in the world,” Hill says. “There areplaces and causes that people don’t even know exist, and if people can’t step inside them, they won’tunderstand the real need.”

After filming this experience, Hill will document the work of the P.E.T Project in Zambia.

The P.E.T Project, started in Columbia in 1994, builds devices that “go where wheelchairs can’t go,” saysDirector Gary Moreau. The devices, made out of yellow pine lumber and steel, look a bit like the child of ago-kart and a bike. The device is operated by a chain pulley, which users can twist with twin handles tomove the P.E.T forward, backward and around.

The P.E.T Project has made more than 50,000 P.E.T devices, averaging about three devices every twohours. P.E.Ts have been transported to more than 100 locations across the globe, delivered directly tocommunities with people who lack mobility.

Although the P.E.T Project continues to be successful, it struggles to find funding. And though Moreauadmits he doesn’t completely understand the technology behind Hill’s VR ventures, he’s excited aboutwhat opportunities her storytelling presents.

“What [P.E.T] needs and what we’re really struggling to do is to grow into the digital age, and maybe withthis VR, we can make big strides,” Moreau says. “If Obama can fund his campaign on Facebook, maybeP.E.T can do the same thing through VR.”

‘The beginning of the beginning of the beginning’

Above all, Hill looks forward to the enormous possibilities VR presents. She counts future VR options offwith her fingers: school fieldtrip experiences, live concert and sports footage, real estate home tours,choose-your-own-adventure games, distractions for young kids at the dentist’s office and more.

Although StoryUp VR may not cover every one of those areas of VR, Hill is ready to see where her startuptakes her.

“The world needs to be reshot using this technology because it creates empathy,” Hill says. “Story, to anorganization, is sometimes more important than any money.”

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