David Brickley is something of a social marketing pioneer. In 2011, he founded STN Digital, a leading social-first digital marketing company in sports and entertainment. STN now has more than 50 employees and creates hundreds of pieces of content daily for partners like ESPN, Warner Bros., NBC Sports, Under Armour, the Philadelphia Phillies, and NBA star Jayson Tatum, among dozens of others. The company helped Elton John launch his TikTok. In 2023, digital sports viewership surpassed traditional television viewers for the first time. Forty-three percent of young adult sports fans follow their favorite league on social media, 54% follow their favorite athlete, and 32% of all sports fans use social media while watching games. Brickley and STN have been at the forefront of this social-first revolution. Brickley never wanted to start a social marketing agency. But when Kobe Bryant opens a door—even by accident—you walk through. Building a business A lifelong Lakers fan who grew up east of Los Angeles, Brickley took a job in 2011 as a producer at Fox Sports Radio with the dream of hosting his own sports talk radio show. “I thought I should have my own afternoon show,” he said. “My program director thought differently.” Shut down by the higher-ups, Brickey became an entrepreneur by necessity. He used Fox Sports AV equipment and studio space after hours to launch his own YouTube channel. At the time, original sports content on the platform was scarce. His content regularly made it on YouTube’s front page, which grew his profile enough for him to start working directly with professional athletes, eventually landing Bryant as a client in 2013. In an exclusive interview, Brickley spoke with Fast Company about his evolution into a digital maven, sharing his insights on how social audience habits have changed, how he sees them evolving in the future, and how any company can build a social content strategy that works. The interview has been edited and condensed. How did you land Kobe Bryant as a client when you were just getting started as a small shop? It started with good karma. I did a ton of favors for the publicist of Matt Barnes, who was a Lakers player at the time, and as a favor, I interviewed his twins after they got on the honor roll at their elementary school. In exchange, I got a 10-minute one-on-one with Matt. Then one day I was at a boxing class and I ran into his publicist. She mentioned she was working with Kobe, so I asked if I could send over some ideas. Because of all those favors I’d done, she let me pitch Kobe the concept of the “Kobe Minute”—a 60-second weekly video about his on-court and off-court successes. They loved it because we could highlight his charitable work without it feeling self-promotional. How did creating content for Kobe and his team open your eyes to the idea of creating a social marketing agency? The Kobe opportunity was the epiphany moment. I had just reached out to my childhood hero about working together, and he said yes. So I realized if I could land Kobe, I could reach other athletes and teams too. We built an Excel sheet with all 32 NFL teams, found every email, and reached out. Seven hopped on calls, three wanted proposals, and the Minnesota Vikings were willing to try us out as a partner. It was pure bootstrapped cold outreach. Being able to create your own destiny without relying on someone else for opportunity was intoxicating. You started STN Digital basically from scratch. What struggles were your clients having when creating original content—specifically for social—and how did you position yourself as the solution? Back in 2013, every sports entity had social channels—the Facebooks and Twitters. But they weren’t posting original content. They had these audiences but didn’t know how to engage them. Social was just a PR dump of press releases and super boring, non-fan-centric content. So my message was, “We understand fans, we understand what the sports fan wants, and we can curate content specifically on social that speaks to them.” You gotta understand that at that time, a fan-first approach of speaking authentically about topics fans cared about didn’t exist. Now, as we transition to 2025, every CEO, president, CMO in the world is starting to think about a social-first approach, which is awesome to see. How does the agency work? In what ways do partners deploy your services and expertise on a given social marketing campaign or initiative? Our clients use us in one of two ways. Usually, they’ll either hire us as a world-class social media department and we run everything A to Z—copywriting, content, analytics, everything—or they’ll bolt us on as a world-class content house. In that case, they have an incredible team already, but they add us on top because their team doesn’t have three and a half hours to dream up a bunch of dope ideas in a whiteboard session or simply need more engaging content for all their initiatives. ESPN has a 75-person social team with incredible engines internally, but we’re able to be that supercharger to take them from 99% potential to hopefully 125% potential. What’s an example of a creative campaign you’ve executed that you’re really proud of? Our work with the Indiana Fever during the Caitlin Clark draft just won a Webby. My team spent 70 to 80 hours creating this video of a Toy Story-esque action figure of Caitlin Clark dribbling around her bedroom, shooting hoops. It got around 10 million views on TikTok alone and 500,000 engagements. What’s interesting is we’re seeing lo-fi content outperform hi-fi content by 40% more views and 30% more engagements on average. But this high-production piece was thumb-stopping creative that nobody else was posting—something that made people think, I gotta watch the rest of this. It’s something the Fever and we are super proud to have collaborated on. What are some of the biggest misconceptions you see about social marketing content, and what strategies that may seem counterintuitive actually work? I look at social media as upper-funnel fan engagement—building community, credibility, and trust. But a lot of the time, brands see it as a lower-funnel platform where they’re trying to talk about brand, logo, messaging, and calls to action. You have to be social on social. You have to provide value—whether it’s education, laughter, or elicit some type of emotion. People aren’t required to follow you, so why do they? You have to build that relationship. Brands that do social wrong are mostly just, “Look at me, look at me!” and constantly making calls to action. That’s not how you build true community, no different than a friendship or relationship. For every eight things you give your community, you have then earned the right to ask for two things in return. And the value you give in that 80% needs to be memorable. What are some of the other lessons you’ve learned about social engagement or audience behavior over the years? The power of real-time social, especially in sports, continues to be undervalued. During the Olympics with NBC Sports, we worked back-to-back 12-hour shifts daily and helped them get 6.5 billion impressions in 17 days. Those impressions would cost $50 million if you bought them on the open market. The key is being ready for every moment. If Simone Biles won bronze, silver, or gold, we had content ready for all scenarios with different angles and storylines. Same with Caitlin Clark’s draft. We spent 30 days planning content for before, during, and after she was picked to capitalize on arguably the biggest moment in the Fever’s franchise history. How do you approach data and measurement when creating content strategies and campaigns? We follow the data of what works, but we also pay attention to how different platforms’ algorithms behave. Instagram will serve you something in your feed that happened five days ago, so there are considerations about what goes on Stories versus in-feed. We’re constantly obsessed with data—not just what’s working or not working, but what different post types perform best, whether it’s a reel, carousel, or single post. We’re analyzing timing, post type, static versus video versus carousel, and noticing how algorithms are being optimized differently across Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. We use platforms like Sprout Social and Rival IQ to get super deep with third-party and first-party data. We analyze our top 10 and bottom 10 posts constantly—weekly or monthly—to understand why certain posts underperformed. We look at who was featured, what time it was posted, whether it was a carousel versus a reel. We might notice reels are taking a dive and wonder if the algorithm has changed. Not all engagement metrics are equal, either. Watching something for 3 seconds and scrolling past is much different than watching it for the full 60 seconds. And I believe that one of the most undervalued engagement metrics is shares. If you take time to DM content to a friend saying, “This is so us,” that’s 10 times more important engagement than just a “like” because you’re actually taking time to send it to someone you love. We look seriously at shareability and ask, “Is this something you want to DM your family or best friend?” What about platforms? Which are the most important, and where do you see the most success and engagement? We still see Instagram and TikTok at the top in terms of engagement and virality. From a sports perspective, Twitter is still that real-time water cooler—nobody else holds a candle to it. There have been attempts with platforms like Bluesky, but we saw with the Luka Dončić trade how NBA Twitter just exploded in ways other platforms can’t replicate. Social behavior continues to swing back and forth. Once something becomes too saturated, there’s an opportunity for new platforms or content types to emerge as fresh ways to connect with audiences. The key is being adaptable and understanding where your specific audience lives and engages most authentically. Marketing efforts can often become fragmented across different departments. How should companies think about aligning their social strategy with broader marketing goals? Social and sales teams—even CMOs and marketing teams—often operate separately from social, which is a problem. CMOs should always oversee the social department because it has to ladder up to a greater vision of value prop and audience understanding. Social and community building and fan engagement at the top of the funnel is all to eventually work people down the funnel to become customers and drive revenue generation. If I were a prospective client who came to you and said, “My social strategy sucks. What can I do?” what’s the first piece of advice you would give me? Where would you start? I would ask, “What audience specifically are you trying to grow?” Then we can reverse-engineer a strategy based on what that audience finds valuable, entertaining, and engaging. Are you trying to grow mass audience because you’re a large brand, or are you saturated in one demo but want to diversify? Then, once we identify the target avatar, we can develop a strategy based on what we know works with other brands talking to that same audience. Without figuring out who your customer is at the very top of the conversation, you’re just posting content and hoping it works with no real endgame. So let’s figure out who you’re talking to, what they want most, and how we can meet them where they are and deliver it to them.

Observation Rocket Report: SpaceX’s expansion at Vandenberg; India’s PSLV fails in flight China's diversity in rockets was evident this week, with four types of launchers in action. Stephen Clark – May 23, 2025 7:00 am | 7 Dawn Aerospace's Mk-II Aurora airplane in flight over New Zealand last year. Credit: Dawn Aerospace Dawn Aerospace's Mk-II Aurora airplane in flight over New Zealand last year. Credit: Dawn Aerospace Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Welcome to Edition 7.45 of the Rocket Report! Let's talk about spaceplanes. Since the Space Shuttle, spaceplanes have, at best, been a niche part of the space transportation business. The US Air Force's uncrewed X-37B and a similar vehicle operated by China's military are the only spaceplanes to reach orbit since the last shuttle flight in 2011, and both require a lift from a conventional rocket. Virgin Galactic's suborbital space tourism platform is also a spaceplane of sorts. A generation or two ago, one of the chief arguments in favor of spaceplanes was that they were easier to recover and reuse. Today, SpaceX routinely reuses capsules and rockets that look much more like conventional space vehicles than the winged designs of yesteryear. Spaceplanes are undeniably alluring in appearance, but they have the drawback of carrying extra weight (wings) into space that won't be used until the final minutes of a mission. So, do they have a future? As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar. One of China's commercial rockets returns to flight. The Kinetica-1 rocket launched Wednesday for the first time since a failure doomed its previous attempt to reach orbit in December, according to the vehicle's developer and operator, CAS Space. The Kinetica-1 is one of several small Chinese solid-fueled launch vehicles managed by a commercial company, although with strict government oversight and support. CAS Space, a spinoff of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said its Kinetica-1 rocket deployed multiple payloads with "excellent orbit insertion accuracy." This was the seventh flight of a Kinetica-1 rocket since its debut in 2022. Back in action ... "Kinetica-1 is back!" CAS Space posted on X. "Mission Y7 has just successfully sent six satellites into designated orbits, making a total of 63 satellites or 6 tons of payloads since its debut. Lots of missions are planned for the coming months. 2025 is going to be awesome." The Kinetica-1 is designed to place up to 2 metric tons of payload into low-Earth orbit. A larger liquid-fueled rocket, Kinetica-2, is scheduled to debut later this year. The Ars Technica Rocket Report The easiest way to keep up with Eric Berger's and Stephen Clark's reporting on all things space is to sign up for our newsletter. We'll collect their stories and deliver them straight to your inbox. Sign Me Up! French government backs a spaceplane startup. French spaceplane startup AndroMach announced May 15 that it received a contract from CNES, the French space agency, to begin testing an early prototype of its Banger v1 rocket engine, European Spaceflight reports. Founded in 2023, AndroMach is developing a pair of spaceplanes that will be used to perform suborbital and orbital missions to space. A suborbital spaceplane will utilize turbojet engines for horizontal takeoff and landing, and a pressure-fed biopropane/liquid oxygen rocket engine to reach space. Test flights of this smaller vehicle will begin in early 2027. A risky proposition ... A larger ÉTOILE "orbital shuttle" is designed to be launched by various small launch vehicles and will be capable of carrying payloads of up to 100 kilograms (220 pounds). According to the company, initial test flights of ÉTOILE are expected to begin at the beginning of the next decade. It's unclear how much CNES is committing to AndroMach through this contract, but the company says the funding will support testing of an early demonstrator for its propane-fueled engine, with a focus on evaluating its thermodynamic performance. It's good to see European governments supporting developments in commercial space, but the path to a small commercial orbital spaceplane is rife with risk. (submitted by EllPeaTea) Dawn Aerospace is taking orders. Another spaceplane company in a more advanced stage of development says it is now taking customer orders for flights to the edge of space. New Zealand-based Dawn Aerospace said it is beginning to take orders for its remotely piloted, rocket-powered suborbital spaceplane, known as Aurora, with first deliveries expected in 2027, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. "This marks a historic milestone: the first time a space-capable vehicle—designed to fly beyond the Kármán line (100 kilometers or 328,000 feet)—has been offered for direct sale to customers," Dawn Aerospace said in a statement. While it hasn't yet reached space, Dawn's Aurora spaceplane flew to supersonic speed for the first time last year and climbed to an altitude of 82,500 feet (25.1 kilometers), setting a record for the fastest climb from a runway to 20 kilometers. Further along ... Aurora is small in stature, measuring just 15.7 feet (4.8 meters) long. It's designed to loft a payload of up to 22 pounds (10 kilograms) above the Kármán line for up to three minutes of microgravity, before returning to a runway landing. Eventually, Dawn wants to reduce the turnaround time between Aurora flights to less than four hours. "Aurora is set to become the fastest and highest-flying aircraft ever to take off from a conventional runway, blending the extreme performance of rocket propulsion with the reusability and operational simplicity of traditional aviation," Dawn said. The company's business model is akin to commercial airlines, where operators can purchase an aircraft directly from a manufacturer and manage their own operations. (submitted by EllPeaTea) India's workhorse rocket falls short of orbit. In a rare setback, Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) launch vehicle PSLV-C61 malfunctioned and failed to place a surveillance satellite into the intended orbit last weekend, the Times of India reported. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle lifted off from a launch pad on the southeastern coast of India early Sunday, local time, with a radar reconnaissance satellite named EOS-09, or RISAT-1B. The satellite was likely intended to gather intelligence for the Indian military. "The country's military space capabilities, already hindered by developmental challenges, have suffered another setback with the loss of a potential strategic asset," the Times of India wrote. What happened? ... V. Narayanan, ISRO's chairman, later said that the rocket’s performance was normal until the third stage. The PSLV's third stage, powered by a solid rocket motor, suffered a "fall in chamber pressure" and the mission could not be accomplished, Narayanan said. Investigators are probing the root cause of the failure. Telemetry data indicated the rocket deviated from its planned flight path around six minutes after launch, when it was traveling more than 12,600 mph (5.66 kilometers per second), well short of the speed it needed to reach orbital velocity. The rocket and its payload fell into the Indian Ocean south of the launch site. This was the first PSLV launch failure in eight years, ending a streak of 21 consecutive successful flights. (submitted by EllPeaTea) SES makes a booking with Impulse Space. SES, owner of the world's largest fleet of geostationary satellites, plans to use Impulse Space’s Helios kick stage to take advantage of lower-cost, low-Earth-orbit (LEO) launch vehicles and get its satellites quickly into higher orbits, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports. SES hopes the combination will break a traditional launch conundrum for operators of medium-Earth-orbit (MEO) and geostationary orbit (GEO). These operators often must make a trade-off between a lower-cost launch that puts them farther from their satellite's final orbit, or a more expensive launch that can expedite their satellite's entry into service. A matter of hours ... On Thursday, SES and Impulse Space announced a multi-launch agreement to use the methane-fueled Helios kick stage. "The first mission, currently planned for 2027, will feature a dedicated deployment from a medium-lift launcher in LEO, followed by Helios transferring the 4-ton-class payload directly to GEO within eight hours of launch," Impulse said in a statement. Typically, this transit to GEO takes several weeks to several months, depending on the satellite's propulsion system. "Today, we’re not only partnering with Impulse to bring our satellites faster to orbit, but this will also allow us to extend their lifetime and accelerate service delivery to our customers," said Adel Al-Saleh, CEO of SES. "We're proud to become Helios' first dedicated commercial mission." Unpacking China's spaceflight patches. There's a fascinating set of new patches Chinese officials released for a series of launches with top-secret satellites over the last two months, Ars reports. These four patches depict Buddhist gods with a sense of artistry and sharp colors that stand apart from China's previous spaceflight emblems, and perhaps—or perhaps not—they can tell us something about the nature of the missions they represent. The missions launched so-called TJS satellites toward geostationary orbit, where they most likely will perform missions in surveillance, signals intelligence, or missile warning.  Making connections ... It's not difficult to start making connections between the Four Heavenly Gods and the missions that China's TJS satellites likely carry out in space. A protector with an umbrella? An all-seeing entity? This sounds like a possible link to spy craft or missile warning, but there's a chance Chinese officials approved the patches to misdirect outside observers, or there's no connection at all. China aims for an asteroid. China is set to launch its second Tianwen deep space exploration mission late May, targeting both a near-Earth asteroid and a main belt comet, Space News reports. The robotic Tianwen-2 spacecraft is being integrated with a Long March 3B rocket at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China, the country's top state-owned aerospace contractor said. Airspace closure notices indicate a four-hour-long launch window opening at noon EDT (16:00–20:00 UTC) on May 28. Backup launch windows are scheduled for May 29 and 30. New frontiers ... Tianwen-2's first goal is to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid designated 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, or 2016 HO3, and return them to Earth in late 2027 with a reentry module. The Tianwen-2 mothership will then set a course toward a comet for a secondary mission. This will be China's first sample return mission from beyond the Moon. The asteroid selected as the target for Tianwen-2 is believed by scientists to be less than 100 meters, or 330 feet, in diameter, and may be made of material thrown off the Moon some time in its ancient past. Results from Tianwen-2 may confirm that hypothesis. (submitted by EllPeaTea) Upgraded methalox rocket flies from Jiuquan. Another one of China's privately funded launch companies achieved a milestone this week. Landspace launched an upgraded version of its Zhuque-2E rocket Saturday from the Jiuquan launch base in northwestern China, Space News reports. The rocket delivered six satellites to orbit for a range of remote sensing, Earth observation, and technology demonstration missions. The Zhuque-2E is an improved version of the Zhuque-2, which became the first liquid methane-fueled rocket in the world to reach orbit in 2023. Larger envelope ... This was the second flight of the Zhuque-2E rocket design, but the first to utilize a wider payload fairing to provide more volume for satellites on their ride into space. The Zhuque-2E is a stepping stone toward a much larger rocket Landspace is developing called the Zhuque-3, a stainless steel launcher with a reusable first stage booster that, at least outwardly, bears some similarities to SpaceX's Falcon 9. (submitted by EllPeaTea) FAA clears SpaceX for Starship Flight 9. The Federal Aviation Administration gave the green light Thursday for SpaceX to launch the next test flight of its Starship mega-rocket as soon as next week, following two consecutive failures earlier this year, Ars reports. The failures set back SpaceX's Starship program by several months. The company aims to get the rocket's development back on track with the upcoming launch, Starship's ninth full-scale test flight since its debut in April 2023. Starship is central to SpaceX's long-held ambition to send humans to Mars and is the vehicle NASA has selected to land astronauts on the Moon under the umbrella of the government's Artemis program. Targeting Tuesday, for now ... In a statement Thursday, the FAA said SpaceX is authorized to launch the next Starship test flight, known as Flight 9, after finding the company "meets all of the rigorous safety, environmental and other licensing requirements." SpaceX has not confirmed a target launch date for the next launch of Starship, but warning notices for pilots and mariners to steer clear of hazard areas in the Gulf of Mexico suggest the flight might happen as soon as the evening of Tuesday, May 27. The rocket will lift off from Starbase, Texas, SpaceX's privately owned spaceport near the US-Mexico border. The FAA's approval comes with some stipulations, including that the launch must occur during "non-peak" times for air traffic and a larger closure of airspace downrange from Starbase. Space Force is fed up with Vulcan delays. In recent written testimony to a US House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees the military, the senior official responsible for purchasing launches for national security missions blistered one of the country's two primary rocket providers, Ars reports. The remarks from Major General Stephen G. Purdy, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, concerned United Launch Alliance and its long-delayed development of the large Vulcan rocket. "The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year," Purdy said in written testimony during a May 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. This portion of his testimony did not come up during the hearing, and it has not been reported publicly to date. Repairing trust ... "Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions," Purdy wrote. "Despite the retirement of highly successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to Vulcan has been slow and continues to impact the completion of Space Force mission objectives." It has widely been known in the space community that military officials, who supported Vulcan with development contracts for the rocket and its engines that exceeded $1 billion, have been unhappy with the pace of the rocket's development. It was originally due to launch in 2020. At the end of his written testimony, Purdy emphasized that he expected ULA to do better. As part of his job as the Service Acquisition Executive for Space (SAE), Purdy noted that he has been tasked to transform space acquisition and to become more innovative. "For these programs, the prime contractors must re-establish baselines, establish a culture of accountability, and repair trust deficit to prove to the SAE that they are adopting the acquisition principles necessary to deliver capabilities at speed, on cost and on schedule." SpaceX's growth on the West Coast. SpaceX is moving ahead with expansion plans at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, that will double its West Coast launch cadence and enable Falcon Heavy rockets to fly from California, Spaceflight Now reports. Last week, the Department of the Air Force issued its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which considers proposed modifications from SpaceX to Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6) at Vandenberg. These modifications will include changes to support launches of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the construction of two new landing pads for Falcon boosters adjacent to SLC-6, the demolition of unneeded structures at SLC-6, and increasing SpaceX’s permitted launch cadence from Vandenberg from 50 launches to 100. Doubling the fun ... The transformation of SLC-6 would include quite a bit of overhaul. Its most recent tenant, United Launch Alliance, previously used it for Delta IV rockets from 2006 through its final launch in September 2022. The following year, the Space Force handed over the launch pad to SpaceX, which lacked a pad at Vandenberg capable of supporting Falcon Heavy missions. The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing Falcon 9 pad at Vandenberg, known as SLC-4E, and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026, with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6, for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028, with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years. (submitted by EllPeaTea) Next three launches May 23: Falcon 9 | Starlink 11-16 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 20:36 UTC May 24: Falcon 9 | Starlink 12-22 | Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida | 17:19 UTC May 27: Falcon 9 | Starlink 17-1 | Vandenberg Space Force Base, California | 16:14 UTC Stephen Clark Space Reporter Stephen Clark Space Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 7 Comments

Google is implementing AI-driven enhancements to its software and collaboration tools that could translate to big productivity gains. Google CEO Sundar Pichai started his keynote at the Google I/O developer conference this week with one of those features: real-time language translation in Google Meet, which was until now in research. The feature uses Google’s AI technology to translate speech from one language to another in near real time, while matching the tone and expressions — such as “hmmm” — during delivery. The technology breaks down language barriers, Pichai said. A video demonstrated the translation from spoken English to Spanish. A computer-generated voiceover spoke the translation after a one-second delay. Then the other participant’s response was translated from Spanish to English. “We are even closer to having a natural and free-flowing conversation across languages,” Pichai said. Translations to English and Spanish are now available in beta for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, with more languages rolling out in the next few weeks. “Real-time translations will be coming to enterprises later this year,” Pichai said. Pichai, in the opening moments of his keynote, also mentioned a new product called Google Beam, a 3D video communications platform that transforms 2D video streams into a realistic experience. The product was in development for many years under a research effort called Project Starline. Behind the scenes, an array of six cameras captures participants from different angles. “With AI we can merge these video streams together and render you on a 3D light-field display with near perfect head tracking down to the millimeter and at 60 frames per second, all in real time,” Pichai said. The result, Pichai said, was a much more natural and deeply immersive conversational experience. The first Google Beam devices will be available for early customers later this year. Google is partnering with device maker HP, which will share more information about these devices a few weeks from now. Traditional videoconferencing reduces many natural social cues that people experience in face-to-face interactions, which is where something like Google Beam fits in, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst on Forrester’s Future of Work team. “Those subtle cues contain a lot more information than people realize, so richer forms of videoconferencing that feel naturalistic could offer benefits,” said Gownder. Since users don’t have to wear specialized equipment such as VR headgear, it will be that much more accessible. “It’s probably a longer-term play, but if the experience is better, over time it could get traction,” Gownder said. Google also shed more light on how it is implementing Workspace Flows, a feature that was introduced at last month’s Google Cloud Next as a way to automate work across Google Workspace apps. Workspace Flows brings AI agents into the loop to get work done. Google can utilize AI agents called Gems that specialize in certain tasks such as customer service and work with other AI agents to complete tasks. An onstage Gems demonstration showed how workers could use AI agents to automate processing customer service by sharing complaints with other employees via Google Chat, looking up product literature, referencing an internal genAI model for further answers, and automatically sending a possible resolution to customers. Gems use Google’s Gemini AI model to analyze information, prioritize tasks, and generate feedback. “These are AI experts you can create to solve particular tasks… you can actually have a team of Gems working together to solve these issues for you,” said Farhaz Karmali, Google’s product director for the Workspace ecosystem, during a keynote on the second day of Google I/O. Karmali also shared some richer conversational features coming to Google Chat. Users will be able to subscribe to messages in a conversation, create groups, and manage memberships. These features will be helpful for ensuring targeted conversations and information reach the right agents. “Imagine: you build a chat app that is agentic and you want to get all the information from a chat app. You can now summarize it, and this helps you take actions and so on,” Karmali said. Other AI-powered features coming to Google Workspace include personalized smart replies, directed inbox cleanup, and fast appointment scheduling in Gmail; the ability to turn Google Slides decks into videos; and writing assistance in Google Docs that limits Gemini to specific sources designated by the user. Google I/O overlapped with Microsoft’s Build developer conference, where the company introduced new Copilot agent features this week. Both tech giants are in the early stages of AI, and the shows focused on how they are still developing their unique agent ecosystems, Gownder said.