During the annual Ann Arbor SPARK marquee event A2 Tech Trek, we encourage attendees to share their experiences on social media. Our participating companies usually get in on the action — creating interactive displays for selfies and more. In fact, we recently won an award for the 2017 campaign! This year, every post earned its Twitter account owner a chance to win an Oculus Rift + Touch Virtual Reality System. We recently heard from winner Jacquelyn Pogue, talent engineer at DISHER, with an update.
“I honestly had no idea what it was,” Jacquelyn laughed. “I saw the signs during Tech Trek about the chance to win and really didn’t give it a lot of additional thought. It was just fun to snap and share pictures of the kids throughout the day. After SPARK notified me that I had won, I called my husband to share the news. To say he was excited would be an understatement.”
And here’s why: Jacquelyn’s husband, Maurice, is the video game editor for Geeks Under Grace, a non-profit, volunteer-based Christian lifestyle site that reviews video games and pop culture content.
Maurice graduated from Tuskegee University and pursued an English doctorate at Michigan State University. He achieved ABD (all but dissertation) status before leaving the program to enter the workforce and support his growing family.
In 2015, Maurice started focusing his team’s efforts by creating a “hot list” making sure they covered the biggest releases each month. “It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to be an editor for a gaming magazine, like the UK publication Edge. The language and diction they use far exceed the industry standard. This is the caliber of writing that I strive for and if my writer is willing to go there, I will take them.”
Winning the Oculus Rift combined with the effort he spent growing his department, Maurice can now carve out a niche for himself as the Geeks Under Grace virtual reality (VR) specialist.
“I’m very excited because VR is still enthusiast-tier with equipment specifications and price points creating a high barrier to entry for many gamers. Meanwhile, game developers in this field want their products to be known. We were recently contacted by a review aggregate website that specializes in virtual reality video games because they noticed that in one week, we ran three VR articles three days in a row. Our entry into the VR review genre is definitely getting noticed.”
Maurice recently previewed Karnage Chronicles using the Oculus Rift.
