kind of girl when I do something I do
the hell out of that thing and I go all
in
I take huge risks on sometimes absurd
ideas and as a result it’s really worked
out for me my name is Ella darling I
have been a porn performer for seven
years I co-founded a company that
created a live webcam platform in
virtual reality that product is called
cam for VR I am the president of a
nonprofit called the adult performer
Advocacy Committee and we do work
advocating for adult performers and I
found along the way that there are four
main principles that have really guided
me as I’ve thrown myself headfirst into
the first is take calculated risks
sometimes people are going to think that
the choices you’re making are insane but
you are the only person who can decide
what’s worth risking and what rewards
are worth sacrificing for take a chance
on yourself if you don’t believe in
yourself if you don’t invest in yourself
nobody else will either
and you are worth taking that risk you
are worth investing in make yourself
uncomfortable it’s at the edge of your
comfort zone where truly magnificent
things happen if it was easy everybody
would be doing it and then it wouldn’t
be special so push yourself and dare
yourself to do more and finally start
over sometimes when you’ve put a lot of
work into something it feels like when
you start over you’re throwing away
everything but in reality you’re
discarding the things that are weighing
you down and allowing yourself to move
forward with the lessons you’ve learned
and the skills you’ve gained along the
way so these are the four things that
have really helped me through a lot of
points in my life
I’ve done something really crazy or
invested in something that didn’t seem
very wise to outsiders about ten years
ago I was finishing college and I
decided on a whim that I wanted to
become a librarian and it wasn’t enough
to just become a librarian you have to
go to grad school and get a masters
degree to do this so if I was going to
do this I was going to only go to the
best library school in America nothing
else would do and if I did it I was
going to do it in double time I was
going to do this two-year degree in one
year just to prove to myself that I
could so I only applied to one graduate
school and if I didn’t get in then I
would definitely and I still don’t know
how to finish that sentence because I
don’t really know what my back-up plan
was but luckily I did get in and I
attended this school and a year later I
became a reference librarian and the
associate director of a library and this
was an incredible incredible achievement
for me especially so young I had a job
that I loved something that I could see
myself doing for the rest of my life oh
my god is the rest of my life about to
start when I’m 22 this was crazy so I
threw it all away and I found a
different path crushing existential on
we can push you to do things that you
never expected sometimes so I did the
obvious thing after that I moved to Los
Angeles and started doing porn as you do
um
this in itself was quite a risk because
I worked very hard to be where I was
professionally and once you start doing
porn you’ve always done porn you’re
never not naked on the internet again
after that and when you do this a lot of
doors closed for you I’m never going to
be a kindergarten teacher for example
but I did it I dared myself to explore
an industry that scared me
and then I had a lot of misconceptions
about I challenged myself to learn what
the reality of this industry was for the
people for the workers for the laborers
I wanted to explore it for
every angle and so I did I gave myself
the opportunity to challenge my beliefs
and as a result I found a long term
career and community and opportunity and
independence that I never expected to
find a few years after that I found
myself getting a little bit older which
in porn can be a big deal and I knew
that if I wanted to have longevity in
the adult industry I needed to expand I
needed to start a production company and
make my own content so I started doing I
started creating very stylized high end
high production value lesbian
pornography and it was gorgeous
and it was fun but there was something
lacking
um I realized that my husband at the
time started kind of edging me out of my
business and making decisions without
talking to me I was like wait what are
you doing what this is my company you
have your company but this one is my
company’s so what’s going on here and he
told me that he didn’t think that I was
capable of starting a company on my own
unless he did it for me and handed it to
me so I threw all of that away and
started over both the company and the
marriage because that was a little bit
nonsense and I realized that while the
lesbian pornography business was really
cool it wasn’t a challenge I was doing
the exact same thing I’d been doing for
four and a half years just on the other
side of the camera and it was a
challenge without real challenge it was
a risk without real risk and I knew that
I could do better than that and I had to
challenge myself to do better than that
around the same time I tried a device
called the oculus rift which is a
virtual reality headset if you don’t
know what virtual reality is you’re
going to in the next few years for sure
but what it is is it’s a headset that
you put on your face and there’s a lens
pointing at each of your eyes and it’s
this transport ativ immersive experience
where you can you can be anywhere in the
world you can try new things you can
explore experiences with this immersive
device from the comfort of your home and
I knew when I tried this device
this was going to be incredible for
pornography
whenever I try a new technology I have
two questions
how can I fuck with it and how can
people watch someone fuck with it so
that was very clear it was very apparent
how virtual reality was going to be
important for the adult industry but I
didn’t have the technical or development
skill sets to make that happen on my own
well serendipitously one day I was
cruising reddit.com and I saw a post by
someone who said I really want to make
virtual reality porn I’ve got all the
tech and camera experience that I need I
just don’t know how to find someone that
will actually get naked on camera so we
obviously had to meet within a few weeks
this person had flown me out to the East
Coast and this was a pretty big risk
this was a meeting a stranger on the
Internet to be naked in front of a
camera with them which is always
something that can make you a little
nervous but I did this and I was
standing in a train station in
Washington DC and the person who would
eventually become my best friend and my
business partner approached me and I
almost asked to see his identification
because he looked like a teenager he was
only 20 years old at the time and it was
not at all what I was expecting so a
little backstory about porn
it’s very common important to shoot in
people’s houses their apartments their
homes a lot of Studios don’t like to
rent to the adult industry so we make do
with what we have so when he told me we
would be shooting in his apartment but
didn’t really faze me until we arrived
at the apartment and it turned out it
was actually his dorm room at his
university and much to the surprise of
his roommates at the time who who were
playing Dungeons & Dragons when we got
there
so it was cool because I knew I was
amongst my people we shot our first
virtual reality porn scene in his dorm
room
it was incredibly weird science if
you’ve ever seen that movie I lived it
basically and it was cool we reviewed
the content and I was absolutely blown
away I had never felt so engaged with an
adult film before I’ve watched my own
work plenty of times but this was truly
something different and truly something
unique it had the ability to make you
feel a presence and a sense of
personhood with the person that you were
watching that I never saw before in
traditional 2d analogues so we became
business partners and we started
creating more of this content it was 180
degrees 3d and we made some really cool
stuff and then we threw it all away and
we started over this time we did 360
degree 3d content which is similar but a
lot more technologically taxing and we
made some really bad content but also
some really great content we learned a
lot and once again we took this catalog
of our work and drew it away and started
over this was a very new industry and we
were one of the first companies
producing this kind of content but the
kind of content we were creating wasn’t
defensible anybody could buy a camera
learn some of the the stitching
technology and easily become our
competitors and probably outweigh us
because we were only two people so we
needed to do something that was more of
a challenge to ourselves and that would
pose a challenge to anybody who wanted
to enter into the space that we were
occupying so we made the world’s first
virtual reality porn Holograms
we took a Microsoft Kinect and we use
that as a camera and then we use some
software to designate the capture space
on three axes so I would place a
performer into that space and capture
their movements and then place that into
a digitally rendered environment so you
could walk all around them and see them
from different angles and it was so cool
because you felt like you were really in
a bedroom with this person
I was talking to you and really engaged
with you but again we tossed it we
scrapped it we moved on because we found
a more compelling way to use that tech
we created holographic a holographic
dating simulator so you can date me in
virtual reality and I learned that I am
actually a very tough date because there
was behavioral aspects to this program
in that if you said something to sexual
or too forward too early on in the
conversation
holographic me does not have time for
your nonsense she’s out of there if you
act respectfully and you approach it
like you’re talking to a person and not
flesh on screen then you get rewarded
and this made all of the difference
because this made it so that you were
engaged it was interactive and you felt
like you were really talking to each
person and then once again we threw it
all away because if the cool part was
feeling like you were talking to a
person we decided why not make it so
that you can actually talk to a real
person so we launched the world’s first
virtual reality webcam platform and I
became the world’s first VR cam girl and
we iterated and we pivoted and we
changed it and we fixed it and we
haven’t thrown this one away we’ve
decided that we’re really happy with it
and this is because of all of the
previous experiences where we challenged
ourselves we took risks we took chances
and we started over we carried with us
the knowledge that we learned and the
insights that we had gained that at this
point we’re incredibly unique and we
were some the only people in the world
who knew these things and had this
insight and we realized that while we
were making adult content the most
compelling aspect of it wasn’t sexual at
all it was the ability to make someone
feel less lonely to make someone feel
like there’s somebody else out there in
the void of life who hears them and
cares someone with whom they can share a
reciprocal attraction a shared self
disclosure and vulnerability it’s far
more of a therapeutic medium than
anything sexual though it definitely is
sexual as well and that’s
where we are now and if I had not taken
these risks taken a chance on myself
made myself incredibly uncomfortable in
a lot of ways and thrown away a lot of
work I would probably still have a
relatively happy comfortable life but I
wouldn’t have experienced the incredible
opportunities and the thrills of success
I’ve made some of the best mistakes in
my life and I’ve gotten to experience
parts of the world in parts of life that
I never dreamed of when I was deciding
that I was going to study the Dewey
Decimal System and working library so I
take away that I’d like for you to leave
with is don’t be afraid to take big
risks and start completely fresh whether
that’s in work or in hobbies or even in
a marriage or a relationship when things
stop working when you know that you want
more and can do more and you can
challenge yourself to be better do it
listen to that thought listen to that
voice and act on it get out there and
start taking some chances thank you [Applause]