The instruction to my team was simple to say but incredibly hard to pull off. Recreate everything that makes a real graduation feel like a milestone and do it inside an immersive virtual world. That meant the interns had to be trained to build custom avatars, learn to navigate the platform, and find caps and gowns that actually looked the part. There is a lot to be said for graduation regalia that requires zero dry cleaning and costs nothing, and our students kept their entire graduation wardrobe budget at a clean, zero dollars.
From there we treated it like any other event we produce, harkening back to what we did well and learned during Covid while executing in Degy World every day. We staged the virtual graduation ceremony in our RMN Memorial Auditorium (those are my father’s initials, and I dedicated the building to him). We filled it with a full house of interns, staff, and a few distinguished guests. The Degy Marketing Team built proper signage and a Class of Spring 2026 backdrop. And then, we came up with the idea to substitute printed certificates for ‘diplomas,’ which you now see adorning many of our interns’ LinkedIn profiles. We set up a step and repeat photo spot the same way you would at a film premiere. Then, when each name was called, the graduate walked across the stage, shook my hand, and headed back to their seat, exactly the way it happens in a gymnasium or athletics stadium on college campuses every May.
We did not skip the small rituals either, because the small rituals are the whole point. At the end I counted the class down from three, and everyone flipped their tassel from right to left on cue (ish, as it might have been a bit sloppier than that). Balloons dropped from the ceiling. Then we moved the entire class through three different photo locations, finishing at a lighthouse where fireworks went off over the water. That was an ode to our pandemic events, where we invited each client’s patrons to visit the lighthouse for a group picture at the end of every program. I will admit I had a real graduation cap on my real head the entire time. I may also have been wearing a bathrobe and slippers below the camera line, but why not, since that’s what we learned we could do during Covid.
We briefly considered inviting families to watch, then pictured 41 sets of parents trying to build avatars at the same time, with at least one grandfather accidentally ending up in Roblox, and we quietly let that idea go.
Here is what makes this more than a fun gimmick. The graduation our interns attended was also supported by some of those graduating interns. Felix Agosto, who coordinates our remote internship program, took the lead on developing the experience and training everyone on how to move through the world. He did it with the support of his director, Caité Kendrick. Felix also hosted the ceremony from the virtual podium, which is no small thing when you are emceeing a commencement and running the technology at the same time. But that task is also in Felix’s DNA. As he shared to us prior, and since on his LinkedIn post, Felix was an Air Force instructor who regularly held graduations for the Airman Leadership School. After cleaning off the rust from his old days, he’d probably tell you that this one was quite different and unique, but no less special.
One of our graduating interns, Riley St. John, a recent University of Central Florida graduate, volunteered to build the onboarding guide that taught the rest of the class, and a good chunk of our own staff, how to dress their avatars, find the auditorium, and walk the stage. She designed the seating chart, and then on the evening of the event, Riley stationed herself in the welcome zone to greet arrivals and point them toward the auditorium. Gaia Dash and Lauren Coutin worked the rehearsals, answering questions and redirecting anyone who got lost. Dorothy Trusty produced marketing videos about the experience that caught fire online once people realized what we had crazily pulled off on the platform.
I want to sit on that for a second. The students we set out to honor were the same students who wrote the manual, drew the map, greeted the guests, and told the story to the world. Riley and Gaia even led the business development pitch that laid out how we would pull the whole thing off. If you ever want proof that this internship teaches people to produce real events, look no further than the event they produced to celebrate themselves. That is what hands-on education looks like when you take it seriously, and it is the thing I care about most.
A graduation is a good excuse to say out loud what our remote internship program is supposed to be about. We do not just book and execute nearly 3,000 live events a year. We develop the people who will run the next 3,000. Each semester we bring in between 25 and 45 interns across departments, and what we tried to give this class was not a simulation of the entertainment industry, Degy World aside. It was a reflection of the real one.
That meant real conversations about real deals with real stakes. It meant masterclasses, mentorship, and one-on-one coaching from people who have spent decades earning their place in this business, including industry veterans like Stuart Ross, who has probably forgotten more about touring than most of us will ever learn. We built this program on three pillars from the very beginning, experience, education, and mentorship, and we treat all three as non-negotiable as each cohort enters our walls. An internship at Degy is a skills-based learning experience, not a coffee run.
Every department director who took an intern under their wing this semester did something genuinely hard. Doing your own job well is difficult enough. Doing it while teaching someone else how to do it alongside you takes a kind of generosity that does not show up on any balance sheet. I am grateful to every one of them, and to Felix for turning a program into a genuine education rather than a list of tasks to hand off.
I also told this class the truth, because they had earned the truth more than they had earned a polished speech. They are graduating into a hard moment. Artificial intelligence is reshaping entire industries in real time, and ours is not exempt. Entry level opportunities in entertainment can feel like they are shrinking while the competition keeps growing, and that competition is global. Nobody hands you a seat at this table. You earn it by being scrappy, resilient, and willing to do the work other people decide is beneath them. I know that path personally, because I was born out of an internship just like this one. I still remember the name of the person who took a chance on a kid who knew nothing about the music business and was scared of his own shadow, and that was 30 years ago.
I will be honest about something. Plenty of people called me crazy for building Degy World, and a few of them work for me. Some of my own team cannot stand it when I bring up the metaverse, and I am fairly sure a couple of them grumble about me wanting to build a real event strategy around this platform in 2026 and beyond. I understand the skepticism. The word metaverse got overhyped, then written off, and a lot of companies that rushed in have quietly backed out. I’m somewhat glad Facebook hasn’t reverted to its old name… yet.
We never backed out, for a simple reason. Degy World was not a marketing stunt for us. It was how we kept working, and keeping ourselves sane, from 2020 to 2022 when the live event business shut down. We ran hundreds of virtual concerts, conferences, showcases, and meetings inside Degy World during the pandemic, our interns became known as VEPs, short for Virtual Event Persons, and the platform became a real part of how we serve clients who cannot get everyone into the same physical room. While a lot of the industry treated the pandemic pivot as a temporary detour, we treated it as a capability worth keeping.
That is why we are still bullish on the metaverse as a serious business strategy rather than a buzzword. Degy World gives us a way to virtualize events of all kinds, and it works on both sides of the aisle. On the B2B side, it powers buyer showcases, conferences, trade style expo halls, corporate meetings, training, and onboarding, all with custom avatars, live voice, and analytics built in. On the B2C side, it hosts virtual concerts, fan experiences, ticketed shows, community events, and maybe someday, my goal of ‘Speed Dating’ (just wait!). The hybrid events we run today, where we stream live talent on a real stage to buyers and fans who could not travel, are the direct descendant of that pandemic era work, and hybrid is where a growing share of the market is heading.
So when people ask me why a talent buying and live event company would throw a metaverse graduation inside a world that looks like a video game, the answer is that we have been producing real events in here for years, and we intend to produce a lot more. A commencement was simply a new kind of event, and events are what we do. If there is one lesson I hope this class carries with them, it is the one this whole evening was built on. When somebody tells you something cannot be done, do not treat it as a stop sign. Treat it as an invitation.
Watch the graduation recap here!
Whether you need a full production in the real world or an immersive virtual experience inside the metaverse, we have spent years building events that people remember.
Degy Entertainment (talent buying & full-service events)
Degy World (immersive virtual & hybrid event platform)
Email: ari@degy.com
Call: 732-818-9600 (Office)
Website: www.degy.com
Students who want this kind of experience can learn about our remote internship program here.