Hôte Fonction Seine-et-Marne is an initiative organised by Dirigeantes Actives 77 that brings entrepreneurs and elected officials together through a unique professional role-swapping experience.
What happens when an immersive 360° filmmaker discovers the realities of local government—and an elected official steps into the world of virtual reality and audiovisual production?
I had the opportunity to take part in this experience alongside Véronique Veau, Vice-President of the Seine-et-Marne Department responsible for Culture and Heritage.
For both of us, it was an opportunity to discover different professional environments, exchange perspectives and explore the connections between entrepreneurship, cultural heritage and immersive technology.
From Créatrices d’Avenir to Hôte Fonction Seine-et-Marne
In 2023, I was honoured to be selected as a finalist in the Créatrices d’Avenir competition in the “Mixité des métiers” category for my work with Visual Solutions 360.
Following this recognition, Dirigeantes Actives 77 invited me to participate in Hôte Fonction.
The association brings together women business leaders and entrepreneurs from Seine-et-Marne and the surrounding area, creating opportunities to exchange experience, develop professional networks and strengthen connections within the local economic ecosystem.
Hôte Fonction takes this idea one step further by bringing entrepreneurs and elected officials directly into each other’s professional environments.
Rather than meeting around a conference table, each participant gets an opportunity to experience the other person’s daily reality.
A day inside local government in Seine-et-Marne
My immersion began alongside Véronique Veau.
As Vice-President of the Department responsible for Culture and Heritage, her work involves cultural policy, heritage projects, public institutions, local organisations and many different stakeholders across Seine-et-Marne.
During the day, I accompanied her through meetings, discussions, travel and exchanges with local actors.
Seeing this environment from the inside gave me a much clearer understanding of the complexity behind public projects.
Decisions that can appear straightforward from the outside often involve budgets, administrative constraints, multiple stakeholders, long-term planning and the need to balance very different interests.
It was particularly interesting for me because culture, heritage and new technologies are closely connected to many of the immersive projects I work on.
Museums, historical sites and cultural institutions are increasingly exploring new ways to communicate with visitors and make heritage accessible through digital and immersive experiences.
Then it was time to swap roles
The experience continued in the opposite direction.
Véronique Veau entered my professional world and discovered the day-to-day realities of Visual Solutions 360: immersive content creation, 360° video production, virtual reality and the technical challenges involved in producing innovative audiovisual experiences.
Running a specialised creative business means constantly moving between very different responsibilities.
Creative development, client communication, technical preparation, filming, equipment, logistics, post-production and delivery are all part of the same project.
Behind an immersive experience that may appear effortless to the final viewer lies a significant amount of technical preparation and decision-making.
Discovering immersive 360° production on set
The immersion continued during a production day with The Overlap Factory, a studio creating cinematic immersive and interactive experiences.
This gave Véronique Veau the opportunity to experience an actual production environment and see how immersive content is created from behind the scenes.
A 360° production requires a very different approach from traditional filmmaking.
Because the camera captures the entire environment, lighting, crew placement, equipment, movement and staging all need to be carefully considered. There is often nowhere behind the camera to hide.
The day offered a concrete look at how creative ideas, technology and production constraints come together on set.
It also demonstrated something that is central to my work: immersive technology is not simply about equipment.
It is about finding the right technical solution to serve a story, a place or an experience.
Immersive technology for culture and heritage
The connection between this exchange and my work became particularly meaningful through our collaboration with The Overlap Factory.
I have worked on several of their immersive productions combining historical environments, panoramic imaging, 360° content and interactive experiences.
These projects demonstrate how immersive technologies can allow visitors to approach history differently—not simply by observing a place, but by feeling present inside a reconstructed moment or environment.
For museums, heritage organisations and cultural destinations, technologies such as 360° video, virtual reality and interactive immersive content can create new forms of interpretation while complementing the physical experience of visiting a site.
Discover Houffalize – Winter 44–45, an immersive historical experience developed by SKY BOY / The Overlap Factory. Travel back to the Battle of the Bulge through five interactive locations featuring 360° historical reconstructions.
Download the free app:
You can discover more about our work with The Overlap Factory in the article:
“Unveiling the Past: Visual Solutions 360° leverages Mistika VR for The Overlap Factory.”
What I learned from Hôte Fonction
The most valuable part of this experience was discovering how much our two professional worlds actually have in common.
Whether managing a public cultural project or producing an immersive experience, both require coordination, problem-solving, budget management, communication and the ability to work with many different people.
The constraints are different, but the need to transform an idea into something concrete is very similar.
For Véronique Veau, the experience offered a view into the realities of entrepreneurship and specialised audiovisual production.
For me, it provided a much deeper understanding of how public institutions work and how cultural and territorial projects are developed.
Building bridges between public institutions and entrepreneurs
Initiatives such as Hôte Fonction in Seine-et-Marne are valuable because they create conversations that might not happen through traditional professional meetings.
Understanding the constraints faced by another sector can lead to better collaboration, more realistic projects and new ideas.
This is particularly relevant in culture, tourism and heritage, where public institutions, creative companies, technology providers and local organisations increasingly need to work together.
Innovation often starts with technology—but successful projects begin with people understanding one another.
A warm thank you to Dirigeantes Actives 77, Véronique Veau, Flavienne Stock-Raymond, Frédérique Humbert, the The Overlap Factory team and everyone who made this enriching exchange possible.
About Visual Solutions 360
Visual Solutions 360 creates immersive experiences for companies, museums, cultural institutions, tourism organisations and creative agencies in France and internationally.
Our expertise includes 360° video production, immersive VR filmmaking, interactive 360° virtual tours, HDR panoramic photography, 360° drone filming and VR post-production.
From technical consulting and filming to post-production and delivery, each project is developed around the experience we want the audience to live—not simply the technology used to create it.
