He's a great speaker too, he'll discuss topics I am not at all familiar with but the context he wraps them in makes them easy to intuit. He also has a very intense passion for his work and his ability to dissect problems into their primitives leads him to really elegant solutions (0x5f3759df! [1]).
If it weren't for John I would have absolutely no interest in VR... but with his involvement it's hard to not be at least a little curious.