Agenda

Description

Topics to be covered:
• What are the key factors that entertainment venues are looking for in a VR attraction?
• Design considerations for LBE providers & end-users
• Deciding between Road-shows vs Brick & Mortar Location. Is one better than the other?
• Marketing strategy for LBE venues
• Where is the industry going?
• What hurdles are we facing?

Speakers

Leila Amirsadeghi

Principal Program Manager , Microsoft

Joanna Popper

Senior Media, Ent & Emerging Tech Exec , Consultant

Aaron Pulkka

AR/VR Program Director , Amber

Selma Sabera Ruzdijic

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER , MEOW WOLF

Ned Atkins

Senior Consultant , LBE News

Daisy Berns

Sr. BD - Games , PICO XR

Description

AWE Nites are a place for developers, creators, investors, founders, corporate decision makers, and curious folk to come together to celebrate the activity and devote conviction around building an augmented reality (AR) hub in each city.

Come and hear from the AWE Nite organizers around the world about their experiences and see how you can get involved.

Speakers

Patrick Johnson

Founder , Rock Paper Reality

Patrick Johnson

CEO , Rock Paper Reality

Suzan Oslin

Director of Spatial Experiences , UXXR Design

DAVE LORENZINI

Chief of Secret Police , Draw & Code

Molly Portillo

Community Manager , AWE

Shota Saito

Product Director , Graffity inc,

Carl White

CEO , Meshicon Software

Emily Smith

Digital Engagement Coordinator , Nelson Education

Ron Padzensky

Author , Independent Consultant

Description

While there are numerous case studies covering the quantitative benefits of enterprise augmented reality (AR), an important qualitative benefit has emerged. Businesses spanning multiple industries across the globe have seen a fundamental behavioral change in how people train, work, collaborate, and plan. These changes go beyond the simple productivity, quality, and safety gains traditionally touted with AR, and can have an even more transformative effect in the long term. Attend this session and learn how businesses are capitalizing on this to drive re-invention of conventional business models, operational management, and resource utilization, as well as unlocking higher-value jobs for the hands-on workforce through an AR-led digital workforce transformation.

Speakers

Jay Kim

Chief Strategy Officer , Upskill

Description

Creative Microsystem was among the first near-eye optics companies to successfully demonstrate a laser-to-waveguide hybrid display, of the kind most recently made known by HoloLens 2 (not affiliated). Bill Parker first saw fame when he invented the Plasma Lamp while at MIT. Today he wants to speak to AWE about an Artificial Intelligence interface for Augmented Reality applications.

Speakers

Bill Parker

CEO , Creative MicroSystems

Description

We are seeing Holographic Ambassadors combined with Sentiment Analysis pose great potential for brands to convert shoppers to buyers, reduce product returns and build brand loyalty through measurable interactions. With sentiment analysis, brands are no longer combined to the binary model of analytics, but rather can utilize a spectrum of sentiment to best programmatically deliver targeted AR experiences.

Speakers

Paul Duffy

President , NexTech AR

Description

We have seen a shift in Life Sciences development from small molecule to highly sophisticated biologics to the development of complex personalized medicine. With that complexity comes the need for streamlining human-centric processes and assurance of greater reliability, compliance, speed and safety across all unit operations. Paper procedures lack the ability to provide deep insight or process improvement and current EBR systems are rigid, lacking the contextual understanding that makes augmented reality-driven systems so successful within complex environments. As a result, these intelligent and spatial systems are being implemented across life science teams from R&D through manufacturing to improve collaboration, communication and speed. These systems allow organizations to take their existing content, augment it and execute on any device, providing a fully traceable system for accessing and storing critical data.

Speakers

Angelo Stracquatanio

CEO & Co-Founder , Apprentice.io

Description

Pick up any smart phone and gestures to operate it are nearly universal. Put on a set of smart glasses or play a mobile AR game and they are hobbled by out dated UX/UI standards that interfere with the new opportunities on the emerging AR platforms for spacial computing. In contrast to the UX/UI guidelines for WIMP interfaces; precious little has been written about best practices for AR. With screenless information, spatial computing, floating menus, mid air gestures, restyled 3DOF and 6DOF controllers, new graphics, audio, and haptics AR offers novel interaction patterns that demand new interface language and standards. Come join us for a dive into the emerging UX / UI standards for AR and spatial computing with inspiring examples from Leap Motion, North, mixed reality, Magic Leap, as well as some from XEO's own laboratory and latest experiments.

Speakers

Nicole Lazzaro

President , Xeodesign Inc

Description

One of the factors that give us confidence in the future of spatial computing is the amount of investment being made by influential tech giants. That includes most of the major platforms and more notably, tech' s big five: Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft. But an important question is Why? What are their motivations? The answer is different for each of these players, but one theme persists: They're each motivated to protect or grow core businesses. And they're finding ways that XR, especially AR in the near term, accomplishes that goal. Why is this important? Answering the question of why can inform the what and how, which have implications for the rest of us. Knowing these players' course headings and motivations are can help XR startups and investors align their strategies and product road maps. ARtillery Intelligence Chief Analyst Mike Boland has spent lots of time thinking, writing and speaking about this topic (including a chapter in Charlie Fink's latest book) and will break it down for the AWE audience. This will include an in-depth look at each of these players' moves, motivations and trajectory.

Speakers

Mike Boland

Chief Analyst , ARtillery Intelligence

Description

Artificial intelligence is increasingly prevalent in every aspect of our lives – and its impact on the entertainment industry is taking shape. As the video space becomes increasingly saturated and engagement rates continue to drop, AI-powered avatars are becoming the “what comes next” in mobile entertainment. Armando will speak about this new form of interactive content: how AI avatars are becoming increasingly lifelike, how emotional insights gleaned from AI avatars can change interactions with computers as we know them, and how the intersection of these innovations offers creators an opportunity to deploy AI avatars across the entertainment industry.

Speakers

Armando Kirwin

Founder , Artie

Description

According to a recent survey, there are over 1.4 million transgender adults in the United States. This doesn’t include the massive number of individuals under 18 years old that are transgender and non-binary. The number of transgender and non-binary individuals who are coming out is increasing every day. With increased awareness, education, and visibility individuals will continue to come out as their true selves. VR and AR companies have a massive opportunity with this community as a vehicle in a transformation of self. Dr. Kristie brings 12 years of clinical expertise and best practices of working with the transgender population. She will discuss new opportunities for developers with an understanding of transgender and non-binary users.

Speakers

Kristie Overstreet

Psychotherapist, Clinical Sexologist , Therapy Department

Description

With intelligent transformation on the rise, traditional and emerging technologies in a business are no longer two separate things – they are all interconnected to a larger IT infrastructure as an extension of one another. Vice President of Strategy and Emerging Business for Lenovo’s Intelligent Devices Group, Jon Pershke will discuss the commercial possibilities of doing ‘Smarter Business’ and the importance of exploring new opportunities that emerging technologies like AR/VR can bring companies - to better design, manufacture, operate and maintain their products or to train their people. Jon will be joined by a special guest and partner who will unpack how AR has created significant ROI for their business and people.

Speakers

Jon Pershke

VP, Strategy & Emerging Business , Lenovo

Description

TAFE NSW, Australia’s largest vocational training institute with over 130 campuses. The TAFE NSW Digital Lab are building VR prototypes and exploring the requirements needed to scale this technology across their organisation. Joe Millward will share what the team has discovered in the first 12 months of this journey. This will cover topics including:
• Building early prototypes and considerations needed scale content
• Fostering and developing advocates and early adopters
• Brand and organisation compliance
• Infrastructure and hardware requirements
• Creating content with longevity
• Adopting a comprehensive analytics strategy
• The importance of experimentation
• Planning for the evolution – steps in change management
• Future-proofing, identifying upcoming changes and trends in XR
Joe will breakdown all of the steps the team are going through as they continue this process. This will give you an insight into areas of focus you need to add to your implementation strategy.
Joe will dive into specific projects to dissect how TAFE NSW is preparing these applications for mass consumption. From developing continuity across multiple applications, what data is important to add to your analytics tool to how to maintain design quality.
He will also share lessons the team has learned as they have revised and improved the applications they have developed over the past 12 months. This including interaction design, audio and aesthetic improvements based on user feedback and analytical data.

Speakers

Joe Millward

Innovation Manager , *

Description

I will talk about the ROI on these type of interactive educational experinces and how they can help the schools in their community with their stem intiatives thru AR/VR.

Speakers

Description

Wargaming’s Special Projects team deploys high-exposure XR projects at the intersection of heritage and gaming, leveraging World of Tanks (160million+ registered users). From life-sized AR tanks coming out of HoloLens portals into museums, to recent graphics-bending AR collab projects with History Channel & Google, I’ll discuss how this games company explores these new platforms a little differently: with a quick-turnaround & agile approach, for a massive gaming audience with a high affinity toward history. I’ll talk about the mass media coverage, the early blue-ocean partnerships, attracting rarified new media talent & mindshare, brand positioning, and the invaluable R&D exploration, all leading toward an increasingly ubiquitous commercial XR future.

Speakers

Matt Daly

Special Projects Lead , Wargaming Group

Description

Embodying another person is known to increase empathy and understanding. How do we harness this for soft skill training? Join Equal Reality to discuss how we've applied these principals in the diversity and inclusion space.

Speakers

Annie Drake

Founder , Equal Reality

Description

Edge compute and 5G are coming fast and they will separately and together change the way immersive applications can function. Learn how multiple telcos are working to enabling device manufacturers and service providers to address significant technical challenges with bandwidth, location positioning, AR cloud deployment, multi-user collaboration, computer vision services and more while users operate with true mobility.

Speakers

Ali Daniali

Founder and CEO , HRVSTS

Nima Shams

VP & GM of Product Business Unit , DigiLens

Ali Daniali

Founder and CEO , HRVSTS

Terry Schussler

Sr. Dir., XR & Metaverse , Deutsche Telekom AG

Ali Daniali

CEO/Founder , HRVSTS

Alisha Seam

Principal Engineer: Emerging Technology , AT&T Foundry

Hiren Bhinde

Sr. Director, Product Management , Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

JR Dawkins

Innovation Program Manager , Verizon Media

Description

This talk will be an overview of the different components needed to build the future of spatial computing. First, we'll will dig into how computers perceive the world, and current state of sensor-based tech. Then she'll dive into which event types are most useful or specific for AR. Spatial computing requires a reassessment of how humans interact with computers, so this lecture will cover inputs and modalities, from button presses to facial sentiment analysis.

Finally, we'll close with how to get to the future, both with developer tools, and an overview of the current state of hardware in 2019.

Speakers

Timoni West

Director of XR Research , Unity Technologies

Description

Spatial Computing is changing our understanding of AR/VR and MR today, at the dawn of the Age of Light. AR/VR and MR have long been understood as the next step for personal computing. But the emergence of Spatial Computing in self-driving vehicles, robotics, IoT, and screen free displays, breaks the mold of Personal Computing and unleashes computers into the world around us, enabling new forms of multi-user collaboration based on natural interaction, intelligence, proactivity, and social awareness. Spatial Computing and AR/VR/MR share the same core technologies - sensors, compute, AI, machine learning, 3D capture and rendering, ultra fast networks and compute. Creating new kinds of hybrid applications for AR/VR/MR that go beyond Personal Spatial Computing is one of the most exciting opportunities for AR/VR/MR innovators today. And, as the future of these technologies is tied to a bigger shift from electronics to photonics, we are also pioneers of the Age of Light who can help realize a bright future for humanity.

Speakers

Tish Shute

Co-Founder , AWE

Description

Experienced XR Attorney Michael Leventhal takes you through the business and legal process of moving from an idea to a business investors will fund.

Speakers

Michael Leventhal

Partner , Holmes Weinberg, PC

Description

There are many tasks that require collaboration, with participants that are co-located, remote, or mixed. I will present ongoing research at Columbia University that explores how AR and VR can improve communication between collaborating users, increasing how effectively they work together. Domains that I will address range from maintenance and assembly, to rehabilitation, to urban visualization, and also demonstrate the complementary advantages of different kinds of AR and VR displays.

Speakers

Steve Feiner

Professor of Computer Science , Columbia University