Ben Erwin is the Creator, Executive Producer, and writer of The Polys - WebXR Awards, the WebXR Summit Series and MetaTr@versal, He’s become well-known as a leading voice on LinkedIn for his work rallying the XR community around ethics, standards and interoperability, and for recognizing its pioneers. He serves on the board of Metaverse Standards Forum and recently co-founded the Academy of Immersive Arts and Sciences.

Ben Erwin has 35 years of experience in marketing and management as an entrepreneur. He founded his digital media consultancy, Powersimple, in 1997. He has worked on over 40 major brands for digital media agencies, including T-Brand Studio at the New York Times. For 13 years, he served the United Nations Office of the Secretary-General’s Special Representatives for Children in Armed Conflict and Sexual Violence Against Women.

As a speaker, Ben Erwin’s talks are acclaimed for being  humorous, engaging, and informative. He has appeared at numerous industry conferences, webinars, and streaming events including AWE, VRTO, WebXR Summit Series, VRARA Global Summits, XR Guild, Wordcamp, Neuro-ethics and Future Realities at Princeton University, NYVR Meetups, Silicon Harlem, and Immersive Tech Africa as a panelist, moderator, presenter, and guest speaker at corporate events. He recently delivered the keynote at the Immersive X conference hosted in The Polys Red Carpet Theater in ENGAGE.  At AWE 2024 he presented the award  for Best in Show - Breakthrough Talent at the Auggies.

Ben has also led a series of innovative XR Stunt shows demonstrating immersive tech live, including a play he wrote and directed about interoperability, with a cast of 17 industry luminaries on the AWE Main Stage in 2022. His recent AWE talk “Why Open Wins” received accolades for being funny and insightful. He has been a repeat interview guest on many podcasts such as Kent Bye’s Voices of VR, and Maxwell McGee’s Virtual World Society.