Augmented Reality Event, June 2-3

I’m both ecstatic and humbled to be a part of Augmented Reality Event, especially in its inaugural year. I would have been enthusiastic simply to attend such an event in its first year — Being invited to speak felt somewhat like I would imagine one of the side-stage bands must have felt, being invited to play Lollapalooza in 1991. This is going to be an event that grows, and I expect people will talk about in the coming years.

The Keynote speaker lineup is worth traveling for — Bruce Sterling, Will Wright, Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jesse Schell. The exhibitors and other industry speakers make the event every bit worth attending, but putting together a rock-star supergroup like that for the Keynote speakers lineup… and for a first year event at that. Amazing! Anyone of those four guys alone would be a speaker worth attending to see.

Above, I’ve edited together the video montage above of appearances by Bruce, Will, Blaise and Jesse, speaking at other events; to get an idea what is in store, have a look.

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Bruce Sterling
In the 1980s, Bruce, along with William Gibson and Rudy Rucker, was one of the writers who created the Cyberpunk Science Fiction sub-genre. Though his stock has always remained high, his mainstream profile has been rising, as a futurist cultural commentator. As a contributing editor to WIRED Magazine, he has become a vocal advocate, some might say an evangelist, for Augmented Reality. He has also served as Visionary in Residence at the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California.

Will Wright
Legendary game developer, in 1989 Will created SimCity, both one of the top selling, and one of the most influential computer games of all time. So successful it bloomed into an entire franchise including SimCity 2000, SimCity Societies, SimEarth and many others; spawning a whole genre of simulation games. He later went on to create TheSims, and most recently Spore — each a legendary game in its own right. Today Wright runs an entertainment development studio called, “Stupid Fun Club.”

Blaise Agüera y Arcas
Blaise founded software company SeaDragon, acquired by Microsoft in 2006. Since then his star has been rising like a rocket. One of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business, Newsweek’s multipage profile simply titles him “Super Hero”. Playing a leadership role at Microsoft LiveLabs, he has been one of the most popular speakers at TED. Blaise was recently promoted to Director of Bing Maps where many of the innovations developed at LiveLabs are now finding a home in shipped products.

Jesse Schell
Youthful diversions as a stand-up comic, and juggling circus clown groomed Jesse for his role as Creative Director for the Walt Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio — seven years creating immersive visitor experiences for Walt Disney theme parks. In 2004 he left to start his own entertainment design firm, Schell Games, and was named one of the world’s top 100 young innovators by MIT Technology Review. Today Jesse also serves on the faculty of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University.

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My own Talk is titled: Mobile AR, OOH and the Mirror World. I will be speaking on Thursday morning, June 3, at 9:20 AM in Ballroom H (Business Track, B12). I look forward to meeting some of you there.

I would like to thank Ori, Tish, whurley and Sean for making this event happen, and particularly thank Ori & Tish for inviting me to speak (no, for insisting that I speak).

This is the sort of event worth traveling for. And anyone on the West Coast has no excuse not to attend. I look forward to seeing you all there (and if you’re a friend or GigantiCo reader, get in touch with me ASAP. I have some promotional code discounts to share).

AR, H+ & R'n'R

Augmented Reality, Transhumanism & Rock’n’Roll

What a weekend!

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Saturday was the first annual ARDevCamp (Augmented Reality Developer Camp). Originating in San Francisco, with an East coast camp quickly organized in New York City. It was embraced with such enthusiasm that smaller satellite camps were organized in Amsterdam, Netherlands; Brisbane, Australia; Seoul, South Korea; Manchester, UK and others.

I’ve said many times that the community surrounding AR, especially mobile AR, is like Déjà vu from the early days of the web. There is something unique happening here, something technologically revolutionary, and the word is spreading.

The best thing about these events is meeting other people that share a common interest, that share your enthusiasm. I can talk about this with friends and business acquaintances… to a point. But I’m the one talking. Some have a top-line knowledge, but with most I’m sharing information and they’re asking questions. Among this circle, I’m in the median. A little more knowledge than some, but a lot less than many others. Seeing new things, picking up new knowledge.

The only formal presentation was Ohan Oda, showing his Goblin XNA project, part of his Ph.D. study at Columbia. One one his colleagues, Dr. Steven K. Feiner, Professor of Computer Science at Columbia shed additional light on the project. Matt Shapoff was industrious enough to get this live-streamed from his laptop:

Ohan Oda was kind enough to share his slide presentation.

The real highlight was finally meeting Noah Zerkin, whose worked I’ve followed and with whom I’ve corresponded, but only now just met. He was generous enough to let me demo a Microvision Nomad HMD. This older discontinued model was a monochrome display in red, which had a look eerily reminiscent of the Terminator.

Noah does NASA funded research in the Neurology Department Human Aerospace Lab at Mount Sinai Medical Center. He has particular expertise in dataglove technology, but is also a connoisseur of video eyewear.

After posting a tweet regarding the Microvision display, I received a message from a friend in California who works for NASA, inviting me to demo the Mars seamless virtual reality CAVE at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A “CAVE” system uses similar stereoscopic 3D technology as an IMAX theater wearing polarized lenses, but with screens projected onto the walls of a cube that the viewer stands inside of… and a “seamless” CAVE has a curved wall interior. I plan to take him up on his generous offer as soon as I can get back out West.

As the evening wound down, Steven Feiner, Tish Shute and Heidi Hysell appeared intent to talk augmented reality game-play into the night, but I had other plans.

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My good friend Al Risi had the run of the Gibson Guitars NYC Showroom, in the former space of The Hit Factory recording studio, for a private birthday party for both himself and Jessica Daponte… and a few hundred of their closest friends. Our highlight was hearing jam sessions with both Kenny Kramme and Ric Agudelo. Two good friends, both drummers, neither of whom I had ever seen play.

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Much of Sunday was spent following the Humanity + Summit (streamed live on TechZulu). This was the first event organized by The World Transhumanist Association since they changed their name to HumanityPlus (with the acquisition of H+ magazine, to which I contribute).

I watched all four of the speaker in the Artificial Intelligence series. Ben Goertzel’s presentation was particularly entertaining. Although it was streamed, it does not (yet anyway) appear to have been posted anywhere. Hopefully they will eventually post the lectures on the HumanityPlus website. There were many speakers, Alex Lightman, RU Sirius and Brian Selzer among others, whose talks I would still like the opportunity to see. If and when they do so I will update this page. Two clips:

Brian Selzer: Reinventing Reality with AR.

Ed Lantz: Pervasive Projections and Social Space.

You can view 36 videos from the Humanity + Summit in this directory.

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And this officially begins the holiday season party week. How will anything live up to this weekend?