The Augmentation will be Televised

So much is happening I can hardly keep up with it all. The holidays finally behind us, Apple iSlate rumors flying, CES in full swing, Facebook trumping Google in U.S. markets, and so much client work I’ve neglected several feature stories I had hoped to publish by now. But much has been accomplished as well. After accepting responsibility for streaming the video for our future ARNY Meetups, I got busy trying out streaming services, testing hardware, and eventually building out a website that is larger than just our efforts here in New York.

ARMeetup.org

After the December 5th ARDevCamp that caught fire and sprouted many satellite DevCamps around the world, it seemed to have seeded the inspiration for AR Meetup Groups that are spawning like alien pods from a mothership. Our New York Meetup Group was organized by Ori Inbar, cofounder of Ogmento and proprietor of the blog, Games Alfresco. From the start we were coordinating with the Los Angeles Meetup Group where Ori’s business partner, Brian Selzer participates. The idea to stream video of our Meetup was largely to coordinate and network between the New York and Los Angeles groups. Once I decided to create a dedicated website for the streaming of our group, expanding the site to include the LA group was obvious. From there it was just a logical extension to seek out other like-minded AR Groups around the world to participate as well. Once I began introducing myself to the organizers of the various international AR Meetups and then introducing them to one another, and then spreading the word through Twitter and the various augmented reality business groups on Linkedin, it inspired other people in other cities to begin organizing groups of their own. It has been fascinating watching the grassroots efforts unfold.

The site, ARMeetup.org, currently has an embedded video page set up for each Meetup group, together with a Twitter stream for the hashtag associated with that group (and a link back to the Meetup page for each respective group). At the moment I’ve kept it very simple. While I intent to keep the straight forward execution, there are more features on the way.

January 19th, ARNY - Augmented Reality New York Meetup

Our second New York Meetup, and the first to be streamed, will be held at 75 Varick Street, at the offices of Porter Novelli. Just eleven days away, Ori has arranged for five speakers: Dana Farbo, President of Acrossair; Marco Tempest, a Magician; Craig Kapp, inventor of Whisper Deck; John Swords, partner in Circ.us and a fifth “Mystery Speaker” that he plans to surprise us all with.

To help us promote the Tuesday, January 19th ARNY Meetup, copy and paste the code below to add the above video to your site or blog:

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Porter Novelli

Thanks principally to John C. Havens, the public relation firm of Porter Novelli has played host or sponsor to several augmented reality themed functions in recent months. On November 18th John was the moderator of the Augmented Reality panel at the Web 2Open Unconference, at New York Web 2.0 Expo, and the night before Porter Novelli hosted an augmented reality themed gathering of the New York Semantic Web Meetup Group. While I had met Ori previously, it was over the course of these two days that I got to meet many others I had previously only known online including Robert Rice, Chairman of the AR Consortium and Tish Shute, writer of UgoTrade. Below is Jack Mason, IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs & Social Media; speaking at the Unconference.

Join Us

As a result of launching the ARMeetup.org website, I’ve been fortunate to (digitally) meet some of the other organizers like Matt Trubow of the Manchester Meetup and Rob Manson of the Sydney Meetup. Since then Richard Alvarez has organized a new AR Meetup in Chicago and others such as Woontack Woo in Gwangju, South Korea, have been organizing to put together Augmented Reality Meetup Groups in their own cities. The goal of the ARMeetup.org site is to connect all of these far-flung groups into a global grassroots network. If you’re reading this, and there is not an AR Meetup in your city, then consider taking the initiative and organizing one yourself. If you need help organizing, you are encouraged to reach out to organizers of the other groups for advice. We all look forward to hearing from you.

To learn more about the Tuesday, January 19th ARNY Meetup, please visit:
ARNY - Augmented Reality New York January Meetup

One Week, Two Meetups

NYAR - Augmented Reality New York Meetup

Tuesday night was the first Augmented Reality New York Meetup. There were five quick presentations, and each was followed with a few minutes of Q&A.

• Patrick O’Shaughnessey of Patched Reality - The 5 Lives of Criss Angel
• Ohan Oda of Columbia University - Goblin XNA
• Steve Henderson of Columbia University - Talk Maintenance
• Noah Zerkin, Inventor - The Zerkin Glove
• Ori Inbar of Ogmento - Put a Spell (spelling game), and Vampire Academy

There were no arrangements for anyone to film the Meetup presentations, so I made a few sample clips with my iPhone, and used them to make the teaser clip above (feel free to embed it and share it to help promote the group). Subsequently I have volunteered to bring a video camera to future events which we intend to stream on the web. The first two presenters I did not think to make a clip of, as I had already seen these projects presented before — I’ve already posted a video of Ohan Oda’s Goblin XNA presentation from the New York ARDevCamp; and Patrick O’Shaughnessey gave me a demo of his 5 Lives of Criss Angel AR puzzle over lunch, after the Emerge - Augmented Reality Unconference at Web 2.Open last month.

The real “Meetup” starts after the presentation, of course, where it’s all conversation with other people that share a passion for augmented reality.

I met Chris Brady of Chart Venture Partners and we discussed what kind of AR opportunities look ripe for their firm’s investment (Answer: Software based technologies with a short time-horizon to goto market. Most interested in software that has military and commercial/industrial applications but are staying aware of potential consumer possibilities. *Chris, let me know if I’ve got that right, or feel free to comment to clarify).

Tish Shute and I debated the possible mid-term ramifications of Google’s and Apple’s maneuvering in the mobile space, the mistakes of Nokia’s AR efforts and the long-term fate of the desktop/laptop computer form-factors in the coming mobile dominated world. We also talked about a comment I left on the blog of her friend David Oliver, and why Apple needs to have a search strategy. Tish made me an invitation see the work she’s been doing with augmented reality over the Google Wave Federation Protocol, and I gave Rob Kelley a crash course in the state of the industry and recent patent filings regarding augmented reality eyewear.

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Brandhacker Meetup

On Monday night I went to see Joseph Jaffe speak at the Brandhacker Meetup. Jaffe is a wonderful presenter and it was nice to see him speak to a small crowd. Being Mr. “Join the Conversation,” the dialog was primarily Facebook, Twitter and user generated content focused, quite a world apart from the mobile AR circles I’ve been in for much of the past year. He was also promoting a new book he has coming out in early February titled, “Flip the Funnel”. I had a good conversation with a fellow named Stan Phelps who is writing a book under the working title of Purple Goldfish. Stan pointed me in the direction of B. Bonin Bough. I’ll see what comes of that conversation, and perhaps leave that story for another day.