Agenda

Description

In 2019, the USA TODAY NETWORK team has an ambitious goal – produce a dozen emerging tech projects this year. In this case study presentation, Ray will dig into the AR projects the NETWORK has currently released and best practices for creating AR experiences that stick with readers.

Drawing on his experience in gaming, Ray will lay out the process in which his team approached a variety of AR initiatives for the NETWORK, everything from the 321 LAUNCH app bringing real-life rocket launches to life to the interactive features launched alongside podcast, The City, showing the devastating effects a scandalous 6-story tall pile of waste had on Chicago in the 90s. Most recently, he and his team worked closely with the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, collaborating with the 27th Annual Art of Motion Picture Costume Design team and its engineers to shoot each set of Oscar-nominated costumes to give readers an immersive up close & personal look at the award-worthy designs.

These are just a few examples of how Ray and his team are creating sticky AR experiences for news audiences and through this case study presentation he can dig into the technical, creative and journalistic requirements for successful AR activations in media.

Speakers

Ray Soto

Director of Emerging Technology , USA Today

Description

3D digital design will be as normal as 3D physical design today. Everyplace we go, every object we hold, every action we perform will be designed for our 3D environments. What world do you want to live it? Let's talk about how to make it exceptional, accessible and humanity centered.

Speakers

Silka Sietsma

Head of Emerging Design , Adobe

Description

Extended reality (XR) is the best medium for teaching individual students with interactive visuals. We typically lose attention within eight seconds, and only 20% of what we learn is from text. Experiential learning introduces elements of the virtual world into the real world to make learning more hands-on, but not everyone has an MR or VR lens. However, we do have AR devices, in a mobile form.

It is predicted that mobile users will adopt the use of MR and VR lenses in the near future. In the meantime, there should be a mechanism in place to allow learners to use the mobile devices they already have to consume content. This type of mechanism would give users confidence in the technology and help them graduate to future technologies with ease.

We will present a mechanism that enhances the learning process with the help of XR technology and explain how we use technology to promote experience-based learning irrespective of the type of device learners have. Make teaching inspiring and personal.

Speakers

Ranjith Yengoti

Chief Operating Officer , HoloPundits, Inc

Vinod Dega

CEO and President , HoloPundits

Description

Immersive tech presents a new channel, in the omnichannel marketplace, to enable brands to combine experiential marketing and product sales, in the same container, for greater consumer reach and depth of connection. Developing virtual commercial space enables new revenue models and, in the long term, it could disrupt both consumer behavior and, also, the commercial real estate industry.

Speakers

Marcy Boyle

CEO , Hot Bit VR

Description

AR/VR Garden promotes human and bio-diversity, inclusion, empathy, cimate justice, and wellness. It started a few sketches of flowers created with Tilt Brush. I tweeted a link inviting anyone to remix or add to the garden. My friends were sure I'd recieve hate symbols and offensive drawings. I begged them to trust in humanity; I was not wrong! People around the world added to the VR Garden. As mentor at the Teen Tech Lab at the downtown library, members created AR embroidered patches of flowers for their own drawings in the garden. Our idea to match the AR Flower Patches to other teen's drawings and music samples will be executed this year for teens at libraries. Performed live in NYC, and Los Angeles, AR/VR Garden has recently visited Southeast Asia to draw with school children and underserved women in Cambodia, and Malaysia. This summer VR Garden will create a digitally immersive interactive exhibiton using AR and work with school children in China to use AR to activate their virtual reality garden. Creating a regional garden in 2019, will create a case study to propagate ARVR Garden globally.

Speakers

Paige Dansinger

Founder , Better World Museum

Description

This session will provide insights and a basis for further discussions on how technologies like Augmented and Virtual Reality are being tested and explored in the healthcare sector.

Speakers

Anton Ebert

Technology Coordinator , Siemens Healthcare GmbH

Description

A decade ago, advancements in hardware technology drove innovations in network infrastructure -- and we've collectively been reaping the benefits ever since. But this symbiosis of high-speed wireless connectivity and device capabilities is about to be upended by the arrival of 5G. The advanced network platform is poised to enable a hardware revolution, and this has significant (some might say "huge") implications for creators and technologists. The fact is: 5G is here, and innovators are skating to where the puck is going to be. Learn how you can meet them there and be ready when this new technology presents new opportunities for the augmented reality industry. (Spoiler: that time is now.)

Speakers

Description

This is a historic moment. We are on the cusp of a new generation of mobile computing. Latency-free 5G broadband networks, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies will converge in the next five years to change the world as we know it. Our devices will change dramatically and change us in ways no one can fully predict. Convergence tells the story of Augmented Reality, a new technology that’s seeping into every smartphone and every workplace. But the smartphone is just the beginning. We will soon wonder how we put up with its miserable form for so long. In this presentation of key ideas from his new book, author and Forbes columnist Charlie Fink will discuss how the convergence will lead to head-worn, interoperable AR/VR glasses and, ultimately, to wearable, invisible, computing. The book uses a kind of AR called "marker AR," to allow readers to use their smartphone to bring pages to life in surprising and entertaining ways to illustrate how the world, and everyone it, will be painted with data. More than a book about technology, this is about an evolutionary change in humankind.

Speakers

Charlie Fink

Consultant, Columnist, Author, Adjunct , Forbes

Description

Virtual reality has changed how we create. From games and movies to experiences and tools, we are just beginning to see what is possible. But what happens when you take traditional artistic methods and transfer them to VR? Learn how Oculus is creating new tools, specifically for Touch, to help more people express themselves.

Speakers

Goro Fujita

Art Director , Facebook, Inc.

Description

When the screen in front of us becomes the world around us, new possibilities are opened – not just for entertainment, but for virtually any type of content or experience. Hear from Chris Bobotis, head of Immersive at Adobe, whose job is to help artists, filmmakers, and creative visionaries bring their talents to the new canvas and re-discover – or even reinvent – the art of narrative. Whether inventing new forms of creative expression, transforming customer experiences or igniting new business models, we can re-invent storytelling and content creation tools as we know them. ​Join us as we discuss storytelling in the context of technology and explore the evolution of stories across mediums.

Speakers

Chris Bobotis

Director of Immersive , Adobe

Description

The recent resurgence of VR is exciting and encouraging because the technology is at a point that it soon will be available to a very large audience of industry sectors and consumer markets. Yet, it has also been a little bit disappointing to see that VR technology is mostly being portrayed in the public eye as the ultimate gaming environment. But, VR is much more than that; for over twenty years virtual reality has been pushing the edge of innovation in engineering, design, training, and many other areas proving itself as a valuable tool to improve, accelerate, and advance processes and product-to-market operations. Furthermore, VR is also much more than goggles; we need to understand what, how, and where users need VR to then select the appropriate VR platform to deliver the applications. For example, during a product design cycle, team reviews and discussions are necessary, so team-enabling virtual reality platforms like large immersive rooms or walls are more effective platforms as the team can simultaneously share the immersive review experience while maintaining the social interactions of a face-to-face meeting. For VR to become the true new innovation engine, the current market (both consumers as well as technology providers) we need to understand that VR has been pushing the edge of innovation for over twenty years and that many of those advances somehow seem lost in today’s frenzy to bring to market “new and innovative” applications. We need to be aware of the challenges in aspects related to creating engaging, effective, and safe VR applications as well as the challenge to differentiate VR professionals from VR amateurs.

This talk will first present a wide perspective of what VR does as an innovation engine, the options we have today to explore virtual spaces to achieve innovation in different industry sectors, and its potential benefits and limitations when it is integrated in a variety of workflows. The speaker will discuss her over 25 years of experiences on developing VR solutions for specific industries that have been critical to accelerate VR technology development and deployment as well as to quickly determine technology development paths that, although exciting or “cool”, may not yield successful practical outcomes. The talk will follow with a discussion of the speaker’s newest work on bringing social VR systems, those that a single platform allows for multiple users, to the consumer market. These types of platforms used to be complex, expensive, and customized systems. Her work is bringing multi-user VR platforms, like projection rooms and walls, to the ease of use and cost to meet the expectations of today’s VR market. She will discuss specific industry cases that she has lead through collaborations with her research centers in which VR has proven its value to enhance productivity and efficiency. The talk will end providing a vision on the future of VR applicability as a force of change in many industry markets and as a result, its potential to become a key innovation engine to improve many aspects of human life.

Speakers

Carolina Cruz-Neira

Executive Director , Emerging Analytics Center, UA Little Rock

Description

Engagement is all about meaningful customer interactions. Engagement is one of XR’s superpowers. When someone puts on a headset or uses an AR app, they are engaged in a brand experience. More and more companies are starting to realize this immersive opportunity. The Superpowered Consumer Engagement panel brings together brand leaders and technology to discuss how engagement played a key role in digital innovation activations.

Speakers

Richard Hess

Immersive Experiences Lead , Nestle

Julie Smithson

Co-Founder & COO , MetaVRse

Jason Yim

CEO , Trigger Global

Eden Chen

Co-Founder/CEO , Fishermen Labs

Mohamed Rajani

Director, New Business Development , Macy's

Description

XR has the potential to become one of the world’s most disruptive computing platforms in the coming decade. Over the past year, we’ve seen significant strides in technology and with the introduction of new XR form factors such as standalone, tethered viewers and dual-mode HMDs – there has been an acceleration of XR opportunities, use cases and adoption.

In this keynote presentation, Hugo Swart, Head of XR at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. will speak to cutting-edge technological developments and how Qualcomm has met previous challenges, with a forward outlook on how strong ecosystem collaboration, the proliferation of 5G and AI will fast-track the industry timeline to an XR ubiquitous world.

Speakers

Hugo Swart

VP & GM, XR , Qualcomm

Description

Deceptively powerful and stunningly beautiful, this monumental leap forward in conveying the invisible effectively has always been right there in front of us, waiting to be unlocked, hiding in plain sight. All it took was the convergence of human ingenuity, artificial intelligence, and the rise of a medium capable of magic.

Join M. Pell, author of ‚Envisioning Holograms‚ and ‚The Age of Smart Information‚ on a deep dive into the mesmerizing world of visualizing and communicating the unseen data, movements, systems, and forces of our world in perhaps the most impactful use of Spatial Computing and Artificial Intelligence to date.

Book signing immediately following this session.

Speakers

M. Pell

Envisioneer , Microsoft - Mixed Reality Development