Agenda

Description

At the heart of every successful Augmented Reality(AR) experience, is solid storytelling that leaves the user with an emotional connection to the brand. Consumer demand for a personalized experience and emotional realism to content has been a major driver for AR experiences. However, capturing lifelike, digital recreations was limited. Volcap enables AR to break free from the frame and into fully immersive worlds, creating authentic, realistic experiences for the user across multiple verticals including entertainment, sports, training, enterprise, gaming, and more. How do you tell your brand story in AR using VolCap? Join our panel as they discuss how AR has taken the reins using VolCap to create personalized experiences for consumers, while providing brands with the ultimate immersion.

Speakers

Christina Heller

CEO , Metastage

James Giglio

CEO and Founder , MVP Interactive

Niko Chauls

XR Partnerships, Product Innovation , Verizon

Description

Learn how to use Unity’s XR Interaction Toolkit to build AR/VR applications with a common set of inputs that work across different platforms. Get a hands-on look at how to get started with a sample project, and find out what’s new in version 2.0, including some upcoming 2.1 features.

Speakers

Dorrene Brown

Senior Technical Product Manager , Unity Technologies

Dave Ruddell

Manager, XR Input & Interactions , Unity Technologies

Description

AR already powers compelling ways for shoppers to visualize, try on, and experience products before buying them – helping to increase sales and reduce returns, benefitting both shoppers and businesses alike. In this workshop-style session, we’ll show you how you can create and publish AR Try-On Lenses, whether you’re a beginner, brand or business, or an experienced developer. From external body mesh to cloth simulation, you will see how the Snap AR platform is reimagining retail and fueling some of the most advanced, realistic experiences on mobile today.

Speakers

Description

Coming Soon!

Speakers

Nima Shams

VP & GM of Product Business Unit , DigiLens

Description

Leverage your passion and skills for gaming to change the world! Do you like creating incendiary fights with fire demons or finding ways to uncover story secrets, or how about stealing artifacts from spaceships while avoiding robots? Then join Robin Moulder as she shares insights and lessons learned from game development to creating XR applications for enterprises.

Speakers

Robin Moulder

CEO , 3lbXR & 3lb Games

Description

There are many great, functioning examples of virtual environments in the Metaverse. And still there is not a clear reason WHY we are building and creating so frantically as if somehow, the Metaverse gates were about to close.

It's interesting that there are very good, affordable devices out there for consumers to get into The Metaverse, but usage data suggests that even hardcore amers aren't spending a long time in headset. With this panel, we will explore:
• The way that creators are thinking about the future of storytelling
• The psychology of The Metaverse - why will consumers care?
• Elevating the human experience
• How storytelling will evolve and the tools required to produce a different kind of narrative
• What is myth and what is real relative to The Metaverse

Speakers

Marcie Jastrow

Chief Revenue Officer , Evercast

Jack McCauley

Innovator in Residence , UC Berkeley

Jacqueline Bo?njak

Founder / CEO , Mach1

Jenna Seiden

VP of Business Development , Niantic Labs

Maureen Fan

CEO & Co-Founder , Baobab Studios

Description

Join us in an authentic panel discussion with three CEO’s leading the Immersive Tech Landscape. The focus will be on the current trajectory of immersive media, and where we are headed. As Founders, how has the landscape of VR changed from the previous years? What is the latest thinking on the current ecosystem? These CEO’s will share perspectives on team-building and what it takes to develop a highly-driven team working on forward-thinking products. They will speak to how to ideate and build for the Metaverse using the tools available and deep-dive into what it really takes to build out an application for consumer and enterprise use.

Speakers

Katherine Bachert

Developer Strategy Team , Meta

Inga Petryaevskaya

Founder and CEO , ShapesXR

Emilie Joly

CEO , Zoe Immersive Inc

Inga Petryaevskaya

Founder and CEO , ShapesXR

Anurupa Ganguly

CEO , Prisms

Description

Incorporation of 3D assets into the e-commerce customer experience has a significant positive impact. Customers are more likely to purchase products represented by 3D assets, and less likely to return them, because they have a much better idea of what to expect in real life.

Khronos Group's 3D Commerce Working Group was founded to remove barriers to deploying 3D in e-commerce at the industrial scale. By extending Khronos’s glTF standards asset format, creating 3D authoring guidelines and tools, and certifying 3D viewer, this group is working to enable the seamless design, manufacture, and presentation of 3D products.

In this session, experts from a variety of 3D asset providers share how they're working to create a single 3D object that offers value to stakeholders at every stage of product development. Learn how new hybrid working realities are driving the need for fully digital product development workflows. Discover current gaps in the pipeline as well as how to balance requirements for performance, portability, fidelity, and web accessibility. Find out how to incorporate shopping behaviors into the design process, so the same object interactivity features can benefit both product designers and consumers.

Speakers

Paul Duffy

President & Chairman , NexTech AR Solutions

Yehiel Atias

CEO & Co-Founder , Hexa3D

Tyler Lindberg

Lead, Vertebrae 3D Engineering , Snap, Inc.

Ashley Crowder

CEO, Co-Founder , VNTANA

Murad Akhter

Co-Founder & CTO , ALL3D

Description

MetaVRse is a low-code 3D creation platform for the future of human communication, collaboration, commerce and culture. Launched at AWE 2020, the MetaVRse Engine has been used for training and marketing for Fortune 500 organizations. TheMall.io is a 100m sq ft virtual retail and entertainment destination built on the MetaVRse Engine. We will be showcasing the new features of the completely re-built v2.0 while building a multiplayer experience real-time.

Speakers

Alan Smithson

Co-Founder , MetaVRse

Description

With TikTok's launch of Effect House, anyone can now create AR experiences and effects for TikTok's global community.
AR on TikTok is different than anywhere else — it's uniquely creative, used by people in distinct and imaginative ways, and often it's just plain WEIRDER. The Effect House community is different, too; for a new generation of creators, TikTok is their first experience with augmented reality. This new contingent of effect creators is using Effect House to bring an entirely new set of skills and ideas to the world of AR.
During our early beta, effects made by our creators were used in 1.5 billion TikTok videos and viewed over 600 billion times. At AWE, you'll hear firsthand from some of those creators and find out:

• How does an AR effect become a global trend?
• How can creators build an audience for their AR experiences?
• What features in Effect House are most exciting for designers, developers and artists?

And of course, we'll share some of our favorite TikTok videos featuring community effects :) See you there!

Speakers

Paige Piskin

Social AR Developer, Influencer and Designer , White Glove Media

Paige Piskin

AR/VR Director and TikTok Creator , Creator

Laura Gouillon

AR/VR Director and TikTok Creator , Creator

Ollie Tyler

Augmented Reality Technologist , Creator

Greg Feingold

Community Lead , TikTok

Description

The internet can be regarded as a closed-off and isolated environment. People enter the web through devices that conceal or distort their identities, creating a landscape of anonymous users. It is well acknowledged and discussed that much of the physical world, most significantly human connection, is lost in the digital climate. The trajectory of this disconnect is a concern for many, particularly when considering young and future generations are born with internet access in their immediate grasp. And while, for some, this is a daunting prospect, there are tools and devices that will ensure the positive innovations of this beyond belief. Augmented Reality has the power to connect users both in the digital and physical worlds - the technology fuses the two environments, establishing a meeting point in which people remain who and where they are. But how do we reach the point of an entirely augmented reality?

In his presentation, Faisal Galaria will discuss the concept that in order to enable this state, in which communities of people utilise the power of AR, it is essential that they are not only observers and users, but also creators - with the ability to shape their own ecosystems. And while collaboration and sharing are at the core of published AR experiences, it is imperative that these elements are also a possibility in the building stage. At Blippar, the integration of our AR SaaS tools into working team platforms will foster communities of AR creators and pioneers - providing accessible and inspirational innovation environments, both on and offline.

Speakers

Faisal Galaria

CEO , Blippar

Description

Within USA TODAY NETWORK's DNA is the desire to innovate how the organization tells stories. Since 2018 USA TODAY's Emerging Technologies team has developed over 40 highly engaging and interactive augmented reality (AR) experiences, exploring complex, historical, and trending news topics. Recognizing an opportunity to improve the core user experience within the app's framework, the team leveraged engagement analytics and external user testing to develop a robust and intuitive user onboarding sequence, resulting in a 3x increase in average time spent per user.

A few media-rich AR experiences that include the updated framework are “Seven Days of 1961: A Dangerous Ride on the Road to Freedom,” "Champions of Women's Suffrage,” "Accused: The Impending Execution of Elwood Jones,” “Attica: A Prison Uprising 50 Years Later,” and many others. The Emerging Technology team has also implemented accessible designs to meet their audience's growing expectations for new and inclusive forms of premium interactive experiences.
Will Austin, the Senior Designer of Emerging Technology, will explore the evolution of UI/UX to foster a deeper understanding of AR amongst casual consumers. He will also share insights and case studies on USA TODAY's onboarding challenges, new instructional design, and its vision for the future of premium interactive editorial experiences.

Speakers

William Austin

Sr. Designer , Gannett | USA TODAY NETWORK

Description

As we begin to build out communities inside the Metaverse/virtual worlds, are there any key architectural tenants and principals we should consider first, that might be different from game design ecosystems? Traditional Experience Design from themed attractions have long been well equipped to answer these questions. Tune in to this fireside chat with Disney Imagineer and Experience Designer, Amy Jupiter, to help us better understand if building for the Metaverse holds the same requirements as building a new themed attraction.

Speakers

Amy Jupiter

Founder/Chief Experience Designer , ByJove: A Collective of Perspective TM

Kathleen Cohen

Tech Humanist, XR Strategist , The Collaboratorium

Description

The joke used to be that "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." In the metaverse, nobody knows who you are.

How do we evolve to the next stage of identity? What does it mean to be human? What do our names mean? How much do we want to look like ourselves, versus look like avatars? Today, we face a new paradigm of online identity. It presents many questions on how we develop for this world.

These are questions to engage the audience in an examination on not only what it means to be human, but how do we evolve to that next stage of identity.

Speakers

Cix Liv

Founder , REK