Agenda

Description

The journey with XREAL Light, XREAL Air and Beyond

Speakers

Chi Xu

CEO , XREAL

Description

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already having a significant influence on the Metaverse and the intersection of AI and the Metaverse will become increasingly evident as AI evolves and the Metaverse grows.

AI can be used to create more realistic and engaging experiences in virtual worlds, intelligent avatars that can engage with users in a more natural way, and personalized content in real-time. All of this can improve the overall experience for users. Furthermore, AI can be used to create more efficient and scalable infrastructure for the Metaverse, enabling more users to participate and interact with each other.

However, there will be challenges as well, such as biases in algorithms that perpetuate harmful stereotypes, false or manipulated content leading to misinformation, and questions about privacy and security.

This expert panel will discuss the issues and how AI might potentially transform how we interact with others in immersive spaces.

Speakers

Kent Bye

Producer , Voices of VR Podcast

Amy LaMeyer

Managing Partner , WXR Fund

Tony Parisi

CPO , Lamina1

Alvin Graylin

Global VP of Corporate Development , HTC

Description

The grand challenge of the 21st Century is to create socially and ethically adept hybrid networks of humans and machines. The augmentation of human abilities and global ecological systems will play a critical role in our future. AI agents are already deeply integrated into society and integral to many activities from dating, driving, coding, to policing and Large Language Models and Multimodal AI have already changed the way we communicate, work, and play. But, while Augmented Ecologies are now reaching beyond industry experts and scientists to the rest of us with generative AI, these new hybrid ecologies between humans and machines will diminish individual human autonomy and agency if we do not empower people to create, manage and participate in them. This panel will look at this grand challenge for the future of an Augmented World!

Speakers

Anselm Hook

CTO , MorpheusXR

David A. Smith

CTO, Founder , Croquet

Sean White

Founder , Three Dog Labs

Tish Shute

Co-Founder , AWE

Description

XR is at the heart of industry, education, health, and social networks. The development of immersive technology will only be successful if it is created by a diverse workforce, empowered to create an XR that represents that experience of all people. As our world is transformed by the prospect of XR, employment opportunities abound for people of all levels of education and experience.

**XR Impact**

Speakers

Naria Santa Lucia

GM, Digital Inclusion & Community Engagement , Microsoft

Kathryn White

Assoc. Dir., Metaverse Continuum Business Group , Accenture

Elizabeth Hyman

CEO , XR Association

Jessica Lindl

VP of Social Impact , Unity

Description

In the gaming industry, "God Mode" is a special code that makes the players invincible in the virtual world. And today, In the real world, there is no character in more need of invincibility than Earth - the sustainability of communities, natural resources, and wildlife within it.

One of the debates in recent Sustainability forums has been the extent to which the massive digitalization of people, processes, and technology during the pandemic has proved a bountiful benefit or dramatic detriment to the planet. And the XR industry has been a major beneficiary of this accelerated digitalization and has the opportunity to demonstrate how the industry and total ecosystem (be that Metaverse, Blockchain, etc) will positively contribute to REAL Sustainability outcomes.

This critical panel will explore where and how XR can meaningfully impact climate-positive and social-forward initiatives and enterprises, and put the Earth in God-Mode - before it's too late (ie, "Game Over").

Speakers

Rika Nakazawa

Group Vice President, New Ventures & Innovation , NTT

Shivam Kishore

Sr. Advisor Digital Transformation | Sustainability , UN Environment Programme

Heidi Lehmann

Sustainable Capital & Innovation Advisor, Co-Founder , Kenzen

Description

Dispelix develops and delivers elegant and high-performance see-through waveguides that are used as transparent displays in extended reality (XR) devices. We are the trusted and visionary partner of the most demanding customers in XR, and enable the industry leaders to redefine the form, function, and feel of XR wearables. Join our Co-founder & CEO, Antti Sunnari, as he discusses how together with Dispelix you can realize your product visions from waveguide design to mass production.

Speakers

Antti Sunnari

CEO , Dispelix

Description

The annual Auggie Awards have been the most recognized industry AR & VR awards show in the world since 2010. Now in its 14th year, the Auggies continue to showcase the best of the best in augmented and virtual reality. Winners will be presented with a prestigious Auggie Award live on stage.

Speakers

Ori Inbar

Co-Founder , AWE and Super Ventures

Description

Today’s MR and VR headsets deliver really compelling experiences but the cost of the headsets remains a barrier to entry for users and developers alike.

At just $79.99, Zapbox changes everything. Zapbox is a smartphone-powered headset that offers capabilities previously only associated with much more expensive dedicated devices.

Zapbox includes a comfortable headset with an innovative open-peripheral design alongside a pair of custom Bluetooth controllers that offer position and orientation tracking and a wide set of additional inputs. Zapbox can be used for either virtual reality or mixed reality experiences with low-latency color passthrough.

For developers, we provide a Unity XR SDK Provider plugin which makes it straightforward to port content from other headsets. Support for WebXR, OpenXR and PC Streaming is on our roadmap which will allow Zapbox to be used with existing content ecosystems.

Join Zappar co-founder Dr. Simon Taylor for a run-down of the features and benefits of Zapbox and a live demo of the experiences that Zapbox delivers at this unprecedented price point.

Oh, and don’t miss out, 5 lucky attendees will walk away with a free Zapbox from the session!

Speakers

Simon Taylor

Co-founder & Chief R&D Officer , Zappar

Kirk Ewing

Co-founder and Zapbox General Manager , Zappar

Description

Daniel Suarez's seminal AR thriller, Daemon, anticipated the rise of cryptocurrencies, bot-powered social media manipulation, autonomous vehicles, and much more. Across seven high-tech and sci-fi novels he's earned a reputation for anticipating what's next. Join host Tish Shute as she and Daniel discuss his latest visionary space-tech novel, Critical Mass, and the pivotal role augmented and virtual reality technologies will play in accelerating human progress in deep space -- and why that matters to everyone on Earth.

Speakers

Daniel Suarez

Author

Tish Shute

Co-Founder , AWE

Description

The XR hardware market has been dominated by consumer gaming and social media-focused companies. But the most important use cases for the growth of XR are in the enterprise, and they are achieving ROI today. Enterprise needs are different, customers not only need great hardware and solutions they also need scalability, support, services, and financing. Join Vishal Shah, GM of ThinkReality at Lenovo, as he discusses the challenges and solutions for customers scaling into the Enterprise Metaverse.

Speakers

Vishal Shah

General Manager, XR & Metaverse , Lenovo

Description

Skateboarding translated to gameplay so well in the early-2000’s that Activison was often called, “The house that Tony built” due to the success of its Tony Hawk Pro Skater franchise. While it was partly the endless trick-combos, THPS became a cultural phenomenon because it also tapped the creative freedom and ethos of this community. Yet for all its success, it only scratched the surface of the most intrinsic part of all—the ability to skate the world, itself. Augmented Reality changes that.

Skatrix is a new skate game leveraging AR to liberate players from predefined worlds to skate the actual world around us—at any scale. Come engage with skate legend, Rodney Mullen, renown AI Researcher, Bill Higgins and Skatrix’ visionary developer, Kasimir Lehto; you’ll get a taste of not only the mindset and tech behind all this, but a look into the unfolding possibilities, from integrating Ai to make the world shimmer with new ideas to using Skatrix as a creative tool in your own skating, and even to learn from pros, too.

Speakers

Rodney Mullen

Skater

Bill Higgins

Chair, IBM Open Innovation Community , IBM

Kasimir Lehto

Founder, Game Developer , Reality Crisis

Description

This is the very first time Ant Reality will unveil the secret of Crossfire 120° AR optics – the world’s widest OST (optical see-through) solution. First, Zheng will prove to you that Crossfire is almost the best option for wide FoV AR, compared to birdbath, free-form and other waveguide solutions. While targeting AR/VR hybrid use case, Zheng will walk you through the reasons why Crossfire is much better than its competitor Pancake +VST (video see-through) solution. Additionally, Zheng will introduce several reference products that have been designed with some of Ant Reality’s clients.

Speakers

Zheng Qin

Founder , Ant Reality

Description

How does Niantic empower AR everywhere? Come see the latest in state of the art AR games, tools and technologies to unlock location-based and mobile phone AR, from apps to the web and beyond.

Speakers

Brian McClendon

Senior VP of Engineering , Niantic

Description

In a fast-evolving world of technology, staying ahead of the curve and pushing creative and technological boundaries with AR is not just beneficial, but essential. Join Resh Sidhu and Ben Feuerstein, the founders of Snapchat's AR Creative Studio, as they unveil their key principles for building industry-leading AR experiences with the Snap AR platform.

During this talk, they'll share principles for AR development on Lens Studio backed by real-world examples of experiences that have captivated festival-goers with Live Nation, transformed fashion with Vogue, and brought wonder to Coca-Cola. Whether you're a brand, a developer, or simply curious about the latest advancements in Snap AR’s technology, this is a unique opportunity to learn from experts and gain practical insights and innovative ideas.

Get ready to be inspired, educated, and amazed by the incredible possibilities of Snap AR, and how it can help you meet the ever-changing demands of today’s consumers.

Speakers

Resh Sidhu

Global Director, Arcadia Creative Studio , Snap, Inc.

Ben Feuerstein

Head of Business, Ops & Innovation, Arcadia Creative Studio , Snap, Inc.

Description

With no end in sight to the labor shortages and the expected retirement of the boomer generation over the next seven years, workforce challenges are hitting organizations large and small around the globe. There aren’t enough people to fill the open jobs, and the people that are there need to be capable of doing more things - often with less time for traditional training or upskilling programs. What if you could create instant experts and transfer organizational knowledge with ease? What if you could create instant experts and save millions of dollars in training costs and make your employees more engaged and productive?

In this fireside chat inspired presentation, Michael Hinckley, Sector Manager of Manufacturing Systems Engineering at Northrop Grumman, and Scott Montgomerie, Founder & CEO of Scope AR will talk about how Northrop Grumman created instant experts on their manufacturing floor for assembling some of the world’s most advanced products. Powered by augmented reality, these instant experts accelerated process times by up to 66%, eliminated errors and are creating the next generation of shop floor enablement. Join Scott and Michael to hear real stories of how Northrup Grumman adopted AR, how it went, how it’s going and what is in the future.

Speakers

Scott Montgomerie

Co-founder and CEO , Scope AR

Michael Hinckley

Senior Systems Engineering Mgr (AMT) , Northrop Grumman

Description

Ori Inbar, CEO and cofounder of AWE, will welcome attendees to the 14th annual AWE USA 2023 event with the theme: XR is Everywhere!

He will kick off with his annual update about the state of the XR industry and where it's headed, and will follow up with "Metaverse Unplugged" - a super-fan conversation with Neal Stephenson - the legendary author who coined the term Metaverse.

Speakers

Neal Stephenson

Co-Founder , Lamina1

Ori Inbar

Co-Founder , AWE and Super Ventures

Description

In this panel discussion, we will talk to three XR champions and leaders who have led successful large-scale deployments at Wal-Mart, Axon, and the Veteran’s Health Administration. While we often are caught up in what the future of XR may be, many need to realize the power that XR is bringing to major organizations today.

You will hear how they are using XR, the results of using VR in their organization, the challenges they faced, and how they scaled their programs. The future is bright for XR, but it is already radically changing how we learn, work, and heal.

Speakers

Robert Murphy

Sr. Director, Virtual Reality , Axon

Jarrad Nagel

Senior Manager - Global Learning Innovations , Walmart

Caitlin Rawlins

Deputy Director, Clinical Tech Innovation , Veterans Affairs

David Burch

Sales Director , ArborXR

Description

Get ready to buckle up and dive into the world of XR with Tim Ventura and Shelley Peterson, who each have over 20 years of experience in the XR and visualization industry.

Tim's experience involves providing XR solutions that change the way a company does business.

Shelley's experience involves pulling XR solutions into the enterprise space to provide incredibly impactful value.

What happens when you mix the two? It's anyone's guess, but the result is likely to return value.

Speakers

Shelley Peterson

Founder | XR Industry Pioneer , Wizard Wells

Tim Ventura

Enterprise Account Executive , Holo-Light

Description

Qualcomm Technologies Inc., is excited to be at the forefront of accelerating the XR industry. Our efforts to build an open XR ecosystem have helped drive innovation that make the XR industry successful for all. At AWE 2023, Hugo Swart, VP & GM of XR at Qualcomm will reveal the latest developments with our Snapdragon XR platforms and Snapdragon Spaces developer SDK and how they are shaping the next generation of AR, VR, and MR experiences.

Speakers

Yi Xu

Director of XR Technology , OPPO

Kalpana Berman

Chief Product Officer , Kittch

Stephan Hamberger

VP/Head of Digital Products North America , Red Bull Media House

Hugo Swart

VP & GM, XR , Qualcomm

Description

Industry veteran Avi Bar-Zeev covers the latest trends in XR, AI and The Metaverse to dissect the hype, uncover the hero use cases, and help us avoid repeating past mistakes. As the fabricators of the future let’s take ownership of the way we use AI, Web3, Metaverse and XR to make a positive impact on the world.

Speakers

Avi Bar-Zeev

President , XR Guild