James Ashley has been working in creative technology for the past 13 years and has spent the last 7 of those years working with Mixed Reality platforms. He spent half a decade at the famous Razorfish Emerging Experiences Lab. He wrote Beginning Kinect Programming with Jarrett Webb in 2012 and co-created the LinkedIn Learning course App Development for Microsoft HoloLens with Dennis Vroegop in 2017. He last spoke at AWE in 2020.

James grew up in the Republic of Vietnam and in Los Angeles. He did graduate work in philosophy at Emory University before switching over the tech. He continues to be interested in the interplay of the theory of design and the practice of software development. He currently works at Project Archer in Redmond, WA laying the groundwork for the future of AR.