When

Thursday, September 7, 2017 from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM PDT
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Where

Reed Smith LLP 
101 2nd Street
Suite 1800
San Francisco, CA 94105  

 
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Contact

Charlotte Danielsson 
Silicon Vikings 
 
charlotte.danielsson@siliconvikings.com 
 

3rd Annual Virtual & Augmented Reality 

During the last two years, Silicon Vikings has hosted very popular sessions that have explored various issues and developments around Virtual and Augmented Reality. We are now very pleased to invite you back for our Third Annual AV/VR Review, reconvening our panelists to both look back at what has happened in the past year and draw lessons for what may lie ahead. So please join us again on September 7, at ReedSmith in San Francisco.

Our panelists will address these and other questions:

  • What are some of the most interesting and impactful developments we have seen since we met last year (on August 30, 2016)?
  • What surprising developments have we seen in the past year, either in the US or overseas, both in Europe and Asia?
  • Where—in hardware, software, content, etc—have we seen the most significant progress over the last year, and who are some of the leading players? And where is adoption gaining most traction so far?
  • Have we seen new and interesting players coming onto the scene, and what new and exciting innovations are they focusing on? And how are they different from what major players like Facebook, Google, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft and others are doing?
  • Which are some of your favorite applications of VR based on the developments you have seen over the last year? Will entertainment dominate the AV/VR space or will industrial or educational applications see strong growth and interest in the next year?
  • Based on where we are today, and from what predictions we made last year—correctly or incorrectly—what are some of the things we can expect in the year to come, in terms of technology (including headsets), content and services?

We have a great panel of experts who will share their insights into the issues raised above and also answer your questions (and we will allow for plenty of time for Q&A in the session, as we always do). Here are the panel members:

  • Damon Hernandez. Damon—our “Veteran Silicon Vikings panelist” whenever we have sessions on VR/AR or hackathon issues—has been involved in the interactive 3D community for many years, and is a 3D Web, virtual and augmented reality developer and advocate. He is co-founder of the high tech building company IDEAbuilder, advocates 3D Web open standards for the Web3D Consortium, and regularly leads hacking sessions around the world focused on either improving built environment related professions (AEC Hackathon) or developing with immersive technologies like virtual and augmented reality.
  • Christopher Peri, Ph.D. Christopher—who also was a panelist our last two VR/AR sessions—has worked on 3D and VR starting with the VFX1 back in 1995 including teaching a class on VRML. His master thesis at UC Berkeley, 'Spatial Perception in Virtual Environments: Visual Cognition Gain with Head Mounted Displays' focused on how spatial perception and memory are improved using a HMD. This work was a foundation for his Ph.D. in Spatial Communication. His professional work includes creating many virtual worlds using VRML and Java and then employed those skills to dynamic web content using Flash. Later in his career he focused on project management to company leadership including 3 years as CTO at VentureBeat. Currently Christopher has returned to his roots working at Samsung Research Lab working on mobile strategy, tech resourcing, and support on the Gear VR project.

 

  • Linda Jacobson. Linda first had her mind blown by VR in the first R&D wave, when she chased gremlins at VPL Research and played virtual music at Fakespace Labs. Today Linda directs enterprise VR/AR projects for Treasure8 on Treasure Island, advises VR start-ups, evaluates VR/AR start-up pitches for Accelerator Ventures, and brings mobile VR experiences to the residents of assisted-living communities. Author of the books *Garage Virtual Reality* and *CyberArts*, Linda also was the world’s first professional Virtual Reality Evangelist (at Silicon Graphics), and co-founded San Francisco’s first VR meetups for 5 years at the Exploratorium. She has run a real-time VR content production and marketing studio, and has written many successful cloud-computing and UI patent applications.

     

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  • Eilif Trondsen, Ph.D. (moderator). Eilif has followed virtual technologies for many years, and led a four-year research program VirtualWorlds@Work, at SRI to examine how VW technologies could find applications in business and work. He is the Chair of Silicon Vikings SIG on Entrepreneurship and Learning, and has done research in the area of learning technologies for about 20 years