Nearly 600 attendees came to experience 30 hours of AR Goodness delivered by 100 speakers from 70 leading Augmented Reality companies.

6 keynote speakers and special guests illuminated the main stage: Bruce Sterling (AR Prophet) and Daniel Suarez (Best selling author of  techno-thrillers Daemon and Freedom) in a memorable fireside chat, Adrian Cheok (Inventor of first Pac Man in the real world) with AR for all the senses, Miles Ludwig (VP Digital at Sesame Workshop) about mainstream use of AR for education and entertainment, Mark Silva (SVP at Anthem Worldwide) on AR for a new kind of brand engagement, and legendary game designer Will Wright.

Many thanks to our sponsors and exhibitors, and especially to Vuforia by Qualcomm and Daqri for supporting ARE 2012.

For the first time, everyone can experience the AR-ness by signing up as an ARE Member for $49.

ARE membership includes access to all ARE 2012 event videos, a commemorative ARE 2012 T-shirt, and a year long participation in global and local AR awareness programs.

Become an ARE Member Today and watch 30 hours of AR Goodness!

Thank you for driving the AR movement!

ARE Exhibition will provide a chance to see, touch and feel the latest and greatest products in the augmented reality world.

Less than 2 weeks are left for the event and tickets are selling out fast – Register today!

For the first time, ARE 2012 is reaching out beyond the tech world – to everybody out there – who is seeking to leverage AR to advance their business or their life.

The event will kick off with keynotes by Frank Cooper (CMO of Pepsi), and Miles Ludwig (VP Digital at Sesame) – that will showcase how mainstream corporations are using AR as a key tool to drive customer engagement in consumer packaged goods, as well as education and entertainment.

Adrian Cheok (Professor at Keio University, Tokyo) keynote will blow your minds by demonstrating how AR can go beyond the visual sense and leverage all our senses.

Can’t have a true AR event without “The Prophet of AR”; Bruce Sterling will come back this year to share his insights about the evolution of the AR industry, and have a fireside chat with special guest Daniel Suarez (best selling author of techno-thrillers Damon and Freedom) – about the far reaching opportunities with AR, and its looming dangers.

In addition to these fantastic keynotes, ARE 2012 will feature 30 hours of sessions across 3 tracks: Business, Production, and Technology – covering topics such as:

The AR Market and successful business models with Maarten Lens-FitzGerald (Layar) – on how to generate revenue with Augmented Reality, and  Matthew Szymczyk (Zugara) – about where we are in the AR Commerce Hype Cycle.

AR for Marketing and Branding- a panel moderated by Gene Becker showcasing best practices from leaders who implemented some of the most successful AR campaigns to date.

AR for eCommerce and Retail – including talks by Bruno Uzzan (CEO, Total Immersion)  and Andrea Carignano (CEO, seac02) about real revenue-making products in this market.

AR For Wellness with Adam Odessky (HelloDocPal) about current use of AR for healthcare, and HealthCare Alert – an app tracking health alerts in real time with augmented reality.

AR Games as always will be a big draw featuring speakers from the most successful AR games companies:  Brian Selzer (Ogmento), Josh Shabtai (Vertigore), and more.

AR and Crime – A riveting new session moderated by AR enthusiast and Law Enforcement officer Joseph Rampolla who put together a staggering panel: Kevin Manson (Cybercop Portal),  Edward Roche (Barraclough), Best selling author Daniel Suarez (Daemon), and Brian Wassom (Augmented Legality.)

AR For Cars – a session dedicated to the automotive industry led by Juliana Clegg from MVS California creator of the CableGuide HUD with participation from major car companies, and analysts in this space.

User Experiences in AR with one of the world’s top experts in AR user interfaces – Mark Billinghurst (HIT Labs NZ), and additional world experts in UX for AR.

As in every year, the leading players in AR Eyewear will be back to excite us about the prospects of AR in your field of view, and update us on how long we need to wait for it and what we can do to accelerate it.

For the techies, a hole track of sessions will drill into the state of the art in AR Technologies.

Mobile AR Technologies with Marc Gardeya (Dekko) which will talk about Hybrid Tracking, David Murphy (Nokia) – about Nokia’s Mirror world browser, Ben Blachnitzsky (Metaio) – about Object Tracking, Martin Lechner (Wikitude) about SDK for AR browsers, and Hafez Rouzati (Georgia Tech) about their standard-based Argon browser.

Christine Perey (Perey Consulting) will lead a panel discussing Interoperability and Open AR Content and experiences.

Dr. Thomas Alt, founder and CEO of metaio will discuss the process of building a delivery stack that ensures reliable, accessible AR from chipset platform to end-user.

And speaking of hardware for AR, Stephane Gervais-Ducouret (Freescale) will speak about efficient hardware for AR,  Mike Housholder (InvenSense) about motion interface for immersive mobile AR experiences, and Neil Trevett (VP at Nvidia and President of the Khronos Group) about emerging hardware for AR.

Steven Feiner, Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, will share his experience in implementing AR for more than 20 years. If you go by Churchill’s old quote: “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see”, Professor Feiner is the most qualified to speak about the future of AR.

ARE will also feature a bunch of thought provoking talks about AR Game changers such as Amber Case (Geoloqi) and Brian Mullins‘ (CEO, Daqri): AR at the Center of the New Polis: Sociopolitical Impact & Opportunities.

This was just a sneak preview. Stay tuned for many more speakers and fascinating sessions about how to turn around your business – with Augmented Reality.

In another sign that augmented reality is going beyond its gimmicky stage and reaching the mainstream, we are glad to announce a major addition to ARE 2012 keynote speakers lineup: Mr. Miles Ludwig, head of Sesame Workshop’s Digital Group.

Miles Ludwig oversees creative and production for interactive and digital initiatives and has led the design and development of interactive educational experiences and educational software titles for every significant technology-based platform of the last 15 years, including product lines for Mattel, V-Tech, Hasbro, Electronic Arts, Jakks Pacific, Scholastic, Nintendo, and Sony. Miles leads the team that was recently awarded an Emmy (2009), a Webby (2010) and a Peabody award (2010) for Sesame Street broadband website. He was previously the Creative Director of Elias Arts Sound Intelligence Group, and the co-founder of Kirt Gunn & Associates, Inc. (KGA), an interactive advertising agency. At KGA, he led a team that created cross-platform campaigns for Diageo, LVMH, Ford, and Volvo. Miles was educated at Brown University and New York University.

Mr. Ludwig and his team at Sesame Workshop are always exploring new technologies that will help kids learn in a fun way. They believe augmented reality can deliver on that promise and are currently researching and measuring the impact it can have on improving kids’ learning.

Register to ARE 2012 and get inspired by Miles Ludwig along with Frank Cooper (CMO PepsiCO) and more than a hundred speakers that will talk about how to leverage augmented reality to make the world a more engaging place.

The ARE event was initiated 3 years ago by Augmented Reality (AR) Professionals from all over the world, who united in one Silicon Valley location for 2 days to exchange ideas, demonstrate technologies, network, and raise the awareness to the emerging industry.

Gradually, it attracted more attention from the mainstream, those seeking to leverage AR for for their businesses. In 2011 a third of the 530 attendees were buyers of AR products and services in entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, automotive, sports and other vertical markets. They came to learn about how to leverage AR to advance their  brands, attract and keep customers, and how to build successful AR campaigns and products that will delight users.

This has become the major focus of ARE in 2012 and will be reflected in the sessions and speakers featured in the event. More than half of the 600 attendees are expected to come from various verticals looking to deepen their customer engagement with augmented reality.

To that end, we are excited to announce Frank Cooper III, Chief Marketing Officer of PepsiCo, the largest food and beverage company in North America, will take the main stage at ARE 2012 and address the augmented reality movement and everyone out there seeking to leverage this amazing technology.

PepsiCo has been the leader in bringing together the entertainment industry and big brands and is constantly redefining the notion of “consumer engagement.” Mr. Cooper has a central role in that effort and was anointed as Chief Consumer Engagement Officer at PepsiCo.

In Cooper’s current role at PepsiCo, he has direct oversight of key operational areas across PepsiCo Americas Beverages (PAB) that determine consumer engagement including digital, media, sports, video games and multicultural and entertainment. He has led the development of a new consumer engagement model and created breakthrough marketing programs across the PAB portfolio. Successful videogame marketing promotions, including Pepsi’s Rock Band video contest, Pepsi’s Madden Sweepstakes, Mountain Dew Game Fuel for both World of Warcraft and Halo, and Mountain Dew’s latest successful promotion with Halo: Reach have all happened under Cooper’s guidance.

For the first time at ARE, Frank will tackle the 10 billion dollar question: how can CPG and retail companies leverage AR to nurture a deeper engagement with their customers?

I can’t wait.

The first revealed is Adrian David Cheok, Professor at Keio University, Graduate School of Media Design, in Tokyo Japan, as well as a Young Global Leader at World Economic Forum.

Dr. Cheok has been a hero of mine in pushing the envelop of augmented reality. He will join an amazing group of keynote speakers in previous years.

Adrian has been a champion of the idea that Augmented Reality is more than just about the visual sense, but has to include all the senses. Over the years, he’s been working hard to prove his idea and created many prototypes of augmented reality systems that involve the other senses.

To warm you up, check out his Hug Accentuator.

I can’t wait to see his Kissinger system in action.

(Hint: it’s not about the legendary statesman.)

Dr. Adrian David Cheok also created the first real world Pac Man game. When he wanted to create an exciting augmented reality game, he chose to remake the first video game to ever introduce a character – the legendary Pac Man. Cheok literally stepped into Pacman’s shoes in this first-person-shooter-like real world game.

Make sure to register for ARE 2012 before the early bird discount expires on March 21st.

Here’s an excerpt from Adrian’s illustrious career so far:

Adrian David Cheok  was the Founder and Director of the Mixed Reality Lab, Singapore. and previously worked in real-time systems, soft computing, and embedded computing in Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, Japan.

Mr. Cheok has been working on research covering mixed reality, human-computer interfaces, wearable computers and ubiquitous computing, fuzzy systems, embedded systems, power electronics. He has successfully obtained funding for externally funded projects in the area of wearable computers and mixed reality from Nike, National Oilwell Varco, Defense Science Technology Agency, Ministry of Communications and Arts, National Arts Council, Singapore Science Center, Hougang Primary School. The research output has included numerous high quality academic journal papers, research awards, keynote speeches, international exhibitions, numerous government demonstrations including to the President and Prime Minister of Singapore, broadcast television worldwide broadcasts on his research (such as CNN/CNBC/ABC/Discovery/National Geographic etc.), and hundreds of international press media articles.

In addition, Mr. Cheok has been a keynote and invited speaker at numerous international conferences and events. He was invited to exhibit for two years in the Ars Electronica Museum of the Future, launching in the Ars Electronica Festival 2003. His works “Human Pacman”, “Magic Land”, and “Metazoa Ludens”, were each selected as one of the worlds top inventions by Wired and invited to be exhibited in Wired NextFest 2005 and 2007. More…

ARE 2011 was the biggest augmented reality event ever with 520 attendees, 31 sponsors, partners and exhibitors, 107 speakers from more than 76 AR companies who delivered more than 30 hours of AR goodness. With the explosion of AR products and projects in the past year- ARE 2012 is poised to be even bigger.

Here are some of them last years contributions. Go ahead whet your appetite!

Adrian Farano’s “Lasagna Journalism”:

The Space Liberation Front Steals the Stage from Bruces Sterling:

Here’s Ben Cerveny’s (@neb) inspiring talk Ambient Intelligence:

StreetARt Mobile Augmented Reality App casestudy slides:

Jaron Lanier’s keynote:

E square commerce by seac02:

Rob Manson Presents BuildAR at the Auggies:

Impressive future ideas from GoldRun – Mobile Fashion Apps & Augmented Reality:

Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ (Microsoft) keynote:

AR Games by Brian Selzer (Ogmento) slides:

Fireside chat with Vernor Vinge and Bruce Sterling:

Helen Papagiannis AR and storytelling – slides:

Maarten Lens-FitzGerald’s “Moving beyond presumption”:

Chris Arkenberg’s Signals, Challenges, & Horizons in Hand’s Free Augmented Reality:

And for dessert, here is a great article by TechZulu summarizing the highlights of the event.

If you are still hungry from more AR – ARE 2012 is coming.

Early bird registration ends tomorrow, February 21. Register today and save $100!

Note to speakers – if your talk or slides are missing – add them in the comments!

If have an idea for a talk for ARE2012 – go ahead submit here!

We are just 3 and a half months away from another Augmented Reality Event and I can’t wait.

Submissions

Awareness for augmented reality (AR) is building up and getting stronger and broader all over the world. I can see it by the number of submission for talks pouring in, covering all aspects of augmented reality and venturing into new topics and uncharted industries. Thank you for your fantastic contributions! If you have an idea for the event, there is still time to submit your proposal.

Schedule

We have published a first glimpse into ARE 2012 schedule to give you a sense of the event structure and the topics that will be tackled. Check out the preliminary schedule. This may still shift a little, but will certainly remain the event backbone. Would love to hear your feedback.

Registration discounts

Make sure to take advantage of the early bird registration. It will save you a $100 (or 20%) from the standard price. But you have to act before March 21st.

If you have ever attended an ARE event before – you are eligible for the Alumni rate. But that offer will only last until February 21 – so act really fast!

Become a member

We have added this year a new membership option. With a mere $49 you can become an official member of the Augmented Reality Event. What is that? A new ploy to extract more from attendees?

Well, first you should know that ARE is a non-profit organization, initiated for the sole purpose of helping to advance the Augmented Reality industry. The new membership has several purposes:

First, it is a new approach to gauge the interest and help fund the video recording and distribution of all event sessions. It has always been the achilles heel of the event. We never found the time and funds to properly edit and distribute the content. So if you are in favor of ARE videos – this is your opportunity to vote. The value of these videos extends way beyond the mere $49.

The second purpose is more strategic in nature. ARE has always been about raising awareness to AR and helping advance the industry. And yet, although it established itself as the largest global AR event, it only takes place once a year. But when you think about it, each year, key players across the industry see the value in taking the time and uniting with their peers for 2 days in Santa Clara; they extract tremendous value from this get together which persists for many subsequent months. So, how about we use this opportunity to build a formal community that will join forces in helping promote awareness to augmented reality on a global and local basis? How about we extend the magic for the entire year?

We are not yet sure where this will go, but thought we should give it a go. If people sign up and show solidarity, it will be a great motivator to keep it going even after we all leave Santa Clara.

At the event, ARE members will bear a distinguishable badge, so you will be able to spot them from afar. So make your choice: do you want to be that guy with the plain-looking badge?

Seriously, if you care about raising awareness to AR, and want to contribute as well as benefit from this program, join the ARE membership this year. The videos alone are worth the cost. The free T-shirt makes it a steal. Helping spread the word about AR is…priceless.

Register for ARE 2012 here

Start-ups, developers, mobile and hardware companies along with organizations within entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more, will gather to evolve this hot technology into a productive, sustainable and entertaining new medium. ARE will include more than 30 sessions organized into business, technology and production tracks, designed to address topics such as:

• the augmented reality market today and in the future,
• latest augmented reality innovations, engines and tools,
• showcases and postmortems of landmark augmented reality projects
• how to fund and build a successful augmented reality start up,
• how to leverage augmented reality to advance your brand, attract and keep your customers, and
• how to build successful campaigns and products that will delight users.

Industry luminaries will deliver inspiring Augmented Reality keynotes; the exhibition floor will showcase the leading Augmented Reality companies and products and will offer a fantastic opportunity for networking to help boost the fledgling industry. Last year’s successful activities such as the ARt Gala, AR Start up launch pad, and The Auggies (best AR demo award) will return to delight event participants.

This year, we are introducing a new session: Augmented Future – 5 ground breaking augmented reality ideas that will change the world (ignite style.)

ARE is currently accepting submissions for speakers, demos, roundtables, and sponsors and exhibitors.

“Augmented Reality has already transitioned from a gimmick to a major new tech sector,” said Ori Inbar, event co-chair of ARE. “Backed by the leading augmented reality companies and passionate industry leaders, ARE will be a “don’t-miss” event with valuable content focused on the latest innovations, business models and how to successfully bring augmented reality to the market.”

The event is backed by leading global Augmented Reality companies and the ISMAR committee, and is sponsored by top tech companies.

Learn more about Augmented Reality Event and its organizers at www.augmentedrealityevent.com and stay up to date with the latest developments by following @arealityevent on Twitter, and facebook page at www.facebook.com/augmentedrealityevent

Dagri – Smart New Publishing Platform Simplifies the creation and visualization of augmented reality for consumers and designers

Layar First to Provide Direct AR Content Publication Through-Third Party Tools

First Public Showing of Volummetric 3D Hub

Metaio – The Big Picture of Augmented Reality

Innovega Breaks the Mobile Media Bottleneck

Imagine That Technologies Introduces Streamline

ingZ inc – Traveller AR brings Augmented Reality to iPad and iTouch as well as iPhone

Immediate following  the press conference AR attendees representing 24 different countries filled the Main Theater at the Santa Clara Center  to witness an opening video montage and Bruce Sterling’s visionary keynote.  The AR inspiring keynote started with a surprise space liberation ambush and new freepace manifesto.  To catch all the action follow the #are2011 twitter stream.

Stay tuned..