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..

A glimpse into the opening of ARE 2011 this coming Tuesday morning at the Santa Clara Convention Center. It will be fun. Double feature.

Here is an excerpt from an UgoTrade interview with author Vernor Vinge – just 6 days prior to event:

Tish Shute: What is the best and worst, in your view, about the way Augmented Reality is emerging from science fiction into science fact?

Vernor Vinge: Progress that sets the stage: The worldwide market penetration of cellphones in the era 2000-2010 was of a size and speed that would have counted as foolish implausibility even in science-fiction of earlier times. More than half the human race suddenly had access to knowledge and comms. Being in the middle of this firestorm of progress, we can’t really judge ultimate effects, but I expect that smart phones and the empowering aspects of social networks and AR are still massively underhyped. (This is not to say that individual innovation enterprises can’t fail; the treasure is there for those who dare, and ultimately the whole human race can benefit.)

Tish Shute: What do you feel will be the most impactful application of AR in people’s everyday lives?

Vernor: AR apps that let each person/team see those aspects of physical reality that are important for their current activity. Pointing technologies that coordinate with that AR vision. The combination is a revolution of interfaces, and the probable physical disappearance of more and more of the gadgets that twentieth century people associated with high tech.

Read the rest of the interview  at UgoTrade.

Vernor Vinge will be judging the competitors at The Auggies for the best AR demo at ARE 2011. Also, come see him discuss the state of Augmented Reality at the ARE 2011 event wrap up with Bruce Sterling.

Just 6 days left: Register Today for the ARE 2011 event

As Bruce Sterling points out, in the interview below, Augmented Reality is “truly a child of the twenty-teens, a genuine digital native,” and one visible indication that:

..the Internet really could look like a “legacy.” The Legacy Internet as an old-fashioned, dusty, desk-based place best left to archivists and librarians, while the action is out on the streets.”

Interview with Bruce Sterling by Tish Shute and Ori Inbar

Tish Shute: As you so memorably put it, “AR is a technovisionary dream come true – something really rare, and you have to be really patient for those….”

What is best and worst, in your view, about the way Augmented Reality technovisionary dream is coming true and emerging to flourish in the wild?

Bruce Sterling: The best part is that AR is truly happening and is a lot of fun, and the worst part is that it’s happening in a Depression. If AR had broken loose in the dotcom days when cash flew around like soap bubbles, man, that would have been psychedelic.

AR that is even more of-our-time than “social media.” AR has arisen directly from modern technical factors that just didn’t use to exist. It’s made from shiny new parts, and is truly a child of the twenty-teens, a genuine digital native. It’s a little kid and it has to walk before it can run, but it’s great to see it walking.

Tish Shute: As Jesse Schell pointed out last year at ARE2010, “The whole point of AR is to see things from a different point of view…How can there be a more powerful art form than one that actually changes what you see?” What do you feel will be the most impactful application of AR in people’s everyday lives?

Bruce Sterling: I’m all for impact, but it’s pretty clear that the people who would weep for joy to have Augmented Reality are people whose reality is already damaged. People who need reality augmented as a prosthetic, in other words, so that they can achieve an “everyday life.” This is like the impactful but underappreciated role of the Internet in the lives of people who’ve been shut-in. If you’re laid-up in a hospital bed, a laptop is a revolution in convalescence.

But that kind of “impact” doesn’t sound too exciting or too profitable. My guess would be that the biggest arena for “impactful AR” would be augmenting cityscapes for foreign people who can’t speak the local language, can’t read the signs, and lack time to learn the local reality. Imagine, say, the Brazilian overlay for Moscow. You could show up, read your native Brazilian overlay of that city, do your business, eat, sleep, buy, leave, and scarcely “be in Moscow” at all. Constructed right, the AR Brazilian Moscow might even be a better Moscow — a Moscow that Russians themselves would pay to visit.

Tish Shute: You pointed out last year, in your opening keynote for ARE2010, that less immersive forms of AR have their own merits. We are still not seeing much “head mounted display weirdness” yet, but many other forms of AR are emerging – mobile, webcam, projected video, sonic augmented reality, even sticky light. You noted, practically everything that AR is involved in is a transitional technology. But since you spoke last year at ARE2010, which of these transitional technologies have shown the most promise for AR?

Bruce Sterling: It’s got to be handsets. Smartphones. The stats there are just amazing. The smartphone biz makes the personal computer business look like a Victorian railroad. When I read a guy like Tomi Ahonen, who talks about transitioning out of the old-fashioned “Legacy Internet,” that idea is startling. But AR is one visible indication that the Internet really could look like a “legacy.” The Legacy Internet as an old-fashioned, dusty, desk-based place best left to archivists and librarians, while the action is out on the streets.

Tish Shute: This year we have seen gestural interfaces go mainstream. What are the most interesting directions for gestural interfaces that you have seen emerge in recent months?

Bruce Sterling: To me, the most “interesting” part is seeing people do gestural stuff in public. William Gibson, my fellow author, observes that cellphones have stolen the gestural language of cigarettes. There’s lots of fidgeting, box tapping, ash-swiping, slipping boxes in and out of pockets… People quickly learn to do that without thinking twice, and they forget how weird it looks. It’s “design dissolving in behavior,” as Adam Greenfield puts it.

The gestural hack scene for the Kinect has been amazing. It’s like watching 1950s Beatnik dancing go mainstream.

Tish Shute: You have observed that Augmented Reality is Glocal which not only gives us different flavors of augmented experience but is “a departure from earlier models of tech startups, where you usually have like three hippies in a local garage. Now you’ve got German-American-Korean outfits like Metaio, and Total Immersion has a Russian affiliate. They’re inherently multinational, both inside the company and out.” What flavors of glocalness do you hope/expect to see at Augmented Reality Event this year.

Bruce Sterling: I’d be pretty happy to see some AR input from Brazil, India, and South Africa. I seem to be picking up a lot of followers in my Twitter stream from those locales. If I saw some Augmented Bollywood Reality, that would pretty much make my day.

Ori Inbar: What sessions will you go to at ARE this year? Who do you want to meet at ARE 2011?

Bruce Sterling: I make it my business to hang out with artists, but I’m hoping to drill down more on the technical aspects. For instance, where exactly are the bottlenecks in building animated augments? It looks like we’re about a sneeze away from jamming some crude Hanna-Barbera cartoons into real spaces. But the devil is in the details there.

Ori Inbar: Your commentary about the evolution of the AR industry over the years had significant focus on style. Is the AR industry dressed to kill yet? Any glimpses of promise in that direction?

Bruce Sterling: I’m not “pro-style” in every possible aspect of life, but as an Augmented Reality critic, it’s clear to me that if you claim to “augment” reality, then you should work hard to augment it — struggle to make it better. Otherwise you might as well call yourself “Defaced Reality,” or even “3D Spam.” When I see that kind of crudity and carelessness in AR, I’m gonna call people out on it. I know there will be the AR equivalent of cheesy billboards and gang graffiti, but I never much cared for those, either.

The industry’s videos have improved radically in the past year and a half. It used to be all about “look at my grainy, shaky handheld video of my cool new AR hack,” but nowadays the biz has really pulled its socks up.

If AR is about “experience design,” as I think it basically is, then eventually, as a matter of intellectual consistency and professional pride, everything you create will be considered part of “the experience.” That’s the industry’s way forward — that’s what it would do if it was grown-up.

AR people already look better than most similar geeks in the gaming business, and some day, I really do believe that augmentation people will become glamorous. They won’t be supermodels, but they’ll be about as chic as, say, professional set designers. Because AR is set design, in a way; it’s real-time interactive set-design for three-D spaces.

Ori Inbar: In the Layar Launch in 2009 you said “it’s the dawn of AR…”, at ARE 2010, you followed up on the theme saying “it’s 9am in the AR industry.” What time is it now?

Bruce Sterling: I’d be guessing it’s around 9:30 AM, but come on, that’s just a metaphor! ARE we all gonna blow off at 4:30 PM and have a beer, or is AR one of those cruel tech startups where nobody ever gets a personal life?

Ori Inbar: Are you reading any new fictional literature about AR that inspires you? And/or What interesting design fictions for AR have you come across recently?

Bruce Sterling: Well, I’m always interested in creative people who just plain make stuff up. Because that’s why I commonly do myself. The stuff that “inspires” me is usually stuff that I just didn’t expect to see. But when I don’t expect it, that usually means I wasn’t paying enough attention. I plan to pay a lot of attention to AR this year.

I’m not sure it makes a lot of sense to write fiction nowadays “about AR,” because it’s no longer a fictional topic. It’s become like writing fiction “about cinema.” You can write good fiction about someone who works in cinema, but not fiction about cinema itself. AR is not sci-fi “Augmented Reality” any more, it’s become a real-world phenomenon, a new industry of real augmentation.

With that said, I must remark that I sit up straight whenever I see Marco Tempest do stuff. Magicians are all about mystery and wonder. You wouldn’t see a magician, say, using AR to work an assembly line, or re-order library books, or find a pizza joint in Barcelona. And that’s great. Marco is always gonna do something freaky and out-there, and even though he’s a tech magician, it’s never about the tech first. It’s always about his ingenuity in finding new ways to employ new tools in creating a magical experience for his audience.

Marco’s not an entrepreneur, he’s not gonna revolutionize people’s daily lives or invent Web 4.0, but even if AR becomes “old hat” some day, it’s never going to be old hat when he’s doing it. The guy is a pro, and I’m quite the fan.

Magic Projection Live @ TEDxTokyo 2010 from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.

Augmented Reality technology provider metaio has been chosen by ARE as the conferences’ first official mobile guide. The firm’s AR application junaio will fill the two day event with useful, location-specific information; a demonstration to the world that AR is real and ready to use!

During the conference, attendees will be able to access ARE 2011 content on their iPhone and Android devices to view the locations of sponsors and exhibitors overlaid across the showcase floor. Speaker rooms and session details will be featured as well.

ARE Co-Chair Ori Inbar explains,

Well, when you curate the best of the best in augmented reality for the largest gathering of AR enthusiasts in the world – you might as well empower attendees to navigate the event in an augmented reality fashion (while saving some trees)!

This event will immerse attendees in an augmented world of innovative companies, cutting edge keynote speakers and introduce junaio as the events’ first augmented guidebook. By combining sensor fusion with their LLA-marker-technology, metaio aims to show how the accuracy limitations of indoor GPS navigation can be overcome.

Metaio’s Brendan Scully adds:

We wanted to put something together for everybody at ARE that is context-relevant. Hopefully the channel inspires some good discussion between attendees. How do we make this experience better? Where do we take AR next? Ori puts on an incredible show and we can’t wait to see what’s been built for 2011.

If you would like to participate in the mobile navigation experience download junaio here:

For Android download here.

For iPhone download here.

Register Today!

SANTA CLARA, CA (April 26, 2011) – The Augmented Reality industry is getting ready to show off a new round of innovation to the technology, media, and marketing communities.  If you ever wondered about the potential of Augmented reality and wanted to check it out up close, you will be excited to know that “The Auggies” returns to the world’s largest augmented reality event, ARE 2011 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California. The second annual Auggies competition will take place at the heart of Silicon Valley as the brightest minds in the industry put on a show to impress the industry’s most iconic judges and inspire the audience packed with AR enthusiasts.

The thing I like best about ARE is personally witnessing things that never show up on the Internet. There’s a tension in Augmented Reality, between the global scope of the technology and the local character of the teams that produce it. When you’re in the room with committed, creative people — looking them in the eye, breathing the air they are breathing — that’s what makes it an “event.”

- said Bruce Sterling.

For the Auggies competition, augmented reality teams get 5 minutes each on stage and compete for the coolest live AR demo. The panel of judges provides their unabashed comments, critiques and if they are deemed worthy praise. Winners will be voted by the audience and receive the prestigious “Auggies Award.”

The Auggies is the opportunity for AR developers to unveil their vision of the future, not only in terms of technical progress, but also on how creative you can be with this technology. Winning is truly an important recognition from the AR community and it surely means you’re defying the norm and taking one step further.

- said Ivan Franco of YDreams – the 2010 Auggies winner.

Here is the complete list of competing teams for the Auggie – the industry’s top award.

The competition is still open for additional nominations until May 10th.

The only way to witness the yearly AR battle for the Auggies and participate in the live audience voting is to register for the ARE 2011 event. Event registration is limited and does sell out.

Here is a look back at “The Auggies” competition from ARE 2010. Unplugged, raw video of the demos and the insightful, brutally honest, and entertaining commentary by the judges: Bruce Sterling, Jesse Schell, and Mark Billinghurst.

It feels so…2010.

Register Today!

30 hours of the latest innovation in augmented reality by top speakers from the following companies:

3DVIA
AR traveler
AerialFireTech
All Things Digital
The Virtual Magician
Augmatic
Bloom/VURB
Cagefree Consulting
Chart Venture Partners
Clothia
Columbia University
Daqri
Defiant
Exploratorium
Franklin Institute
GeoLoqi
Georgia Tech
Goldrun
Google Goggles
Graz University
HIT Lab NZ
Hoppala
Gigantico
Idea Builder Homes
Immersion Optics
Innovega
Intel capital
Keiichi Matsuda
Teksylos
Layar
Lit Studios
Maker Lab
MapQuest
Metaio
Microsoft
Mob-Labs
Mobilizy
MPR Center
mShakespeare
MUVEDesign
Nokia
Occipital
Ogmento
Osage Associates
OWNI
Parkridge police
PepsiCO
Pillsbury Law
Platial
Previznet
Qualcomm
Sacred Land Film Project
Seac02
Simiosys
Spotmetrix
Tactical Information Systems
Tanagram
Technology Systems, Inc.
ThingM
Total Immersion
UgoTrade
Unity3D
University of Kent, Canterbury
Vertigore
Virtual Public Art Project
Vitamin AR
VTT
Viewdle
Vuzix
Waze
Web3D
Whistlebox
Quest Visual
YDreams
Zenitum
Zugara

Until Now.

Meet Frank Cooper, Chief Engagement Officer at PepsiCo, one of the largest and most recognized brands in the world. PepsiCo is a world leader in convenient snacks, foods and beverages with revenues of more than $60 billion and over 285,000 employees.

Frank is a visionary thinker. His claim to fame, among others, is bringing together the entertainment industry and big brands.

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.

Or in other words:

“Madison Ave and Hollywood LOVE this guy.”

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.

Register today!