Speakers

Keynote: Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, and critic, was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne. His nonfiction works include THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER (1992), TOMORROW NOW: ENVISIONING THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS (2003), and SHAPING THINGS (2005).

He is a contributing editor of WIRED magazine and writes a Wired.com weblog. During 2005, he was the “Visionary in Residence” at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. In 2008 he was the Guest Curator for the Share Festival of Digital Art and Culture in Torino, Italy, and the Visionary in Residence at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam.

He has appeared in ABC’s Nightline, BBC’s The Late Show, CBC’s Morningside, on MTV and TechTV, and in Time, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Fortune, Nature, I.D., Metropolis, Technology Review, Der Spiegel, La Repubblica, and many other venues.

Keynote: Will Wright

Will Wright, widely acknowledged for creating the simulation video game realm, unveiled the highly anticipated Spore™ in September 2008. Spore is a “universe in a box” that allows players to create a species and guide it to sentience, helping it build a society, develop its culture, and explore an infinite cosmos of worlds created by other players. Fans eagerly embraced the creation tools in Spore and have created more than 90 million pieces of user-created content as of March 2009.

Spore, has been distinguished with such honors as Popular Science’s “ Best of What’s New Award”, Popular Mechanics’ “Breakthrough Award”, PC Magazine’s “Technical Excellence Award”,  TIME Magazine’s “50 Best Inventions of 2008” and the Jim Henson Technology Honor.

A true gaming industry legend as a result of his pioneering contributions to video games, Wright has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and honors. Rolling Stone named Will Wright one of the “100 People Who Are Changing America” in March 2009, which placed him among artists, leaders, scientists and policymakers who are “fighting every day to show us what is possible.” In 2008, Will received the first ever Gamer God Award at the Spike Video Game Awards as a testament to his revolutionary work. In 2007, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts recognized an individual in the video game industry for the first time when it named Wright a fellow. He also received the Producers Guild of America Vanguard Award that same year.

Wright first rose to prominence when he developed SimCity™, the acclaimed, nonviolent, open-ended sim game. Wright then followed up the success of SimCity with a string of popular simulation games throughout the 1990s. Titles such as SimEarth™: The Living Planet (1990), SimAnt™: The Electronic Ant Colony (1991), SimCity 2000™ (1993), SimCopter™(1996) and SimCity 3000™ (1999) introduced simulation games to hundreds of thousands of new fans, demonstrating the genre’s true potential.

Wright’s next ground-breaking game came in the form of The Sims™ (2000), which has gone on to become the best-selling PC game franchise of all time, being available in 22 languages in 60 countries. Wright, who studied architecture in college, originally conceived of the game as an architectural design simulator. To “score” the quality of the design, he added tiny people who would inhabit the buildings. These simulated people quickly stole the spotlight, and Will realized that watching the lives of the Sims unfold was the real entertainment. The Sims franchise has now sold more than 100 million units sold around the world! 

Yohan Baillot

Yohan Baillot is a French and US citizen and a pioneer in the Augmented Reality research community with 13 years experience working exclusively in AR domain for the medical and military fields. Mr Baillot has a MS in EE from Polytech’ Montpellier in France and a MS in CS from UCF in Orlando FL. He is the author of more than 30 academic papers and 6 patents. He is a member of the Computer Society and the founder of the ARForum, a mailing list on AR with more than 500 members.

Gene Becker

Gene Becker is founder of Lightning Laboratories, a technical and business strategy consultancy focused on the connected world of ubiquitous computing, augmented reality, social media and the internet of things. Previously he was a technical director at Hewlett-Packard, where he led advanced research and business development for web-based mobile and ubiquitous computing, co-founded a cloud services business, and led worldwide R&D for extreme gaming and mobility brand Voodoo PC. Gene studied engineering at MIT and computer science at Stanford University. In 2009 he co-organized ARDevCamp to encourage development of open, interoperable, extensible and accessible AR systems.

Mark Billinghurst

Mark Billinghurst is one of the world’s leading augmented reality researchers, focusing on innovative computer interfaces that explore how virtual and real worlds can be merged to enhance face-to-face and remote collaboration. Director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (based in New Zealand and one of the biggest AR labs in the world) and a research scientist at the HIT Lab (US), he has produced over 80 technical publications and his work has been demonstrated at a wide variety of conferences. He is active in several research areas including Augmented and Virtual Reality, wearable computing and conversational computer interfaces. He has previously worked at ATR Research Labs in Japan, British Telecom and the MIT Media Laboratory.

Kent Demaine

Kent Demaine is the founder of OOOii, a real-time technology studio that merges VFX, VR, interactive and gaming disciplines in the development of custom large-scale mixed reality installations. Prior to founding OOOii, Kent became one of Hollywood’s leading future technology visionaries, delivering some of the most memorable technology visual effects sequences of the past two decades. Minority Report, Star Trek, Fast and Furious, MI:3, The Island, Déjà Vu, A.I., The Italian Job, Enemy of the State. Over the past year, Kent has been asked to participate in multiple think tanks representing a wide range of industries including the Central Intelligence Agency, Microsoft Research, 5D Immersive Conference, ISMAR and the See Information Visualization Conference.

Michael Gervautz

Michael Gervautz is the founder and Managing Director of Imagination Computer Services, a company developing interactive user experiences based on various sensor technologies, augmented reality and computer vision/computer graphics. Previously he was Associate Professor at the Institute for Computer Graphics at the University of Technology Vienna, where he lead advanced research in the areas virtual and augmented reality, realistic image synthesis, multimedia in education and computer animation. Michael studied Computer Science at the University of Technology in Vienna where he received M.Sc. and PhD. He is still a senior lecturer there.

Eric Gradman

Eric Gradman is an interactive artist in Los Angeles, CA. His work often features computer vision, large-scale projections, unusual sensors, and custom electronics to produce fun environments that compel people to interact.

Jeremy Hight

Jeremy Hight is an information designer,theorist and artist working in Augmented Reality and Locative Media since creating Locative Narrative in 2002. His essay “Narrative Archaeology” was named one of the 4 primary texts in Locative Media. He has published 30 essays on augmented reality,locative media and immersive visualization. He is a contributing editor for M.I.T’s Lea.

Anselm Hook

Anselm Hook is an artist, theorist and locative media developer focusing on Augmented Reality apps. He led the engineering of several video games as well as the development of Platial.com and Meedan.net.

Ori Inbar

Ori is co-founder and CEO of Ogmento, a developer and publisher of mobile augmented reality experiences; Author of Games Alfresco – the #1 blog for augmented reality; President of the Augmented Reality (AR) Consortium – an international group of pioneering AR companies dedicated to advancing the AR industry through collaboration. Ori is a recognized speaker in industry events and a sought after advisor for augmented reality initiatives.

Marshall Kirkpatrick

Marshall Kirkpatrick is the VP of Content Development at ReadWriteWeb, a leading blog focused on web technology innovation and its consequences. He has also consulted for companies large and small on the use of social media for establishing leadership in various markets.

Bryan Klingner

Bryan Klingner is a research scientist at earthmine, inc, a Berkeley startup that has created a unique 3D mapping platform for street-level data. Before joining earthmine, Bryan worked as an engineer at Apple and then earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Berkeley, specializing in graphics, simulation, and computational geometry.

Martin Lechner

Martin studied both Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Salzburg, Austria and the Victoria University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He got to know Philipp Breuss during his time at Sony DADC. Martin was fascinated by the possibilities of Augmented Reality and joined Philipp to develop Wikitude. He is now CTO at Mobilizy.

Mike Liebhold

Michael Liebhold is Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future focusing on mobility, media and geospatial computing. Previously Mike was a Senior Scientist for Atari and Apple Labs researching digital media, early augmented reality.Mike initiated and managed partnerships with Disney, AT&T Bell Labs, MIT Media Lab and other international media labs. Mike successfully lead two of the biggest technology industry consortia in history settling on data formats as chair of the FCC HDTV data interoperability program and a founding architect of the cd-rom industry data working groups, and was most recently instrumental, with others in setting the specs for the geoRSS format for 2D location data used by millions worldwide, and supported by yahoo! google and microsoft as well as hundreds of independent geo-web companies.

Blair MacIntyre

Blair MacIntyre is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Tech, where he has directed the GVU Center’s Augmented Environments Lab for 10 years. He has been conducting Augmented Reality research since 1991, with the goal of understanding the potential of AR as a new medium for games, entertainment, education and work. He has collaborated on a variety of AR gaming and entertainment projects over the years, and in the past few years has focused on handheld AR game design, interaction and evaluation. His research is supported by a variety of technology and content companies, including MediaPower, Turner Broadcasting, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Alcatel-Lucent, NVidia, Apple, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Qualcomm and Motorola and Nokia. He has written a wide range of academic papers, taught tutorials on Handheld Augmented Reality, and been Program Chair for the International Symposia on Wearable Computing (2000), Mixed and Augmented Reality (2003), and User-Interface Software and Technology (2003). He served as the guest editor of a ‘Mixed Reality’ special issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the City of New York in 1998, and B.Math and M.Math degrees in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1989 and 1991.

Peter Meier

Peter Meier, born 1976, received his master in manufacturing engineering from the Technical University of Munich, before founding metaio in 2002 together with Dr. Thomas Alt. Since then, he serves as CTO and helped to make metaio one of the leading companies for the development and licensing of Augmented Reality Technology, worldwide. Metaio has over 50 employees in its locations in Munich, Seoul and San Francisco. Peter Meier actively takes part in expanding metaio’s technology and products.

David Murphy

David Murphy is a Mixed Reality Researcher at Nokia Research Center Helsinki, focusing on mobile applications. He joined NRC in 2004 to begin the Nokia MARA project, which became the first sensor-based mobile AR browser, and has also worked on the Nokia Image Space social mixed reality media sharing service.

Ben Newhouse

Ben Newhouse is a developer at Yelp and is responsible for the creation and development of Yelp Monocle, one of the first implementations of Augmented Reality on the iPhone. A builder at heart, he is busily trying to make 2010 the year of computer vision on consumer devices. Ben has spent 18 months in Beijing and Taipei, and previously worked at Microsoft Research Asia. He will receive a BS in EE from Stanford University at the end of June.

Cole Van Nice

Cole Van Nice is a Partner with Chart Venture Partners (CVP), a technology venture capital firm based in New York that focuses on disruptive technologies with dual-use application in both the Defense industry and large-scale commercial markets. Cole focuses on early-stage investments in the digital media, imaging, photonics, and geospatial technology sectors, with special interest in hardware and software technologies that contribute to the advancement of Augmented Reality.

Julian Oliver

Julian Oliver is a New Zealand born artist, inventor and computer programmer based in Berlin, Germany. He has presented papers and projects at many museums, international electronic-art events and conferences, including the Tate Modern, Transmediale, Ars Electronica and the Japan Media Arts Festival. His work has received several awards, ranging across technical excellence, artistic invention and interaction design. Julian has given numerous workshops and master classes in game-design, artistic game-development, object-oriented programming for artists, UNIX/Linux, virtual architecture, interface design, augmented reality and open source development practices worldwide. He is a long-time advocate of the use of free software in artistic production, distribution and education. Within the AR community Julian is known for LevelHead and the recent urban exhibition platform, The Artvertiser.

Patrick O’Shaughnessey

Patrick O’Shaughnessey is the founder of Patched Reality, an augmented reality software development company. Previously, he led the engineering team at The Electric Sheep Company, publishers of the Webflock virtual worlds platform. A software engineer for over 18 years, his background also includes game development, machinima, mobile computing, and telecommunications. He holds a BS in Computer Engineering from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a co-inventor of five patents.

Jarrell Pair

Mr. Pair is CTO and a founder of LP33.tv, an on demand music entertainment network. For over twelve years he has designed and developed technology for entertainment, art, training, and medical applications. An innovator and entrepreneur, Pair’s background spans internet technology, mobile computing, augmented reality, virtual environments, and live performance.

Helen Papagiannis

Helen Papagiannis is a designer, researcher and artist who has been exploring AR as a new creative visual force since 2005, with a focus on aesthetics, content development, and storytelling. She is completing her Ph.D. at York University in Toronto, where she is also a Senior Research Associate at the AR Lab in the Department of Film. Prior to her augmented life, Helen was a member of the illustrious Bruce Mau Design studio, where as project coordinator she oversaw “Massive Change: The Future of Global Design”, an internationally touring exhibition, book published by Phaidon Press, and a series of global events.

Christine Perey

Christine is an independent consultant and industry analyst focusing on mobile augmented reality and other multimedia services targeting mobile consumers. She provides management consulting, strategic planning, technology transfer and business development services to clients. She is an invited expert to the W3C, and a member of industry advisory boards and committees.

Robert Rice

Robert is an author, futurist, entrepreneur and a recognized world leader in pioneering commercial augmented reality with more than 17 years of experience. Robert is the author of MMO Evolution and a contributing author in Working Through Synthetic Worlds. Robert is the CEO of Neogence Enterprises and Chairman of the AR Consortium.

Paige Saez

Paige Saez is an artist, designer and researcher. Sàez is fascinated by structures of participation in the production of knowledge and information and focuses her research on hacktivism, participatory economics and social media. In 2007 she founded the Makerlab with Anselm Hook, an arts and technology incubator focused on civic and environmental projects.

Brian Selzer

Brian Selzer is the President and Co-Founder of Ogmento, a developer and publisher of mobile augmented reality games and entertainment. As a creative executive and digital media pioneer, Mr. Selzer has created, produced and distributed online and mobile games, animation and social media content to a client list that includes Fox, Universal, Sony, Activision, EA, Marvel, Hasbro, Nike and many others.

Tish Shute

Tish Shute is a consultant, writer, anthropologist, technologist, and founder of Ugotrade, a leading blog focused on augmented reality, and the future of mobile social communications. Tish is currently working on an open distributed platform for augmented reality, bringing together real-time communications, visual and hyper-local search, geo/sensor data, and 3D, to make the physical world our platform. She is passionate about a social commons for augmented reality, and the use of sensor networks and instrumented environments in the service of sustainability.

Bruno Uzzan

Bruno Uzzan has been driving the growth of Total Immersion since 1999 – from start-up to the company’s current position of global category leader. As a pioneer and AR visionary, he has led Total Immersion’s global expansion and built the company’s client roster with blue chip accounts that include Disney, McDonald’s, Mattel, Twentieth Century Fox and Nissan Motors. He also is responsible for developing strategic alliances, bringing his vision for the potential of next gen AR to these relationships. Before establishing Total Immersion, Uzzan served as a consultant for Pierre Henri Scacchi and Associates (Price Waterhouse Group). He holds a masters degree in management from the University of Paris Dauphine.

Sean White

Sean White is a visiting scientist at the Smithsonian Institution and postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University. His research interests focus on investigating situated ways of interacting with and perceiving the environment through mixed and augmented reality, visualization, tangible user interfaces and mobile computing. A 2009 Tech Awards Laureate, his recent projects include mobile, hand-held and augmented reality electronic field guides for botanical species identification, augmented reality visualization of geocoded carbon monoxide sensor data in urban environments, and sonification and spatial perception of the Cuyahoga River.

Daniel Wagner

Daniel Wagner is a senior postdoctoral researcher at Graz University of Technology. He is well known for jump-starting the research area of Augmented Reality on mobile phones. During his PhD study he developed the first marker tracker and first 6DOF natural feature tracker running in real-time on PDAs and mobile phones and designed the multi-platform Studierstube ES software.

whurley

whurley is the founder of whurleyvision, a UI/UX (user experience) research and development studio based in Austin, Texas. A recognized technology innovator, whurley has received numerous honors and awards including IBM’s Master Inventor title, an Apple Design Award, and 11 patents. whurley believes that the whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts, and spends his free time developing vibrant, active, user-focused communities. In 2008 he was named one of the “Top Leaders in Open-Source Business” by LinuxWorld Magazine.