Where were you on Thursday, April 21st, 2011? The ImTech community was having a great time at our first quarterly event, “The Era of Experience,” at The Brewery lofts in Downtown Los Angeles. This event’s aim was to build on discussions sparked at last October’s Immersive Technology Summit and foster dialogue between our industry leading panelists and attendees.
Huge thank you to TechZulu for covering the event!
CLICK HERE for a full gallery of the event photos!
Ken Rutkowski moderated the Q&A with the following amazing panelists.
Gregg Apirian – CEO, DVELOP
Andrew Cheeseman – Consultant, Previously Emerging Tech Dir at Mattel
Greg Davis – General Manager, Total Immersion
Matthew Forrest – COO, Social Animal
Wendy Heimann-Nunes – Partner, Zuber & Taillieu, LLP
Ed Lantz – CEO, Vortex Immersion Media
Phil Lelyveld – Program Manager at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center
Tyler Malin – CEO, Social Animal
Kate McCallum – Founder, c3 VisionLAB
Ernie Merlan – Owner, Merlan Creative
Patty Rangel – Producer, Pixie Dust Labs
Ishan Shapiro – Co-Founder, ThinkState
Gunther Sonnenfeld – SVP, RAPP
Evan Suma – Ph.D., USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies
Matt Szymczyk – CEO, Zugara
Scott Trowbridge – VP Creative R&D, Walt Disney Imagineering
John Underkoffler – Chief Scientist, Oblong Industries
With a solid lineup of great minds, the discussion was represented by many sides – tech hardware and software enablers, UX and content designers, and consumer trend trackers. The evening started off with panel one discussing and answering questions about trends (both early and present). The panelists discussed topics such as early computing mediums, and our natural (and eventual) progression towards more intuitive gesture based interfaces.
The second panel then stepped in to discuss and build upon these topics with a technology focus. After panel two talked about current available products and potential future developments, the third and final panel came to stage to speak about the importance and development of quality user experiences when dealing with these new technologies. Ultimately, as Scott Trowbridge put it, “the technology is an enabler, but not a substitute for the experience itself.”
Our evening closed with a speech by John Underkoffler, Chief Scientist with Oblong Industries. After receiving the Immy award for Oblong Industries at our October summit, he took the microphone and spoke a bit about his role at Oblong, as well as gave some hints as to where Oblong stands with their own work in the field. For those not quite familiar, Oblong Industries is the amazing company that designed and developed the gesture interface technology for hit blockbuster, Minority Report (2002). And for those who are interested? “Oblong Industries is indeed hiring,” says Underkoffler!
In addition to stimulating their minds, guests were able to indulge their senses with a custom fractal laser light show by Bliss Lights and a showcase of WorldViz‘s high-res immersive system. We really enjoyed seeing the reactions of excited tech early adopters as they put on the head mounted display and were directed to jump into a 150 foot chasm (in a virtual world of course).
We truly had a wonderful time opening our home and hosting an intimate evening with 150 of our closest friends and supporters. But this is absolutely just the beginning. The connections and organization are growing, so we definitely urge those interested to get involved by following our blog, becoming a founding member of the community, or joining as an industry partner.
Finally, we want to give an extra thankful nod to the panelists for taking time out of their busy schedules to share their minds with the physical event attendees and 40,000 tuned in through Techzulu‘s live streaming (videos linked below). A big thank you to VeeV Spirits for sponsoring the cocktail portion of our event and event volunteers Rebecca, Jenny, Ellen, Minh, Tim, Albert, Kaushal, and Akemi.
A look at Techzulu’s video coverage (pt. 1)
Click here for pt. 2 of Techzulu’s video coverage!
Click here for pt. 2 of Techzulu’s video coverage!
CLICK HERE for a full gallery of the event photos!
For more information on future events and collaborations, please contact us at info@immersivetech.org