My whirlwind trip through the conferences and summits of October and November starts with WorldSummitAI this week and then moves onto VRDays on 25 – 27 October.
In-between is the amazing Dutch Design Week to help out Anke Kuipers at Bendit Shoes. Anke and I worked together on the first #cocreate2Accelerate 2016 as Anke was one of the incredible Dutch Futurist Thought Leaders matched to one of the five SA companies, Sea Monster. I was the PM on the project and since then I try to go over once a year to hang out with one of the smartest people I know. And this year, I have combined it with the best conferences; WorldSummitAI, VRDays and Websummit.
More about VR Days.
VR Days 2017 is the third edition of the conference with three days devoted to inspiring keynotes, expert sessions, workshops and seminars with the best brains and the most creative content. On Wednesday October 25th, the conference starts off the day at the DeLaMar Theater. There are so many speakers I am super excited to listen to, but to mention just a few…
Tim Milliron yes, that Tim, Pixar Tim. Stefano Baldassi who is laser focused on human visual and multi-sensory interactions with the world. Samantha Gorman is a writer, artist, curator and educator, seriously cool. Leen Segers who is a huge inspiration to me. Tupac Martir, the internationally acclaimed multimedia artist, visual designer and creative director, specialising in light. Boo Aguilar who literally plays in the space I love to read and study, the intersection between art, design, VR, AR, XR, AI, science and philosophy and Philip Rosedale, because, well, Philip Rosedale!
There is an entire exhibition of demos over two days! 26 & 27 October. The Church of VR! The Philosopher’s Salon! And there is also the The Halo Award for AR, VR, and MR projects. “Halo’s goal is to shine a special light on outstanding European works, performances, projects and the creative people that produced them.” The works will be rewarded with a Gold, Silver or Bronze Halo and there is only on ‘Diamond Halo’ will be given to the the best among the Golden Halo’s. The audience will vote online for the ‘Heavenly Halo’. The Halo Awards’ ambition is to “set the standard for quality works and to unite the VR, AR, and MR community in passion, excellence, and innovation.”
It is going to be a very exciting month, if you are at WorldSummitAI, VRDays or Websummit, please let me know on my Twitter @chantallouw_
Cofounders
Benjamin de Wit is Founder and Festival Director of VR Days, Europe’s leading creative professional VR/AR/MR event. De Wit was trained as an actor and worked with Ivo van Hove’s Toneelgroep Amsterdam from 2001-2007. Since then, he has developed several businesses including, Spot On Agency, agency for actors and Studio Stomp, digital agency. Benjamin de Wit is the driving force behind The Classical Story, a multi-reality experience for classical music. He is also on the board of Norma, the Dutch neighbouring rights organization for musicians and actors.
Daniel Doornink started his career at a large Dutch corporate (ING) where he gained lots of hands-on experience with Scrum, Agile and Lean Startup techniques. He put his experience to good use mentoring start-ups at Rockstart in Amsterdam and has been involved in their smart energy accelerator program.
Spring 2014 he started the Dutch community VRNL with over a thousand members currently, bringing together everyone passionate about VR in the Netherlands. A year later he organised the first European meetup at NUMA in Paris, uniting the Dutch, German, Belgian and French communities and co-founded VRDAYS Europe. In August 2015 he joined the Parisian-based startup VideoStitch as their VP Strategic Partnerships. Recently he founded VRBASE in Amsterdam with the goal of uniting several physical hotspots in Europe and to create a true VR/AR ecosystem. VRBASE is an incubator/co-working space and (experimental) content production company.
