Chris Grayson
AWE Business Track Moderator...
Philip Rosedale
Creator of Second Life and A lifelong entrepreneur, in 1995, Philip Rosedale created an innovative Internet video conferencing product (called “FreeVue”), which was later acquired by RealNetworks where (in 1996) he went on to become Vice President and CTO. In 1999, Rosedale left RealNetworks and founded Linden Lab. There he led the creation of a virtual civilization called Second Life, fulfilling his lifelong dream of an open-ended, Internet-connected virtual world. In 2010, he co-founded LoveMachine (www.lovemachineinc.com) as a lab to build several new ideas at the edge of work, computing, commerce, and intelligence. Out of this work, grew Worklist, a global community of web developers, and Coffee & Power. In November, 2011, Rosedale released Coffee & Power version 1.0, a site that enabled people to connect for small jobs and services using a free-market system and distributed work principles. He is currently working on C&P 2.0, which includes a mobile application to extend and expand your work identity online....
Will Wright
Renowned game creator of The Sims, SimCity and Spore, widely acknowledged for creating the simulation video game genre, unveiled the highly anticipated SporeTM in September 2008. Fans eagerly embraced the creation tools in Spore and have created over 100 Million pieces of user-created content, as of Summer 2009. Spore has been distinguished with such honors as Popular Science’s “Best of What’s New Award,” Popular Mechanics’s “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, placing 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....
Bruce Sterling
Known as the “prophet of Augmented Reality”, 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....
Meron Gribetz
Meron is the Founder and CEO of Meta-View. In 2005 I fell in love with startup culture. At that time I was working on one of the first mobile QR code technologies. Our group pioneered QR use in every day scenarios, and I became fascinated in all things where tech intersects with the way people perceive and interact with their surroundings. To that end, I have studied Computer Science (focusing on Augmented Reality) and Neuroscience (because we all know where AR ends up) at Columbia University. Since I started the company, we have collaborated with Epson and a number of other companies to create the world’s first consumer device that was built from the ground up for AR. During the next few years we hope to open the field of Augmented Reality to mainstream, and to that end, we are running a crowdsourcing campaign soon. Stay tuned via our website meta-view.com …...
Brian Haberlin
Brian Haberlin is a comic book artist, writer, editor and producer. He began his career in comics working at Top Cow Productions, where he co-created the Witchblade franchise, which has since expanded to include multiple spin-offs, a live action television series, an anime, and an upcoming film. He founded Haberlin Studios in 1995, producing commercial illustrations and digital coloring for Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Image Comics. He then co-founded Avalon Studios, which published many successful fantasy and sci-fi titles, including Stone, Aria, Area 52, and M-Rex. Haberlin also served for two years as Editor in Chief of Todd McFarlane Productions and penciled and inked its flagship title, Spawn. His work is in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Museum....
Damon Hernandez
AWE Technology Track Moderator...
Kevin Hughes
Kevin Hughes is a graduate student in Computer Engineering at Queen’s University researching in the RCV (Robotics and Computer Vision) Lab under the supervision of Dr. Michael Greenspan. Kevin’s specific area of research is background subtraction and event detection using subspace learning, his other interests include augmented reality, machine learning and robotics....
Ori Inbar
Ori Inbar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Augmented Reality.ORG, a global non-for-profit organization dedicated to advancing augmented reality (AR), and the producer of Augmented World Expo – the world’s largest event dedicated exclusively to the AR industry. Augmented Reality.ORG’s mission is to promote the true potential of AR, and hatch augmented reality initiatives that offer unique value to its active users. In 2009, Ori was the co-founder and CEO of Ogmento, one of the first venture-backed companies conceived from the ground up to develop and publish augmented reality games – games that are played in the real world. Ori has been an enterprising champion of the augmented reality industry since 2007. He established Games Alfresco – a leading augmented reality blog that helped popularize AR, and co-founded the Augmented Reality Event (ARE) – the world’s largest and most influential conference for AR – now in its 4th year. Ori is a recognized speaker in the AR industry as well as a sought after adviser for augmented reality initiatives. Previously, as Senior Vice President of Solution Marketing for SAP’s platform, Ori was responsible for the positioning and marketing of SAP NetWeaver – which under his leadership grew from a mere concept to a billion dollar business for SAP. Prior to SAP, Ori joined TopTier Software, as one of the first employees of this start-up. He lead the development and introduction to the market of more than 15 multimedia and business applications including the world’s leading enterprise portal, which in 2001 was acquired by SAP for $400 Million. Ori has a double major in Computer Science and Cinema from Tel Aviv University, and is a graduate of INSEAD University business leadership program....
Petter Ivmark
Petter Ivmark is the cofounder of 13th Lab a startup working on computer vision for mobile devices. 13th Lab’s technology and browser understands and tracks both 2D and 3D environments. In 2011, we released the first iOS consumer application based on SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping), a technique for modeling and tracking 3D spaces in real time. We’ve since made huge improvements in speed, accuracy and map size, and are making this technology available to both regular web pages through the PointCloud Browser and to native iOS and Android applications through the PointCloud SDK....