Augmented Reality Event - ARE2010

From Canada it was back to Silicon Valley for the ARE2010 in Santa Clara.

"The Augmented Reality Event (ARE), the first global event dedicated to advancing the business of augmented reality in the US, announced today that the inaugural event will be held at Santa Clara Convention Center, June 2-3, 2010. The activities will be kicked off by a highly anticipated keynote from the “augmented reality prophet,” world-renowned author, futurist, editor and critic, Bruce Sterling.

Start-ups, developers, mobile and hardware companies along with organizations within entertainment, media, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more, will gather to focus on evolving the much hyped technology into a productive, sustainable and entertaining new medium. ARE will include more than 30 sessions organized into business, technology and production tracks. The exhibition floor will showcase leading companies and products in augmented reality and will also host a career fair to help kick start the young industry." -website

ARE2010 did just that.

-Day 1

-Day 2

An impressive line-up of speakers contributed to engaging keynotes,

informative panels, sessions, and presentations. I am glad that the organizers of the ARE2010 had a panel on standards found this presentation by fellow Standards panelist Gene Becker to be very informative.

I spent a good amount of time on the expo floor and in meetings so I say keep visiting the ARE2010 official site for the session videos and check out these great write-ups, AR Goes To Hollywood, Locatively, and Augmented Reality utopia in Silicon Valley.

Top favorites of the event:

-Wonder Turner by Helen Papagiannis. Helen Papagiannis is a designer, researcher and artist specializing in Augmented Reality (AR). The demo was of 3 rotating stacked cubes with markers on 4 sides for 12 markers total. As you turned the cubes, new images would appear in the AR application making an interesting take on 'ARt'.

-The Web3D Consortium's SIG on real world uses of AR and how the ISO interactive 3D open standard X3D is being used for augmented reality was a great addition to the event. Presentations included Fraunhofer IGD work that the research institute is doing with image tracking and location based AR, and Dr. Michael Aratow presented on how AR is being used to help the medical industry. A nice writeup on Read Write Web about it here.

- James Alliban's presentation best practices with AR Webcam apps was educational.

- I got a copy of Retinex, an augmented reality comic book from the team at SpiralConcepts. :)

-Total Immersion announced the creation of a logo the company hopes will become a standard for identifying AR applications. The purpose of the logo, AR Plus, is to signify when an interactive augmented experience has been implemented into an application. I really like this idea and hope the industry supports it.

- Metaio announced their Junaio Glue

and showed off some pairs of the Adidas augmented reality sneakers.

My video covering the event.

Well done Tish, Bruce, Sean, Whurley, and everyone else that made this event a 'reality'. See you at next year's event.