Metaverse One

Spring is a time of new beginnings. Many plants begin to grow, flowers blossom, and the world comes out of winter hibernation. Yet it goes beyond a season and includes ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth. In the tech scene, it is also the blossom of a busy conference season. Let's take a look at some of the 'flowers' that attracted this tech bee the past few months. We start with March. Game Developer Conference - San Francisco, USA The Game Developers Conference or GDC  is THE event for those in the gaming industry and related technologies. As an attendee, I saw plenty of virtual reality on the expo floor. Over the past few years it has been amazing to see how companies like Unity, Google, and Facebook have increased the size of their presence at GDC. VR Gaming Summit - San Francisco, USA Following GDC was the VR Gaming Summit . The VR Gaming Summit is a conference focused on VR gaming and entertainment trends. I was an invited s...

The AEC Hackathon 2.4 was this past weekend in London. Held at Future Cities Catapult's Urban Innovation Centre , the weekend long event brought together technology developers with professionals from the built environment to create technology solutions to industry problems. While I was unable to physically attend due to my work schedule, I was still able to remote MC on the big screen and keep things going thanks to great Internet connection.    The really exciting things about this AEC Hackathon for me are it was the first one outside of the United States and the first one supported and locally organized by a government entity. The local lead organizer was Simon Hart from Innovate UK . Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency that works with people, companies and partner organizations to find and drive the science and technology innovations that will grow the UK economy. Simon and team did an amazing job with the help of AEC Hackathon board member Paul D...

The AEC Hackathon 2.3 in Southern California was this past weekend in Los Angeles. Held at UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design, the weekend long event brought together technology developers with professionals from the built environment to create technology solutions to industry problems. This AEC Hackathon set new records. While we always have folks at the events from all around the country and in some cases the world, 70% of the people in attendance were not from the SoCal area. A decent amount of us came down from the SF/Bay area and some from as far as the East Coast. We also had the highest ratio of tech engineer to industry personal with over 75% of the folks there having a technical background.  To be expected, the teams developed some pretty amazing hacks. Watch the team presentations in the video below. Winners Best Overall Project:  Team Rhumbix Best Open Source:  Team Holy Donut Best Use of Experimental Tech:  ...

So the AEC Hackathon just wrapped up its event in Dallas over the weekend of May 1-3. The event was held at the Tree House , a co-working space in the North Dallas area in the small town of Addison. Being a native Texan, it was great for me to be able to work with the local organizers Todd and Joe from Rogers-O'Brien , Brian from the Beck Group , and all the sponsors that made this happen. By far they did it bigger in Texas with the amount of tech in the house. There were virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, 3D printers, drones, 360° cameras, neural brain controllers, various haptic devices including Leap Motion and much more. There were also some really impressive hacks. See the presentations from the teams in the video below. A big thanks to the group from PolyPrinter that made this 3D printable bottle opener for the event. Make sure to visit their site and grab the 3D model file from Frank Lima’s Makerbot Thingiverse page to 3D print ...

It's a wrap, the AEC Hackathon 1.2 just concluded! Held in Seattle, Washington at University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Center for Construction Research and Education, it was a fun weekend of hacking to improve the built environment with plenty of high-tech and innovative solutions in the house. As always, I was amazed at what the AEC Hackers made over the course of the weekend. In addition to the projects created, some of my more memorable highlights from the event include: 1. Drones for architecture and climbing a tree to get the drone for team Revit My Drone . 2. An awesome smart table  touch screen device thanks to SmartUse . 3. Plenty of Virtual Reality for AEC represented including a full immersive VR setup thanks to the team at VRcade . 4. Multiple  Web3D applications that used WebGL and more. 5. FTW (For The Win): seeing alumni that have started companies from projects started at past AEC Hackathons. Video of the team p...

If you read my blog, I am sure you are very familiar with a hackathon and have probably even participated in a few. For those that have not (hi mom), this post is going to share what a hackathon is and the experience I have had with the ones I have recently organized and been involved with. It won't cover the events themselves, but more how it has affected me and my view on how to help facilitate the innovation I want to see in the world. What is a hackathon? Hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects. Occasionally, there is a hardware component as well. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week.  Some hackathons are intended simply for educational or social purposes, although in many cases the goal is to create usable software. Hackathons tend to...

November 8-10, 2013 was the very first AEC Hacktahon held at Facebook's Menlo Park campus. A first for the Architecture, Engineering, Construction Industry, the AEC Hackathon is a non-profit event that creates on-the-spot teams of technologists and industry stakeholders to shape the future of our built environment. My goal of the event was to help the Architecture, Engineering, & Construction Industry go 'Tony Stark' for a weekend and the attendees of the event did just that. For my motives and thoughts pre-hackathon, see these earlier posts titled  AEC Hackathon – Where Techies and Builders Change the World  and  Hacking a Building a Techies way . The event turned out better than I could have ever hoped for. The 130+ people that attended came from all over the U.S. and represented firms of all sizes with a few coming from as far as Asia and Europe. I was blown away by the caliber of attendee, tech gadgets (Oculus Rifts, 3D printers, scanners, Google Glass...

I feel it right to be upfront and say we are about to go on a journey. The matter at hand is something that has become very close to me and it directly affects anyone that lives and works in a house or building. In a few weeks there is going to be a first of its kind event called the AEC Hackathon . This event will break new ground in how we think about design, construction and communication about our built environment. But before we talk about this, lets step back and see how I got here. It all begins seven years back to when I was working in downtown San Francisco with one of the legends in my field. On a day like any other, I see our boss come into the office chatting with another guy that introduces himself as a home builder. This builder goes on to share how he is using game-like technology and robotic manufacturing to improve the home building process. Wait, did he say video games and robots to build houses? Before SF, I spent 15 years in Dallas, Texas. Here is where I got bomb...