Sam Watts of Make Real

Our guest is Sam Watts, Director of Immersive Technologies at Make Real.

Make Real, develops immersive digital products for learning and change. This includes virtual reality, augmented reality and serious games for global customers. In previous leadership roles, Sam has delivered and supported dozens of digital products at Zynga, NCsoft, Kerb and Epic.

Clients have included BBC, EDF Energy, Sky and Sony PlayStation.

Find out more on Make Real at http://www.makereal.co.uk/ and connect with Sam at sam.watts@makereal.co.uk and on twitter at @vr_sam.

James Giglio of MVP Interactive

James Giglio, Founder & CEO, of MVP Interactive is our guest. MVP Interactive enhances brand experiences through custom-built experiential technology such as virtual reality, augmented reality, gesture, facial morphing, social media platforms  and mobile applications.

James has been working with Coca-Cola (among other major brands) over the past few years to create in-venue and out-of-venue experiences and programs that are on the forefront of experiential technology.

MVP Interactive has worked with the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, the U.S. Open and many others to deploy VR/AR and immersive tech activations. This is a great discussion on how the company has achieved success, and very educational on why big brands and sports teams are diving into VR and AR marketing.

Connect with James at james@mvp-interactive.com or www.mvp-interactive.com.

Mark Milstein of Microstock Solutions and VRmeta

On this episode we are joined by Mark Milstein, Founder & Managing Director at Microstock Solutions & Creator of VRmeta.

VRmeta allows you to effectively meta-tag your immersive media content to ensure that it's searchable and monetizable via search. Mark has a fascinating story of how he built Microstock Solutions, and how it lead to the new services of VRmeta, a service that seems applicable to most any content creator in the immersive media space.

VRmeta is offering to every VR/AR Association member worldwide, two months FREE of VRmeta http://www.vrmeta.io/register and use the code VRARA2018.

Connect with Mark at milstein@microstocksolutions.com or on LinkedIn here and look for a new announcement from the company at IBC in Amsterdam on September 12, 2018.

Dan Burgar of the Vancouver VR/AR Association Chapter

Dan Burgar, Vancouver Chapter President of the VR/AR Association, and notably, the Vancouver chapter is one of the largest and fastest growing chapters globally. Dan is also a writer for VRScout, one of the world’s leading immersive media companies, reaching over 250 million people. Dan is also a contributing writer for the Daily Hive and he travels the world speaking at industry conferences regarding trends in VR/AR and immersive media technologies.

Dan talks about the Vancouver VR/AR ecosystem and what he’s seeing in other parts of the world where he’s visited and spoken at events in Dubai, and South America to name a couple.

This episode is airing post the VR/AR Global Summit, but the interview took place before the show where Dan also talks about what he’s looking forward to at the conference.

Connect with Dan on Linkedin or on Twitter at: @dburgar and @vrara_vancouver.

Kris Kolo returns

Kris Kolo, the Global Executive Director of the VR/AR Association, makes a return appearance to the podcast.

Kris talks about industry insights he’s seeing at a global level, the upcoming VR/AR Global Summit related to speakers, topics and experiences you can expect, and it goes into detail about the VRARA industry committees, white papers, and ecosystem reports being generated by these association committees.

We also discuss some of Kris’s and my predictions for the coming years in XR.

Connect with Kris at kris@thevrara.com.

Alan Smithson of MetaVRse

Alan Smithson, CEO of MetaVRse joins us to talk about MetaVRse and their vCommerce (Virtual & Augmented Reality for Retail and eCommerce).

MetaVRse is also building the XR Learning Centre and was recently accepted to the Museum of the Future Accelerator in Dubai.

Alan is a LinkedIn VR/AR thought leader with millions of views of his articles and videos. We also talk about his upcoming keynotes at the VR/AR Global Summit in Vancouver with topics including Virtual Conferences of the Future, and Enterprise XR use cases.

Alan’s purpose in life is to inspire and educate the next generation of young entrepreneurs to think and act in a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable way. This is a fun and informative discussion with Alan.

Find him on LinkedIn searching Alan Smithson, or email him at alan@metavrse.com.

Mfon Akpan of National Louis University

On this episode we talk with Mfon Akpan Assistant Professor of Business at National Louis University in Chicago, Illinois. Mfon discusses the powerful opportunities that we have to apply VR in education.

Mfon was originally inspired by the game Second Life, and began thinking about how VR could be applied in a game-like setting to teach auditing and accounting practices in an applied environment. He is now forging new ground in the University education ecosystem that you’ll find inspiring.

Mfon is on the Education Committee of the VRAR Association, and will also be giving a TedX presentation in Franklin, NH on Sept. 15, 2018.

Connect with him via email at makpan@nl.edu   

Anne-Marie Enns of the VR/AR Global Summit

Anne-Marie Enns, Executive Producer of the VR/AR Global Summit, shares with us the inside scoop on what to expect at the Global Summit conference, taking place in Vancouver on September 21-22 2018 at the PARQ Hotel & Casino.

We talk about speakers, topics, workshops, the startup pitchfest, business speed dating, after-parties and more. This is a fun discussion on the excitement around VR/AR, Vancouver and the global leaders coming together.

To connect with Anne-Marie about exhibiting or sponsoring at the VR/AR Global Summit, reach out at am@thevrara.com or visit http://www.thevrara.com/vr-ar-global-summit/.