VR Toronto, more a DIY Symposium less Tech Conference, took place at Toronto’s Ryerson’s University on June 24-26
Because I’m not an academic, the conferences I make a point of attending are the big commercial ones like The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where leading VR/AR Mixed Reality companies like Sony and Microsoft make big announcements. Places where I can meet everyone and try everything as efficiently as possible. I don’t say no to the free food and parties, either.
But there’s another world. A world of academics, ambitious grad students, CTOs and front end developers, who gather largely out of sight of business types in places like Ryerson University in Toronto where computer scientists think about three-dimensional navigation, volumetric capture, telepresence and where their next grant is coming from. What they really need are visionary entrepreneurs to productize and commercialize their inventions, and conferences like VR Toronto (VRTO) helps connect them. The next insanely great thing may not come out of Stanford, it may come out of Toronto.
Because of this, VRTO has more of a feel of a symposium than a conference, where ideas are traded, not SKUs. There are no fancy booths or marketing spin. Here people are more likely to show a demo on their phone than a finished product in a booth.
,
,
From L to R: General Manager Chrissy Aitchison, Producer Jessy Blaze, and Founder and Programmer Keram Malicki-Sanchez
The conference is led by executive director and programmer Keram Malicki-Sanchez, a Toronto native who plans the conference from LA, where he has a long list of acting credits, and Jessy Blaze, a freelance conference organizer whose stock and trade was regional Comicons before coming onboard to co-produce VRTO and FIVARS.
There were 100 speakers, 62 exhibits/installations and approximately 700 attendees, nearly double the size of last year’s gathering. The opening reception featured a well-known local Toronto jazz combo in a large reception room at Ryerson, which followed an invitation-only opening day “onboarding workshop” for film & TV industry craftspeople looking to better understand this new format. The reception featured an abundance of food, provided by Keram’s own family (awesome ceviche shots). Jessy’s aunt, who handled craft services for 40 volunteers worried, needlessly it turns out, about running out of wine.
“VRTO didn’t grow out of a Meetup necessarily; it was always going to be a symposium and a sort of world’s fair for the most edgy prototypes,” said Malicki-Sanchez. “The “grassroots” nature you are referring to – the handmadeness and family participation is a function of its authenticity: by whatever means necessary we will strive for measurable results, real conversations, connections and opportunities.”
Bob Fine, Washington, D.C. based Editor and Publisher of VR Voice, said “I was really debating whether the time and money was worth traveling to Toronto, but it was a very good conference to attend. Even though the venue wasn’t ideal, it had a positive grass roots feel to it, and the organizers did a very good job of creating a variety of exhibit areas showcasing VR arcade games to Augmented Reality artwork.”
,
,
Keram Malicki-Sanchez, Co-Founder and Head Programmer, VR Toronto
“Bringing all of these plus the most forward-thinkers from the US and abroad together in an environment of collaboration and questioning the status quo makes VRTO a symposium in the truest sense: designed to foster and engender collaboration between various sectors of the industry – be it connecting health research to VR developers or architects to game designers, or students to venture capitalists,” said Malicki-Sanchez.
Shachar Weis,”Vice”, an Isreali software developer based in London Ontario (“can’t stand the Tel-Aviv traffic”) with 20 years of experience, recently founded Packet39.com, a development house for VR/AR/MR and Computer Vision applications. His clients are in manufacturing and automotive. “We published a VR game, but the home market is currently too small to turn a profit”. Vice gave packed presentations, “3D Scanning for VR” and “How to make a terrible VR game” a demonstration of how seamlessly Apple ARKit and Unity work together. “I met a slew of interesting and passionate people, made some new friends and left with leads that will hopefully grow into real projects,” Vice said after returning from the conference.
Pete Forde, a colorful Toronto software entrepreneur, said “2017 was my first VRTO and I was really impressed by the talks I attended. This is a boost for Toronto’s growing VR/AR ecosystem. More people need to know what’s happening here.” I visited Forde’s itsme studio where he showed me a fully automated system that converts photographs into recognizable, photorealistic full-body 3D avatars. In about 70 seconds, my avatar was complete, doing back-flips and ready to be integrated into Unity applications including those made with ARKit. “My avatar is going to outlive me,” Forde said, “I just hope he has nice things to say about me when I’m gone.” The experience left me, literally, jumping up and down.
,
,
Pete Forde made an avatar of me. I flipped over it.
,
Source: Forbes