Ajay Fry, Co-Host InnerSpace
Space

Ajay began his national television career on YTV hosting the coveted Saturday morning block CRUNCH. After two successful years he blasted off to Space where he’s been in orbit for the last 7 years hosting InnerSpace (Weeknights at 6:00PM EST). Along the way he’s made appearances in the web-series, Captain Canuck and Guidestones as well as a cameo on the Space original series Bitten.

He grew up “in the business” as a child actor and appeared on Big Wolf on Campus, Are You Afraid of the Dark, Lassie, and Undressed while lending his voice to the cartoons Little LuLu, Arthur and many more. Days after his 18th birthday he flew to Beijing to voice the main characters in a series of English language educational videos. In just 30 days he logged more than 200 hours in studio and provided a variety of unique character voices.

More recently, he launched his YouTube series, 5 on Fry. The series acts as a platform for Ajay to offer his take on five topics of interest; TV series, movies, games or current affairs, if it’s popular, Ajay’s got something to say about it.

Buzz Hays, Head of Product
Lytro
Keynote

Mr. Hays has been a fixture in the cinema and content creation world for decades. Just some of his influential roles have include being the Director of Engineering at Lucasfilm THX and helping build Robert De Niro’s TriBeCa Film Center in New York. He also co-founded the TriBeCa Interactive game development studio and served as Executive Producer and Chief Creative Officer at Protozoa/Dotcomix, a real-time animation company based in San Francisco.

In one of his earlier film-making pursuits, Mr. Hays co-produced “Swimming With Sharks” alongside Kevin Spacey. It was when he joined Sony Imageworks that Mr. Hays developed influential stereoscopic 3D movies for Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Just some of his visual effects credits include Beowulf, Monster Hour, and G-Force.

Mr. Hays also founded the 3D Technology Center for Sony Corporation where he taught cinematographers, directors, camera professionals and producers the art of telling stories in 3D using modern 3D camera systems. Additionally, Buzz worked closely with Sony Electronics in the design of a number of stereoscopic 3D technologies including the PS3 3D system, 3D televisions, 3D camera systems, and 3D software applications.

Continuing his path of developing exciting new content creation technologies, Mr. Hays is now CTO of Lytro. Lytro is building a premiere Light Field imaging platform enabling artists, scientists and innovators to pursue their goals with an unprecedented level of freedom and control. Among other things, light field technology makes it possible to capture live action footage that captures the nuances needed for positional tracking with virtual reality and other immersive technologies. It also has direct applications with traditional 2D and stereoscopic 3D cinema and broadcasting.

David Parker, Technology Consultant
Keynote

David is a consultant who brings bleeding edge technology to enterprise companies like Canadian Tire, Rogers and many of the leading banks. He brings together cross-functional teams to rapidly test and prototype new ideas and solutions. He has consulted on implementing new technologies such as biometrics, empathy analysis, IoT platforms, and, most recently, artificial intelligence.

Wanting to give back to his community and to show his daughters the value and importance of helping others, David started volunteering at Mount Sinai Hospital in January of 2017. Working closely with their volunteers and palliative team, David makes it possible for terminal patients to experience their final wishes with the help of virtual reality. David is hopeful that using media like VR, we can change the way we treat pain, deal with hospital boredom, and increase the quality of patience’s life at all stages.  David’s work has also been featured on CBC.

Habib Zargarpour, Visual Effects Supervisor

Habib’s recent role as Visual Effects Consultant on Blade Runner 2049 partnering with VFX Supervisor John Nelson allowed him to make full use of his creative and visual skills on a broad scope of work. In 2016 he worked with VFX Supervisor Scott Anderson on Series of Unfortunate Events for Netflix. Prior to that he was Partner Director of Visuals at Microsoft Studios responsible for visuals across all Publishing titles for XBox One, Windows, and Hololens. He has over 14 years of experience in visual effects for film and 14 years in the games industry. Nominated for two Academy Awards and winner of two BAFTAs in Visual Effects for his work on Twister and The Perfect Storm while at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), some of his other film projects include two Star Trek films, Star Wars Episode I, The Bourne Identity, Spawn, and Signs.

Habib received a Visual Effects Society (VES) Award in 2006 for Need for Speed Most Wanted. His project RYSE: Son of Rome was a launch title for XBox One and is still recognized as a visual showcase for the platform. He developed a Real Time Visualization system used by Jon Favreau and DP Bill Pope to film The Jungle Book and by Steven Spielberg on Ready Player One. He is very passionate about using real time techniques in film making and applying his experience to World Building. Habib is an active member of AMPAS VFX Branch, BAFTA, a founding member of the Visual Effects Society and the 5D-Conference, and serves on the Immersive Technology Alliance Advisory Board.

Tricia Dugan, Vice President and Head of Global Go to Market (GTM), Immersive Computing
HP Inc.

Tricia Dugan is vice president and head of global go-to-market for Immersive computing at HP Inc. where she is responsible for bringing immersive products to market including Sprout Pro by HP, the world’s first immersive computer. HP has a portfolio of immersive solutions including reality capture, VR/AR, and 3D technologies.

Tricia brings 20 years of technology industry experience to the HP Immersive team with a background spanning engineering and sales. Ms. Dugan’s passion for new technology was developed at Advanced Micro Devices where she held a number of leadership roles including microprocessor design & development, new product innovation & worldwide sales working with strategic OEMs on advanced technology integration in servers, workstations, commercial, and consumer products. She has a passion for bringing innovative new technologies to life.

John Cutter, Product Manager
Watson Developers Labs & AR/VR Labs, IBM

John Cutter is a husband, developer and Product Manager for IBM’s AR/VR Labs (in that order) who works with AR/VR developers to create developer tools powered by Watson. John believes immersive technology like virtual reality, augmented reality & mixed reality is the next major computing platform that will change everything about how humans perceive the world (and hopefully bring humanity a bit closer).

John has worked at Google and recently partnered with Ubisoft to launch voice command & control in their VR game, Star Trek: Bridge Crew. He attended the University of San Diego and currently lives in Silicon Valley.

Nick Brown, Stereographer
Stereo D Toronto

Mr. Brown is responsible for overseeing the high-quality conversion of 2D movies into stereo 3D. Most recently he supervised the 3D conversion of Blade Runner 2049, working closely with Oscar-nominated Director Denis Villeneuve and Cinematographer Roger Deakins to shape the stereo look. His most recent 3D conversion credits as Stereographer also include King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.

Prior to working in 3D conversion, Mr. Brown gained over ten years of 3D experience as a Stereographer in Los Angeles shooting native 3D. His first venture into 3D was in 2006 on U23D, which led to six years of working with 3D Technology/Production company 3ality Digital in Burbank. He worked as Stereographer on more than fifty 3D productions around the world, including feature films, commercials, music videos, concerts, and even many of the first live 3D sports broadcasts. His first film as Stereographer was Step Up Revolution, which garnered praise from renowned film critic Leonard Maltin specifically for its use of 3D: “While the story is a collection of clichés, it’s the first movie I’ve seen this year that justified the use of those clunky 3-D glasses and actually made the experience enjoyable.”

Since joining Stereo D in 2014, Mr. Brown has applied his native 3D experience to the conversion process, advocating new and advanced methods to increase the quality and creative use of 3D. His goal has been to show how, with the right techniques, conversion can be indiscernible from native 3D, and in some cases even better. With Blade Runner 2049, he hopes audiences find the 3D conversion looks “more native than native.”

Éric Minoli, Vice-President and CTO
Groupe Média TFO (Toronto)

Éric Minoli, who just won the Innovation Award and the Judges’s Prize at IBC, is a serial innovator and disruptor, who combines the creativity and risk-taking of a digital media entrepreneur with the meticulous planning and organizational vision of a process engineer. For 20 years he has fearlessly pushed the limits of what is possible in the world of audio-visual production. Eric has overseen Groupe Média TFO’s amazing transformation from a single minority language tv channel into an award-winning, multi-platform digital content and distribution network of premium French-language education content.

In his role as VP Technologies and Optimization, he currently manages a team of 70 people responsible for all technical and production capabilities ( IT, web, studio, digital) as well as related work flow and process planning.

Since April 2016, Groupe Media TFO, a not-for-profit broadcaster and francophone content creator has brought together a number of technical partners with the aim of creating a high-productivity, low-cost approach to virtual studios: the LUV (Laboratoire d’univers virtuels). It uses the power of the Unreal gaming engine to create an infinite variety of virtual worlds at the click of a mouse. For the first time, this unique space produces huge amounts of kids’ content daily. No need for post-production, everything happens in real-time. It gives a completely free rein to its talented team of creative writers, using sophisticated effects (fire, water, fog), yet remaining within a tight, public service budget. LUV is a complete game-changer in the broadcast industry.

John Baker, Managing Director and COO
Chosen Realities LLC

Chosen Realities specializes in the rapid prototyping full-body mixed reality solutions as well as consulting big box technology vendors in the VR/AR/MR space.  They are currently building the US Army’s mixed reality dismounted training system prototype – think “Call of Duty” but played outside mixing real and virtual people and objects.

John has been bringing cutting edge technology projects to life for 23 years for commercial, civil, defense, and intelligence clients and regularly leads projects with over $200M in funding.

Kevin Chang, Product Designer
Daydream Labs, Google

Daydream Labs is a division at Google that explores AR/VR interaction patterns and use cases through rapid prototyping. Hired at 19, Kevin Chang was Google’s youngest full-time employee at the time. Prior to Google, Mr. Chang founded video purifying service ViewPure (acquired in 2016) and co-founded cause marketing platform JoinGiving.  Over the course of years,  Mr. Chang’s team has amassed a large list of UX findings in immersive computing, ranging from co-present VR, to smartphone AR, to 3DOF VR and more.

Jeff Miller, Director of Sales for the Americas
HumanEyes

Jeff’s career in the imaging, photographic, and graphic arts markets has tracked with the analog-to-digital shift and new technologies we’ve witnessed in the industry over the last 30 plus years. Throughout his career, Jeff has supported and consulted for a diverse body of international clients that include government agencies, commercial printers, photo labs, artists, designers, videographers / photographers, ad agencies, universities, and Fortune 50 to 500 companies, including Dell, Motorola, Samsung, Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Canon, OCE, EFI, FujiFilm, Agfa and Kodak.

Erik Bakke, Co-founder
Motion Workshop

Motion Workshop is a leading developer of inertial motion tracking and sensor technology, and creator of the Shadow full body motion capture system. Since 2006, Motion Workshop has delivered cutting edge hardware and software solutions for tracking human body motion to hundreds of Fortune 500 companies and educational institutions worldwide.

As a software and hardware engineer, Erik focuses on developing an ecosystem of tools to bring real-time full body presence to VR, AR, MR applications. The Shadow motion capture system is an ideal part of this solution, used in content creation for games/film, biomechanics research, and simulation/training.

Shain Wasserman, Director and CEO
Shain Michael Design Inc.

Shain is passionate about creating ideas and environments using the latest in CGI technology and exploring those environments using many digital platforms. His most recent VR experience was created for the Toronto Lift Cannabis Expo to educate the public on federally licensed grow operations and medical cannabis use. With legalization of cannabis in Canada fast approaching in 2018, Shain is exploring how immersive experiences can educate and inform the public about this unique industry.

Shain attended the University of Guelph’s Landscape Architecture program and has a strong background in design and 3D modeling. He worked in Alberta in the golf course and subdivision design industry before moving to Ontario to work for the biggest entertainment design firm in Canada. After gaining valuable experience working on projects for companies like Universal Studios and Six Flags, he branched out and founded SMD to focus on his passion of design, 3D visualization, and VR experiences.

Frank Vitz, Creative Director Immersive Technology Team
Advanced Micro Devices / Radeon Technology Group

Over the course of decades, Frank Vitz has held esteemed titles like Vice-President of Production at Robert Abel and Associates, Creative Director for the Frostbite Development team at DICE, Creative Director at Crytek, and most recently Creative Director of the Immersive Technology Team at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

Mr. Vitz has been creating computer graphics, animation and visual effects since the early 1980’s and has esteemed credits on such films as Tron, Judge Dredd, X-Men One and Two, Stargate, and more. He has also worked in the out of home entertainment business where he designed the visual effects for “The Adventures of Spider-Man” in Orlando, and “In Search of the Obelisk” for the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. Just one of the developments he is famous for is inventing the transformation effects used for the Mystique character in the X-Men movies.

During his tenure at Electronic Arts and DICE, Frank’s work on the Frostbite Engine resulted in games like Battlefield, Mirror’s Edge, Plants Vs. Zombies, Mass Effect, Star Wars and more. While at Crytek, Mr. Vitz and his team’s work provided the pipeline and tools that Crytek used to create popular VR launch titles including “The Climb” on Oculus Rift, and “Robinson the Journey” on PSVR. Frank also co-directed “VRScore – Sky Harbor,” the VR benchmark produced in collaboration with Basemark.

Today frank is at AMD where he is leading a new team dedicated to integrating support for advanced AMD GPU features into real time engines including Unreal, Unity, Lumberyard and CRYENGINE. This effort includes driving all the latest AMD advances such as Liquid VR, MGPU, Asynchronous Compute, Multi Res and Foveated rendering, and a lot more. He will also be leading a new team to showcase these modifications and enhancements in examples and real time demos.

Ben Zimmer, Founder and CEO
Enable Education

Enable Education designs educational technology and provides online training development services for learners of all ages and in a variety of industries.

Enable has received numerous awards for its innovative learning solutions, and has formed partnerships with leaders in education and training. Most recently, Enable was named Business of the Year (medium-sized) by the Milton Chamber of Commerce, and was recently nominated for an Ontario Business Achievement Award.

Always pushing the envelope in the use of technology in education and learning, Enable in actively working with AR, VR, serious games and the Internet of Things.

As a former software developer in automation and robotics, and as a Professor, Ben brings to the table a unique view on the alignment between technology and learning, and between manufacturing and education.

Saleem Khan, Founder
JOVRNALISM

Saleem Khan is a digital news pioneer who first worked with virtual reality for realtime immersive 3D data visualization in the 1990s. He is the founder of JOVRNALISM — a professional resource for VR in journalism — where he helps news organizations as a consulting producer, trainer and adviser. He advocates ethics and inclusion, and advises Google, Knight Foundation and Online News Association immersive news initiative Journalism 360.

Saleem is Emergent Technology editor at global context-and-analysis journalism organization The Conversation, and leads investigative news and technology project invstg8.net. He launched and ran Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s technology news service, was global technology and news editor at Metro and Toronto Star newspapers, and has reported for the New York Times, Globe and Mail, Fast Company and others. He was a Kiplinger Fellow, Unity Fellow, and won OpenNews, African Media Initiative, and Mozilla foundation honours. Formerly the Canadian Association of Journalists’ chairman, Saleem is an Investigative Reporters & Editors awards judge, and co-authored ONA’s industry-leading Social Newsgathering Code of Ethics. He is based in Toronto.

Dr. Jon Peddie, CEO
Jon Peddie Research

Dr. Jon Peddie is one of the pioneers of the graphics industry, and formed Jon Peddie Research (JPR) to provide customer intimate consulting and market forecasting services. Peddie lectures at numerous conferences on topics pertaining to graphics technology and the emerging trends in digital media technology. Regularly credited as one of the world’s most influential analysts, he regularly advises investors in the GLG network, he is frequently quoted in trade and business publications, was the former president of Siggraph Pioneers, and he is also the author or co-author of twelve books. His most recent works include “Augmented Reality: Where we Will All Live” and “The History of Visual Magic in Computers”. Dr. Peddie has also been honored by the CAD Society with a lifetime achievement award.

Nathan Weir, Designer, 3-D Visualization, Creative Studio
FORREC Ltd.

Nathan is FORREC’s interactive and new technologies whiz kid. FORREC is a global entertainment design company with expertise in designing theme parks, water parks, resorts, visitor attractions and mixed use + entertainment spaces. Driven by a keen fascination for the next big thing, he stays on the cutting edge of 3-D visualization and animation while maintaining solid skills in model management, level design, rendering and compositing. Nathan is FORREC’s champion of VR and immersive technology; his expertise and creativity have helped the company explore new ways of applying these innovative technologies to benefit the business. Nathan joined FORREC in 2011 after graduating from George Brown College in game development.

Simon Chu, CEO
Escape VR

Simon has been working with location based VR experiences at his company Escape VR for over a year. Starting with creating high quality content for the escape room industry, the team at Escape VR has successfully deployed their turn-key VR solution to over 20 locations in five countries.

Before his endeavors in VR, Simon has been and is still the CEO of StuckPixel, a mobile app company. As CEO, Simon has helped his team capture the #1 app ranking on Apple’s mobile appstore, then proceeded to push three more apps into the top 10. StuckPixel has generated 50 million app downloads with hundreds of thousands of daily active users.

Samuel McLean,Marketing & Sales
Suometry

Samuel works in the branding and content side of Suometry, a Montreal-based 360 3D VR startup that boasts the fastest 3D 360 streaming solutions. With a background in engineering and film production, his involvement in the production and post-production pipeline continues to explore the applications of immersive live virtual reality entertainment.

Derick Downey, Professsor, Arts Technology
Illinois State University

Derick Downey is a full-time professor for Illinois State University’s Program in Arts Technology where he teaches courses in audio engineering, electronic music production, programming with Max, digital storytelling, and more.

Last year, Derick and his business partner Brian Jesse opened Immersion Arcade, the United State’s first HTC Vive arcade, which ran for four months before they decided to follow other opportunities. Derick is now pursuing a doctorate of education focusing on the use of VR HMDs in K-12 classrooms and is seeking collaborators for a grant proposal that will explore teaching effectiveness of VR health-education experiences.

Derick is writing an e-book reflecting on the many lessons learned from opening and closing Immersion Arcade, and will be sharing some of the valuable lessons learned at Immersed with hopes that they will propel the success of others in the field.

Dan Greenwald, CEO and Chief Creative Officer
White Rhino

White Rhino is a strategic marketing firm with offices in Boston and San Diego. Dan’s B2Me process combines principles of neuroscience, psychology, and marketing and is the driving force behind hundreds of marketing programs for B2B and healthcare companies, globally. Dan has been recognized with numerous industry awards for interactive, strategy, advertising, branding, design and user experience work and is a frequent speaker for MBA programs at many Boston area universities.

Aurelian Rus, Ambassador
VRPlayin

Having joined the team at VRPlayin since its inception in April 2017, Aurelian is a true supporter of immersive technologies. With past B2B and B2C experience, he is always looking at the future of virtual and augmented reality and the possible applications in various industry sectors. As an ambassador at VRPlayin he is on the floor with guests trying virtual reality for the first time gaining valuable insight and feedback on people’s expectations of Location Based Entertainment. But at the same time he is working with the core team behind VRPlayin to help grow the business beyond Entertainment. With the trans-formative power of virtual and augmented reality, Aurelian wants to help accelerate mass adoption beyond the realm of video games.

Bernie Roehl, CEO
Virtual Escapes

Bernie Roehl has been doing VR since the early 1990’s.  He’s written a number of books on the subject, and developed one of the earliest open-source VR SDKs.  He was involved in standardization efforts including VRML and the Virtual Humans Specification, and has created a lot of VR software (including several projects just in the past couple of years).  His main area of interest is multi-user virtual environments, embodiment (avatars) and the design and implementation of short VR experiences.  Through his company, Virtual Escapes Inc, he has released VR room escape games for both the Gear VR and the HTC Vive, and is currently developing the world’s first multi-player VR room escape game. He has also contributed a chapter on Social VR to the upcoming book VR Gems.

James Stewart, Founder
Geneva Film Company

Geneva Film Co. was founded by commercial director James Stewart to produce his work in live action, VFX, stop-motion and CG animation on platforms ranging from mobile to giant screen including gesture control and VR. His award-winning stop-motion 3D short film FOXED! has screened at over 90 film festivals, winning multiple awards and opened at #1 on iTunes in October 2014. Stewart’s recent projects include 3D cinema commercials for Samsung, Toyota, Lexus, Sprint, and the 3D concert film Experience Montreux.

His work on Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams was awarded the Lumière Award for Best 3D Documentary and in 2012, he produced the world’s first gesture-controlled 3D cinema game for Samsung. Stewart was recently featured with Ang Lee on the cover of the Directors issue of SHOOT magazine. He is a six-time speaker at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. At TED2011 he presented the TEDTalk Storytelling in the Next Dimension.

Olga Nabatova,
Award Winning Artist

Featured on national media like the CBC and Space Channel, Olga Nabatova is an award winning virtual reality artist whose stunning work is made possible by tools like Google Tiltbrush and Gravity Sketch. Originally from Lithuania and in Canada since ’92, Olga has worked for the last ten years creating a successful children’s theatre, which stages five performances a year. She wears many hats including set design, prop creation, installations, costume design, photos and video. As an artist, she paints and creates cartoons of cultural performances around town. Her true artistic love is sculpture. Her portrait sculptures in bronze and terracotta can be found in private collections in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Canada. In 2016, she discovered her latest canvass: virtual reality art using Google’s TiltBrush.

Kevin Carbotte, Tech Writer
Tom’s Hardware

Kevin is a lifelong electronics junkie with a passion for innovative new technologies. He has a deep understanding of computer technology and a knack for spotting innovations early on. Following a 12-year career in IT, Kevin joined Tom’s Hardware in January 2015 as a contributing writer covering graphics and virtual / augmented reality hardware. Since joining Tom’s Hardware, Kevin has reviewed all of the major VR HMD releases, more than a dozen graphics cards, as well as more than a dozen VR games. Kevin also regularly interviews industry professionals from around the globe, including software developers, hardware engineers, industry consultants, and company executives.

Kevin has also been involved in running a bi-annual LAN tournament called BaseLAN in his hometown of Winnipeg, MB. for 14 years. For the last five years, his role at BaseLAN involved demonstrating various immersive gaming technologies during the event including stereoscopic 3D and virtual reality gaming experiences.

Neil Trevett, President, Khronos Group
Vice President Mobile Content, Nvidia

Neil is the elected President of the Khronos Group industry standards consortium where he initiated the OpenGL ES standard now used by billions worldwide every day, helped catalyze the WebGL project to bring interactive 3D graphics to the Web, chairs the OpenCL working group defining the open standard for heterogeneous parallel computation and has helped establish and launch the new generation Vulkan API.

The Khronos Group’s most recent work is OpenXR, an open standard platform for immersive technologies like virtual reality.

Neil also works at Nvidia where he helps to drive and develop their developer ecosystem that enables applications to take advantage of advanced GPU and silicon acceleration.

Michael Reed, CEO
Practical

James Micheal Reed is the CEO & Creator of Practical, the first Mixed Reality Platform supported by a token-based economy. He is a global pundit on AI, mixed reality, blockchain, crypto and the future of media, as well as a passionate privacy activist. Micheal most recently spoke on the main stage at Nexus 2017 alongside Flip Filipowski, Perianne Boring, Ron Paul and other technology, cultural and societal pioneers. During the conference, Practical was announced Best Blockchain/Crypto company. Micheal’s mission is to advocate and help guide the industry as we usher in the new world of collaborative computing and the issues we will face.

Wanda Meloni, CEO & Principal Analyst
M2 Insights

Wanda Meloni is CEO of M2 Insights and Editor-in-Chief of Gaming Business Review. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Open Gaming Alliance, a non-profit trade association focused on supporting business, growth and innovation for the games industry.

Wanda is an international technology and entertainment strategist and has been working with top companies in digital media and entertainment for over 15 years. Focused on emerging technologies, she has a deep understanding of interactive media for content development, platforms/tech/games, community empowerment, customer engagement, and development trends. An avid supporter of diversity in the tech and games industry, Wanda works to support leadership opportunities in technology with a particular focus on women and minorities.

Sean Peasgood, President and CEO
Sophic Capital

Sophic Capital is a capital markets advisory firm for public and private companies in the technology and clean technology sectors. They specialize in developing complete capital markets strategies for companies across all stages of development with an in-depth knowledge of the technology sector.

Sean Peasgood has enjoyed a successful career as a sell-side Analyst for over eight years and has covered a diverse set of clean technology and technology stocks, including hardware and software companies that ranged from micro-cap to large-cap stocks.

Sean’s unique insights will be beneficial to the immersive entrepreneur and investor alike.