Wednesday, April 29th, 2015

Virtual - Augmented Reality Workshop

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM, Salon I

Exploring the Market Opportunities in VR, AR and Immersive Technologies

John Feuerstein, Producer, Digital Play, Mattel

David A. Smith, Senior Fellow, Lockheed Martin MST

Chris Ullrich, Vice President, User Experience, Immersion Corporation

Joel Susal, Director, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Dolby Laboratories

Brian Selzer, Vice President, Business and Product, Development, DAQRI, Moderator

(AR). He creates world-class teams and ships impossible products.  Smith was Chief Innovation Officer and Lockheed Martin Senior Fellow at Lockheed Martin MST, where he was focused on next generation human centric computing and collaboration platforms. Before joining Lockheed Martin, Smith was the chief architect of the Croquet Project, an open source virtual world collaboration platform where he worked with Alan Kay (Turing Award winner) and was later CTO and co-founder of Teleplace, Inc. providing a collaboration platform developed specifically for enterprises based on Croquet.  In 1987, Smith created The Colony, the very first realtime 3D adventure game/shooter and the precursor to today's first-person shooters. The game was developed for the Apple Macintosh and won the "Best Adventure Game of the Year" award from MacWorld Magazine. Smith founded Virtus Corporation in 1990 and developed Virtus Walkthrough, the first real-time 3D design application for personal computers. Virtus Smith also co-founded Red Storm Entertainment with author Tom Clancy.

John Feuerstein is the lead Producer for Virtual and Augmented Reality in the Digital Play division of Mattel, Inc.  He is responsible for concepting and executing the first-party software roll out for the relaunch of View-Master – soon to be the industry’s premiere Virtual Reality viewer for kids.   With a background in kids’ software development as well as film and television, he brings and eye and ear towards story-telling and immersiveness to the ever-growing kids app space.  John holds a BA in Media and Culture from Brown University and and MFA in Motion Picture Producing from the Peter Stark Producing Program at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

Joel Susal is the Director of Virtual and Augmented reality business at Dolby Laboratories, responsible for defining, leading, and executing Dolby’s VR and AR business lines.  Joel was hired into Dolby in 2011 to lead the company’s flagship products in the emerging tablet and smartphone space.  In this role, Joel’s product offering was widely publicized as best-in-class for audio with full adoption in the Amazon Kindle Fire HD lineup since 2012, among others.  Before joining Dolby, Joel was a founding member at Location Labs (recently acquired by AVG for $220MM), where he was responsible for defining, building, and deploying the company’s first mobile location tracking product line.  Joel holds dual undergraduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania — a BS in Engineering (Computer Science) and a BS in Economics (Entrepreneurial Management) from the Wharton School.

Chris Ullrich, Vice President, User Experience, Immersion Corporation; Chris Ullrich is responsible for ensuring that haptic products and technologies designed and developed at Immersion are highly valued by users, developers and OEM customers. Since joining Immersion in 2000, Mr. Ullrich has worked across departments to innovate, develop and bring to market a variety of technologies. He also directed software research and development in 3D, directed the medical simulation engineering team and led the design and development of next generation surgical instruments. Prior to working at Immersion, he held several research and engineering roles at Virtual Technologies Inc. and Telesat Canada. He holds a M.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of British Columbia and a B. Math from the University of Waterloo.

Brian Selzer, Vice President, Business and Product Development, DAQRI: As a pioneering creative executive for over 15 years, Brian Selzer has made his career pushing the boundaries of digital media and entertainment. Having established business models that drive today's online, mobile and social media space, he is a recognized leader and innovator in the interactive industry. Brian has created, produced, marketed and distributed award-winning content to a client list that includes Sony, Microsoft, EA, Activision, Fox, Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, MTV, Marvel, Hasbro, Pepsi, Nike, Lego, NBA and others. As an entreprenuer, Brian has co-founded several globaly recognized venture backed companies, including Ogmento, Inc., the first developer and publisher of location-based, augmented reality games and entertainment. Brian is a sought after speaker at industry events and serves as an advisor on augmented reality initiatives, location-based apps and services, immersive technologies, emerging media platforms, games, gamification, transmedia, and the future of entertainment.