Monday, January 6th, 2020

3:30 - 4:30 PM

Session I, C-Space at CES

Aria Resort & Casino, Level 3, Juniper 4

The Augmented/Mixed Reality Experience

Augmented and Mixed Reality experiences are not only exciting, they are finally profitable as well. In this session, we will explore case studies of success, from visual and photographic innovation and texting to how data is explored inside the XR universe.

Olivier Koelemij, Managing Director, MediaMonks L.A.

Cathy Hackl, Enterprise Partner Marketing, Magic Leap

Silke Meixner, Partner, Global Business Strategy, IBM Global business

Nigel Tierney, Head of Content, Verizon/RYOT

Jesse McCulloch, Program Manager, Mixed Reality Developer Ecosystem, Microsoft

Michael Leventhal, Partner, Holmes Weinberg, P.C., Moderator

Silke Meixner has been recognized as a leading digital business strategist, helping CMOs achieve digital transformation through digital marketing, business and brand strategies that drive end-to-end customer experiences. She helps senior marketing executives navigate their role in orchestrating change across broad ecosystems of internal and external partners to maximize short- and long-term marketing ROI. Silke has deep industry knowledge in technology,

media, industrial goods, consumer goods and services where she has operationalized their digital transformation agenda to foster data-driven cultures, with empowered teams that better address market shifts and capture new revenue opportunities. Silke started her career developing new revenue growth platforms for leading companies such as Universal Studios, eToys, and Deloitte before joining IBM’s Digital Strategy practice. Silke enjoys helping marketers succeed in harnessing the power of AI, cognitive abilities and digital tools and enablers to accelerate agile marketing management, marketing operations and commercial capabilities in new product development, e-commerce and brand strategy at leading multinational organizations.

Cathy Hackl, Enterprise Partner Marketing, Magic Leap: Futurist, speaker and author, Cathy Hackl, is a globally recognized augmented reality, virtual reality and spatial computing thought leader. She’s the #4 Top Technology Voice on LinkedIn (the highest honor on the platform). She currently works as part of Magic Leap's Partner Marketing team, where she helps drive Enterprise Partner Marketing initiatives. She focuses on Enterprise partners and solution providers collaborating with them on a variety of marketing and communications programs to achieve joint GTM objectives. Prior to that she was part of the Enterprise Strategy team at Magic Leap where she helped drive Magic Leap's enterprise go-to-market strategy as the company engages and provides solutions for enterprise verticals. Before joining Magic Leap, Cathy was the lead futurist at You Are Here Labs, where she led agencies, brands, and companies in applying Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality for marketing and training and worked with brands like AT&T & Porsche. Cathy advised UPS as a VR Expert prior to the launch of their VR driver training program. She worked as a VR Evangelist for HTC VIVE and had an executive role at Future Lighthouse, an award-wining cinematic VR studio, working with brands like Oculus and Sony Pictures. Cathy is currently working on her second book The Augmented Workforce: How AI, AR, and 5G Will Impact Every Dollar You Make, which is slated to be published in 2020.

Olivier Koelemij is Managing Director of MediaMonks Los Angeles. Olivier founded the LA office in 2014 and helped build it to a 26 Monk powerhouse with 8 nationalities, whilst also overseeing two office moves and the successful acquisition and merge with Stopp LA in 2015. Under his direction MediaMonks LA now works with the world’s biggest brands and agencies, including Uber, Airbnb, Amazon, Google and Intuit. Swapping prizes with Ajax in youth soccer for winning multiple industry awards, Olivier speaks seven programming languages and works across even more time zones. His technical and creative background allows him to talk both ways, translating into productions that exceed the client’s expectations but not their deadlines.

Nigel Tierney, Head of Content RYOT // Verizon Media: Nigel Tierney currently serves as Head of Content for RYOT, a subsidiary of Verizon Media (VM), overseeing the development, creative, art production, & marketing departments. Nigel is shepherding the advancement of immersive and mixed reality experiences specifically targeting the integration of storytelling, brand, & celebrity, as well as creating original content across VM’s suite of brands such as Yahoo, Tumblr, & HuffPo. In addition to spearheading content; Nigel has lead a team to build out RYOT’s state-of-the-art 5G Innovation Studio. This new production facility in Los Angeles is fitted with the latest in motion and volumetric capture technology, all of which has been designed to experiment with forms of storytelling that leverage Verizon’s 5G wireless technology. Prior to his time at RYOT, Nigel served as Chief Creative for a variety of animated projects responsible for tens-of-millions in viewership as well as Senior Technical Director at DreamWorks Animation with award winning credits including a variety of tentpole franchises such as SHREK FOREVER AFTER, THE CROODS, KUNG FU PANDA 3, & CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS. Nigel is also known for creating the world famous J/K COMEDY CLUB, a hidden club located in the heart of the DreamWorks Campus, that showcase a wide variety of celebrity comedians.

Jesse McCulloch is a Program Manager on the Mixed Reality Developer Ecosystem team at Microsoft. Starting as a Mixed Reality Developer in 2016, he has built up a strong community around HoloLens and Immersive Headsets, and then joined Microsoft in 2018 to help lead efforts in cultivating the developer ecosystem.  While this timeline is short relative to how long academia has been working in this technology space, Jesse has been along for this current wave of early commercial adoption and has felt the joys and pains of trying to bring a new technology to the world. This gives him a very unique perspective and strong desire to advocate strongly for the developers who are supporting the platforms.  He is often found hanging out in developer Slack groups, on Twitter trying to keep up with everything going on in this rapidly growing space, or in a big metal tube flying through the air on his way to engage with developers in the real world.

Michael Leventhal, Partner, Holmes Weinberg, P.C., former, Chief Legal Officer and VP, Magic Leap: Michael Leventhal is a partner at Holmes Weinberg, P.C. He specializes in providing corporate, intellectual property and business transactional services for media/entertainment and technology companies. While managing partner of the entertainment law firm Codikow Leventhal & Carroll in the late 1980’s and early ‘90’s, Michael also developed a practice in high technology and digital media, which began even before the internet was a business model. In 1992, he combined his entertainment and digital media practices, when “multimedia” meant the CD-ROM business. Since that time, Michael has been on the forefront of the legal and business aspects of nearly every major technological innovation in digital media, from payment for electronic transmissions of entertainment content (rather than just shiny discs), to dispute resolution over domain names, to co-branding and cross-licensing agreements for online services, to pay-per-click advertising services, to digital music download services, to television/internet hybrids and the development and licensing agreements required to make them run, to user generated content sites, including development in SecondLife, for social media, and for mobile devices, including phones and tablets, to Alternate Reality Games, to 3D display technology, augmented, virtual and mixed reality. Among his clients have been Fortune 500 companies such as Fox Interactive Media, NEC, and Transamerica; digital vanguards like MySpace, Pop.com, Oversee.net, and GoTV; entertainment/digital technology hybrids such as Motion Theory, Compendia Media, Virtual Netcasting Corporation, the Interactive Television Alliance, PaidContent.org, RockWeb, Satellite Events Enterprises, and Vimby; traditional companies moving into digital media,; and various celebrities in need of  digital media guidance or protection. Most recently, Michael spent the last several years as chief legal officer and vice president at Magic Leap, Inc., the well-known augmented/mixed reality venture.  His duties included standard general counsel responsibilities, content and technology licensing, intellectual property strategy and planning, working with the content team, business development, marketing, HR, and the CEO on special projects, among many other tasks. Michael has represented hundreds of entertainment, digital media and high tech start-ups, early stage companies and middle market companies in music, film, visual effects, interactive television, sports, stand-alone online ventures, entertainment and non-entertainment web-based businesses, software, and more traditional businesses—from formation to strategic planning, structuring companies, M&A and alliances, to licensing matters, to obtaining financing. Working with entrepreneurs and visionaries at all stages of development has long been one of Michael’s passions. Michael has been a partner in a large national firm, a co-owner of several boutique law firms and a business consultancy, a solo practitioner and a senior executive at a high flying technology company. The combination of law firm and business consultancy is consistent with Michael’s holistic approach to representing businesses, both large and start up.  Michael is a frequent writer and speaker on all things digital. Most recently, he spoke at VRLA 2016. Michael goes beyond drafting of agreements to understand and support his clients with strong strategic thinking. He brings his considerable experience to his work with clients to develop an overall direction, with legal and business projects woven into the fabric of the larger strategy.