CES (1/8/17) Panel Discussion: Top Technology and Entertainment Companies in VR and AR
By: Steve Masur
Join us on Monday, January 8th at the Las Vegas Convention Center (9:00AM PST) to discuss the Top Technology and Entertainment Companies in VR/AR.
9-10 AM January 8
Tech East, LVCC, North Hall, N258
About the Panel:
From CES and Tribeca to Cannes and Sundance VR/AR continues to dominate the conversation. VR/AR is transforming everything from entertainment and advertising to gaming and education.
- Tony Parisi, Head of AR/VR Strategy, Unity Technologies
- Aaron Luber, Head of AR/VR Content Partnerships, Google
- Russ Schafer, SVP and General Manager of New Ventures, THX
- Tim Dillon, Head of VR & Immersive Content, MPC
- Shannon Norrell, Office of the CTO / VR Evangelist, HP, Inc.
- Steven Masur
About the Speakers:
Steven Masur has over two decades of experience advising emerging and established businesses on new opportunities and business challenges. He focuses his practice on corporate finance, M&A, intellectual property, entertainment, emerging businesses and strategic guidance. Steve brings a unique mix of legal, business, and strategic experience to bear on client matters. He has counseled enterprise level clients including Shazam, Virgin Mobile, Liberty Media, Yamaha, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Bob Vila and Conde Nast Publications in corporate, digital media, and new business matters. He has also helped emerging businesses in a wide variety of sectors, and is especially knowledgeable in media, entertainment, advertising, consumer products, food and technology, including mobile, games, digital music, social media, augmented and virtual reality, software and hardware.
Tony Parisi is a virtual reality pioneer, serial entrepreneur and angel investor. Tony is the co-creator of 3D graphics standards, including VRML, X3D and glTF, the new file format standard for 3D web and mobile applications.Tony is also the author of O’Reilly Media’s books on Virtual Reality and WebGL: Learning Virtual Reality (2015), Programming 3D Applications in HTML5 and WebGL (2014), and WebGL Up and Running (2012). Tony is currently Head of VR and AR at Unity Technologies, where he oversees the company’s strategy for virtual and augmented reality.
Aaron Luber leads content partnerships for Google’s AR and VR efforts — Daydream and Tango. Aaron’s journey began with launching YouTube360 first as a 20% project and then to a live product in March 2015. During that time, Aaron transitioned from YouTube to the Cardboard team and has been working to bring VR, and now AR, to the masses. Probably the most impressive surprise has been the incredible brand engagement and eagerness for companies (such as the NFL, EA, Mattel, IMAX, Disney and The New York Times) to work with Cardboard, Daydream and Tango. Aaron has been core in leading each of these partnerships for Google and many more. These partnerships have been able to deliver on great content, while building towards the mission of delivering innovative AR/VR experiences to the masses.
Russ Schafer oversees the development of new audio and video products and technologies. He is responsible for leading the engineering and product teams that deliver silicon, software and service solutions for the playback of music, movies, gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality content on mobile, PC, consumer electronics, and automobiles. Current products include the THX AAA – ACHROMATIC AUDIO AMPLIFIER, THX LOUDNESS PLUS, BOUNDARY GAIN COMPENSATION (BGC), and THX® DISTRIBUTED BASS TECHNOLOGY™. Before THX, Russ held a variety of senior leadership roles at Intel, IBM, Yahoo, AOL, and Sybase.
Tim Dillon is Head of VR & Immersive Content at MPC, leading a group focused on the exploration of Original Content, Music, Arts, Causes, Advertising and Entertainment. Tim has been instrumental in the development and production of many notable projects including The last Goodbye (Tribeca Premiere, Venice), ‘Heroes’ (Sundance 2017 Premiere), Legion Sessions (Comic-Con SD 2017), Night Night (Dark Corner Co-Production) Kygo ‘Carry Me’ (Sony Music Playstation launch), The Nature Conservancy ‘This is Our Future’, Google TiltBrush, The Martian VR and Goosebumps VR. This new era for MPC’s immersive projects began back in 2015 with projects for Chris Milk’s U2 ‘Song for someone’ and the horror fan favorite ‘Catatonic’. Tim is a vocal advocate for the experiential and immersive power of VR and MR and has spoken at events such as Sundance, SXSW, AICP, NAB, CES, Digital Hollywood, VR on the lot and many more.
Shannon Norrell works in the CTO Office of HP, guiding vision both internally and externally for XR and speaking at events around the world. He has over 20 years’ experience as an engineer in Silicon Valley at places like Apple, Microsoft, Macromedia and now, HP. Organizer of VRCamp at Burning Man, Silicon Valley WebGL Meetup (largest in the world), co-organizer of Silicon Valley AR Meetup, Organizer of Mars Home Planet Meetup. Chairman of the W3C Declarative WebVR Community, Member of the IEEE Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Working Group and the Khronos OpenXR Working Group.