Robert Rice Speaks At MOMA

Robert Rice, the CEO of Neogence Enterprises and blogger of augmented reality on Curious Raven, spoke back in June at Mobile Monday.  His speech targets the intermediate developer of augmented reality.  If you’re new to the technology, most of this speech will go over your head. 

The video is long, but if you’re serious about augmented reality and the future of mobile, the speech hits major points about the industry.  And at 40 minutes, I’d give it a good five minute buffer if you’re going to watch the whole thing.

“Mobile is dead,” said Robert to begin his speech.  He goes on to explain it should be brought back to life in a different format.  Reincarnated, if you will.  The point-to-point communication that we use right now will need transform into an immersive, predictive, meta-enviroment and can’t just be another way to access the internet. 

Robert briefly explains the history of communications and tells us that if we do augmented reality correctly, it’ll join the pantheon.  If we can remove the excess hardware of keyboards and screens in our mobile devices and convert to sunglasses, then the computer can become a buckle or a watch, conspicuous computing.  We need to get away from the 2D mindset of flat screens and create 3D spaces where we can throw a YouTube video to another person through our AR enviroment, or send an SMS as a paper-airplane. 

Augmented reality needs more than graphics over video, Robert goes on to explain.  Should move past being even interactive and more dynamic and meta.  It should answer the who, what, where, when, why and how.  Computers have been vague points of demographic data because multiple people can use them, but mobile is an individual thing which allows us to break away from aggregate statistics and start answering questions for individuals. 

Robert goes on to talk about venture capital, which he believes doesn’t get AR yet, and smart cities, and give suggestions to developers to keep the tagging of the world in mind, so we don’t have to go back and retag later.

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the speech, though I was hoping Robert would get into specifics about Neogence Enterprises and their recent Mirascape announcement.  And having spoken to him at length at ISMAR09 about the details of augmented reality, I thought he might elaborate on his anecdotes about furries and micro transactions.  But maybe those weren’t appropriate for MOMA, anyway.

(edit note: while this was originally filmed back in June and even covered on GA by Ori, it’s still very relevent.  Enjoy.)

Augmented Reality Panel at Web 2.0 Expo and Explosion in AR Meetups

Don’t you love going to conferences that take place in your home town?
And how about being invited to talk about your #1 passion?

Double awesome.

Last November, I was lucky enough to participate in a panel about augmented reality at the Web 2.0 Expo. (In all fairness, it was part of Web2Open co-located with Web 2.0)

The fun actually started the night before at a meetup organized by John Havens which was a great warm up for the real deal.

John also moderated the panel which included the following participants:

Robert Rice, CEO of Neogence delivered as usual a great intro to augmented reality and explained the virtues of the AR Consortium;

Jack Mason (Global Business Services, Strategic Programs and Social Media at IBM)
opened our eyes to the possibilities (and concerns) revolving around AR;

Lynne d Johnson, SVP Social Media at the Advertising Research Foundation and host of the NYC Android Developer’s Meetup showed off the latest AR rage embodied in this week’s Esquire Magazine: the augmented reality issue;

Erik Manley: Manager, Digital Media at GE and Michael Eisenreich: Technology Leader for GE’s company-wide Internet presence – proudly presented what I describe as the first high production augmented reality campaign ever. It’s probably one of the key reasons AR went off the charts on Google trends in the first quarter of the year.

Matt Szymczyk, CEO of Zugara, demonstrated Fashionista, a virtual dressing room his company just launched with Rich Relevance. Who says AR is just a novelty? This is a very Cool and practical use of augmented reality on webcams.

Marco Neumann, CEO and Founder of KONA, and the Organizer for New York Semantic web meet up gave the…semantic web back story behind augmented reality. 

All great guys and gals, enthusiastic about augmented reality, and…doing something about it.

Yours truly gave a little schpiel about Ogmento and demonstrated the upcoming (currently in beta) learning game for the iPhone: Put A Spell Learn to Spell with Augmented Reality.

Here is a video of my 100 slides under 5 minutes intro (seriously):

The crowed was not huge but very engaged. In the spirit of the web2Open unconference most of the interesting discussions happened afterwards.

We will be back at Porter Novelli’s office (Thanks John for hosting once again!) for the upcoming Augmented Reality NY (ARNY) meetup this Tuesday, featuring an amazing line up of speakers and demos:
1) John Swords – Circ.us – his latest AR game developed for Cisco Systems

2) Ryan CharlesZagat– New Augmented Reality view integrated into Zagat’s flagship restaurant rating and review app, Zagat To Go

3) Noora GuldemondMetaio – LEGO application and mobile markerless tracking

4) Dana Farbo – President of Acrossair – will present the fresh new Acrossair AR Browser

5) Craig Kapp – NYU – Whisper Deck – will introduce an experimental interface to access information using AR

These days, AR Meetups are all the rage – sprouting like mushrooms around the globe: From Los Angeles, to Palo Alto, Chicago, Raleigh, Toronto,  London, Manchester, Switzerland, and all the way to New Zealand). Here’s a big shout out to all our friends around the world – and thanks to Chris Grayson – we now have a live stream channel for all AR meetups – so you can participate in real time from the comfort of your home!
(though it’s much more fun being there in person)

Robert Rice at Mobile Monday Amsterdam

This passing Monday, Amsterdam hosted a Mobile Monday event, which ended with a talk by Robert Rice.
To tell you the truth, I’m a bit disappointed that we didn’t get any information about whatever super secret product is under development in Neogence. On the other hand, we got a nicely presented introduction to augmented reality and Rice’s take on the subject.

Here you can find the slides, while here you can find some clarifications from Rice himself.

Passionate About Augmented Reality and Not Afraid to Blog About It

Tish from Ugotrade interviewed Robert Rice about his latest Sekrets AR endeavors. It was an unmissable opportunity to rant about everything augmented. Check out the blog of one passionate AR fan.

What moves you in AR?