Artur Sychov is Founder and CEO of Somnium Space. He has been navigating virtual worlds for more than two decades starting with Ultima Online in 1999, then Second Life and many more. Artur strongly believes in the ultimate future of Virtual Reality worlds with open and decentralized economy.
Alban Denoyel
Alban Denoyel is the co-founder of Sketchfab, the leading platform to publish and find 3D content online, now part of Epic Games. Prior to Sketchfab, he worked for 4 years in the 2D world of photography. He loves making 3D content with photogrammetry or VR sculpting. He graduated from ESSEC Business School (Paris, France).
Caspar Thykier
Caspar Thykier is the co-founder and CEO of Zappar, an augmented reality platform and creative studio on a mission to democratize immersive technology.
Caspar and the Zappar team have been pioneers in the AR space for the last decade and have worked with the world’s leading brands to deploy innovative and market-leading AR solutions across the mobile web and native apps.
Prior to founding Zappar, Caspar spent 15 years as an account director and managing director of major advertising agencies, including one where he was a founding partner.
Robert Long
Robert is passionate about defending the open metaverse. He has worked on social VR at AltspaceVR and Mozilla Hubs. Now Robert is working at Element on decentralized communications and co-chairing the Open Metaverse Interoperability Group.
Alex Howland
Alex Howland, Ph.D., is president and co-founder of Virbela, a virtual world platform for remote work, learning, and events. Howland created Virbela in 2012, before it was purchased and made public by eXp World Holdings in 2018.
Virbela’s mission is to help organizations and people thrive in a remote-first future. Alex leads the development of Virbela’s products and services — continuing to expand the platform to accommodate not just business workspaces, but classrooms, event spaces, and recreational areas as well.
Prior to co-founding Virbela, Howland was an instructor in the Psychology Department at University of California, San Diego, where he taught Industrial and Organizational Psychology to undergraduate students. His expertise in organizational psychology gives him a unique perspective on creating virtual work and education spaces. He designed Virbela specifically to create a unique virtual experience where users feel psychologically safe and are more likely to collaborate, brainstorm, and succeed.
Howland has a bachelor of science in psychology from Providence College, and his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from Alliant International University, San Diego.
Veronica Orvalho
Verónica Orvalho is the founder and CEO of Didimo. She has translated years of research, data science, and computer graphics expertise into a patented technology platform to create digital humans, empowering people to engage more authentically and humanly in digital spaces. This breakthrough provides the next evolution of how humans will engage the world around them.
Veronica earned a Ph.D. in Computer Graphics and is a professor at Porto University. She has lived and worked on three continents, with companies like IBM, Sony, Amazon, Universal Studios, and more.
John Akers
John Akers is the Director of Research and Education at the University of Washington Reality Lab where he manages the XR-related undergraduate research program and educational initiatives. He received bachelor\’s and master\’s degrees in Computer Science and Informatics from the University of Washington, where he researched approaches for accessible input devices for XR applications in the Taskar Center for Accessible Technology.
He is also a member of the XR Access Initiative and a participant of prior W3C workshops on inclusive design for immersive web standards.
Jamie Burke
Jamie is the CEO and founder of Outlier Ventures. He was an early investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum and founded Outlier Ventures, the Web 3.0 startup accelerator, in 2014. He is an active collector of NFTs and a passionate proponent of the Open Metaverse theory (you can read the thesis: https://outlierventures.io/research/the-open-metaverse-os/). The Open Metaverse thesis was created early 2021 after months of development, and acts as a toolkit to design alternatives based on principles of user centricity and sovereignty of identity, data and wealth.
Jamie is an active media commentator and has spoken on stages across the world about the breadth of opportunity Ethereum posses to serve as the foundation for the next generation of the internet. He is an active collector of NFTs, co-founding 100xARt, a community of the Top 200 collectors and has helped launch the world\’s first d-zine, NFTs.WTF, an independent NFT media property owned and controlled by a DAO of 100 industry leaders, creatives and influencers.
Fabien Bénétou
Fabien Bénétou is a WebXR freelance developer currently working for UNICEF and the European Parliament. Based in Brussels, Belgium, Fabien is a Mozilla AFrame contributor driven by the need to make virtual and augmented reality understandable by anybody curious enough to try. He has organized events, given talks and lead dozens of professional workshops all around the world. His focus goes beyond the technology to the positive impact it can offer through privacy conscious methods to bring VR and AR innovations to the most wide possible audience. He is convinced that XR will become useful once used and challenged by the most diverse audience.
Caitlin Krause
Caitlin Krause focuses on the intersection of technology, innovation and wellbeing, and founded the studio and consultancy MindWise in 2015. She teaches about the subject at Stanford University. Caitlin has advised global organizations including Google, Facebook, Oracle, TED, Evernote, University of San Francisco, ETH Zürich and the U.S. State Department. In September of 2020 she released the book Designing Wonder: Leading Transformative Experiences in Virtual Reality. She authored The Importance of Presence and The Art of Storytelling in VR as part of the XR Collaboration Global Resource Guide.
Caitlin has created and run numerous collaborative experiences in social XR, fusing presence, mindfulness, storytelling, curiosity and emotional intelligence. A Senior Strategist for the Virtual World Society, she is a writer and designer for digital therapeutic applications that incorporate haptics and biofeedback. After two decades of teaching and leadership experience, she authored Mindful By Design (Corwin Press, 2019). Caitlin helps individuals and teams navigate complexity and change, prioritizing mindful wellbeing, joy, creativity, wonder and awe.