Holograms, Halloween and the Hottest Tech Conference, ATECH
My birthday is on Halloween, and this year to celebrate, I gave a keynote at the ATECH-Conference in Aruba. Ok, technically it was a work gig and not a birthday trip, but the warm and wonderful people in Aruba, especially our friends from ATECH Conference and Futura, made it a great way to spend one happy birthday on one happy island.
I spoke at the ATECH Conference in 2016, where I was interviewed by 'superconnector' and author Kelly Hoey about being a woman in tech and leading technology for Burning Man. I was delighted this year when Tristan Every reached out and was interested in hearing about my transition from Burning Man into augmented reality and working with Enklu, and that he wanted me to share about the innovative work we are doing at ATECH as part of IMMERSE - Aruba Innovation Week.
That idea blossomed and one thing lead to another, and before we knew it, myself and our Senior Producer (and a Burner), Ganga Baird were invited to host a series of Hololens demos, conduct a workshop "Co-creating Innovation & Culture," sit in on a panel "Transforming Experiences," as well as my keynote "The Future of Arts & Culture: A New Canvas." All these were very well received and I'm told sparked a lot of ideas for attendees. It is always so much fun to put a Hololens on someone and watch their delight as they see and interact with holograms for the first time. For the lens demos, we showed an Enklu experience called "Dark Matter" which is a very futuristic immersive holographic world. As for my keynote, according to Ganga, the spider headpiece which I wore (as every Halloween baby should on their birthday or any day), was super extra sparkly on stage.
After our panel, Tristan and the ATECH crew surprised me with cupcakes and candles on stage, and in true warm Aruban style, the whole conference sang me "Happy Birthday" in both English and Papiamento (a creole language spoken in Aruba and several nearby islands.)
What a great birthday! But wait! We weren't done yet! Our whole trip was made possible by Futura, an organization created by the Government of Aruba to aid in the design, development and implementation of a national innovation strategy for Aruba. This is part of a program created by the Chief Innovation Officer of Aruba, Varelie Croes, who was also a founder and friend from the ATECH conference.
On the day after the ATECH Conference closed, we packed up our Hololenses and moved to a temporary art activation space, called Spaces, where we set up a demonstration of the Enklu Reveal. The Reveal is another kind of interactive of augmented reality (or as we call it at Enklu - social reality) which does not use a head-mounted display, but uses our same creation platform and holographic assets, combined with motion tracking camera technology and a display to adorn the 'player' with various kinds of augmented accoutrements. That's right, on the day after Halloween, we got to play with augmented reality costumes! And the Spaces location was beautifully painted and a stunning backdrop for the Reveal demos.
What more could a girl want for her birthday week? Well, some delicious, fresh, perfectly prepared Aruban seafood and creole cooking, and a good night's sleep actually. So that's exactly what she did next.
