The Most Exciting Events Coming Up at Augmented World Expo 2017 in May

Coming up at the end of May is the world's largest conference and expo dedicated to all things augmented and virtual reality, the Augmented World Expo, more commonly known just as AWE. And this year, a few of us from NextReality are going to be there.

This year's AWE USA will be the eighth annual event that has been held in the States, and will be at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California from May 31 to June 2, 2017. Tickets are still available if you want to join us there.

With the Superpowers to Change the World theme, AWE seems to have an insightful take on what many in the industry think of this technology space—world-changing. Just over the past year, we have seen a greater transformation as more and more people become aware of the technology and new use-cases are explored. Many new companies have appeared, and along with them, new hardware and software, as developers try to solve many of the problems associated with getting a new class of world-changing technology out to the public.

The Most Exciting Events Coming Up at Augmented World Expo 2017 in May — The DAQRI booth at a previous AWE event. *Image by AWE/YouTube*

The first version of the event's agenda has been posted on the AWE website. There are lots of talks, discussions, and keynotes that one could attend, and that is not including the expo itself. As someone who will be there like a kid in a candy store, I'm going to share my list of the top five don't miss events on day one at AWE 2017.

New Developments with Tango from Google: Jared Finder, a Google software engineer, will spend an hour giving us updated information about the Google Tango mobile AR platform. I have been really interested in exploring development on this hardware, and look forward to seeing more devices utilizing it in the near future. Only a few phones are Tango-equipped right now, like the Lenovo Phab Pro 2. (Session starts at 11:30 a.m. PT, Wednesday, May 31, in rooms 209/210.)

Creating Multi-User Mixed Reality Experiences for Virgin Audiences: Keeping in mind that to get the widespread adoption that would make this industry explode (in a good way), it will take making users' first experiences with the technology as smooth and impressive as possible. John Howard, the cofounder and codirector of LOOOK, will be giving a quick talk on the subject. (Session starts at 2:15 p.m. PT, Wednesday, May 31, in room H.)

BARK - The Boeing Augmented Reality Kit: We've already seen Boeing use the HoloLens to great effect. Now, Paul Davies, and associate technical fellow at Boeing, will be showing off Boeing's end-to-end prototype AR system. This is designed to be used solely with Boeing's manufacturing software, so don't go thinking it can be used anywhere. But for those that are interested in enterprise, commercial, and industrial applications, this will likely be an insightful session. (Session starts at 11:45 a.m. PT, Wednesday, May 31, in rooms 203/204.)

Standardization Needs and Efforts in VR/AR: This is a subject that seems to come up often in the various developer Slack servers as new and different use-cases get a chance to come to light. Rudi Schubert and Yu Yuan, both from the IEEE Standards Association, will make the case for why it is important to see the industry flourish and grow. (Session starts at 5:15 p.m. PT, Wednesday, May 31, in rooms 209/210.)

Interaction Design in Mixed Reality: If you read NextReality with any regularity, you know that I will be at any session that has to do with UI/UX design—I love to explore all ideas on the subject. As soon as I begin to get comfortable with the topic, I see an idea that is even more natural. Konrad Koeppe, the chief UX/UI enginner at gestigon, will talk about the current interaction paradigms and how it relates to mixed reality—and how they just do not work. (Session starts at 5:30 p.m. PT, Wednesday, May 31, in rooms 203/204.)

Exciting, right? I set out to highlight only the first five sessions that piqued my interest, but it should be noted that there are many more events taking place at AWE 2017 that should not be ignored. The list above were just some highlighted events on the first day, so keep that in mind when planning your trip, if you're going. There will be events on Project Alloy, Phantom, Shazam, and much more.

While I hope many of you will read what we end up getting to experience at AWE 2017, wouldn't it be better to experience it firsthand? If you can't afford any tickets, keep your browser pointed here to NextReality, because we have two tickets to the event to give to one lucky winner. Details to come.

Are you planning on going to AWE? Let us know in the comments. We would love to see your faces there!