Immersive Tech (imTech) is a "non-profit think tank created to promote the development and adoption of immersive technology for the benefit for advancing fields in public interest, such as education, health, arts and entertainment."  


Immersive Tech hosts an annual summit.  On October 21st, 2010, the summit will be held at the Los Angeles Center Studios:

"The summit organizes a community that bring together technologists, visionaries, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and industry leaders in various fields of immersive technology. This year's summit will feature groundbreaking speakers, a 360° fulldome installation (think planetarium style), exhibitors demonstrating cool new technology, and with your support, this simulation system!"


Here is the list of speakers and their bios, from the website:


[Image]John Smart, Acceleration Studies Foundation John Smart is a developmental systems theorist who studies accelerating change, computational autonomy, and the singularity. He is President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a nonprofit community for research, education, consulting, and selected advocacy of communities and technologies of accelerating change. He co-produces the annual Accelerating Change Conference, an annual meeting of 350 change-leaders and students at Stanford University, and edits ASF's free newsletter, Accelerating Times, read by future-oriented thinkers around the world. He is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, the FBI Futures Working Group, and the editorial advisory board of Technological Forecasting and Social Change. [Image]Dr. Joanne Kuchera-Morin, UCSB Allosphere Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer, Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music, and a researcher in multi-modal media systems, content and facilities design. She created, built, and designed the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology and has been the Center’s Director since its inception in 1986. Her years of experience in digital media research led to the creation of a multi-million dollar sponsored research program for the University of California, the Digital Media Innovation Program. In 2000 she began the creation, design, and development of a Digital Media Center within the California Nanosystems Institute. The culmination of her design is the Allosphere Research Laboratory, a three-story metal sphere inside an echo-free cube, designed for immersive, interactive scientific and artistic investigation of multi-dimensional data sets. She serves as Director of the Allosphere Research Facility. [Image]Dr. Albert "Skip" Rizzo,  USC Institute for Creative Technologies Albert "Skip" Rizzo's work in Virtual Reality has created technologies being used to treat combat-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, help clinicians practice skills for challenging clinical interviews and diagnostic assessments, address the use of VR applications to test and train attention memory visuospatial abilities, and executive function, and has created VR Game systems to address physical rehabilitation post stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury and for those aging with a disability. [Image]Chris Noessel, Cooper His prior experience has seen him developing interactive kiosks and spaces for museums, helping to visualize the future of counter-terrorism, building prototypes of coming technologies for Microsoft, and designing telehealth devices to accommodate the crazy facts of modern health and healthcare.  His spidey sense goes off about random topics, and this has led him to speak at conferences about a wide range of things including interactive narrative, ethnographic user research, interaction design, sex-related interactive technologies, free-range learning, and, most recently, the relationship between science fiction and interface design with co-author Nathan Shedroff. [Image]Greg Hyver, BCINet  Mr. Hyver has 30 years of high-technology experience working in Silicon Valley firms. He spent ten years working within the Aerospace and Defense industry at Lockheed Missiles and Space, serving as a software and hardware engineer for “Star Wars” defense projects. In the late 80’s, Mr. Hyver joined Market Intelligence Research Company as Senior Market Researcher and, in 1994, joined Xilinx as Product / Test Engineering Manager in the ASIC division. In 2005, he joined NeuroSky as VP of Marketing and became VP of Business Development at BCInet in 2009, two companies in the Brain-Computer Interface industry. [Image]Mark Goulthorpe, dECOi Architects / MIT Mark Goulthorpe was educated in England and the USA, and apprenticed professionally for 4 years with Richard Meier in New York and Paris. In 1991 he established the dECOi atelier to undertake a series of architectural competitions, largely theoretically biased. These resulted in numerous accolades around the world, which quickly established a reputation for thoughtful and elegant design work suggestive of new possibilities for architecture and architectural praxis. The Hyposurface was designed principally by Mark Goulthorpe and the dECOi office with a large multi-disciplinary team of architects, engineers, mathematicians and computer programmers, among others. The piece is a facetted metallic surface that has potential to deform physically in response to electronic stimuli from the environment (movement, sound, light,etc). Driven by a bed of 896 pneumatic pistons, the dynamic 'terrains' are generated as real-time calculations. [Image]Dr. Sheryl Flynn, Blue Marble Rehabilitation, Inc Dr. Sheryl Flynn is the founder and CEO of Blue Marble Game Co, a serious games company that focuses design and development of video games to enhance rehabilitation for people with disabilities worldwide. The heart of which is centered on a passion for using technology to revolutionize health care delivery and outcomes. Recently, her company received funding from the Department of Defense to develop a video game for troops with mild traumatic brain injury who wish to return to work. Sheryl has also begun the development of the Games4Rehab.com social network that aims to bring together individuals with disabilities, clinicians, researchers and game industry professionals to push the games for rehabilitation agenda forward quickly. In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits, Dr. Flynn also consults with the University of Southern California, Institute for Creative Technologies and Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy on the NIDRR funded OPTT-RERC grant to develop a suite of games that clinicians can use in rehabilitation settings. [Image]Tino Schaedler, NAU Tino Schaedler is an established art director, production designer and trained architect. He is something of a chimera, moving seamlessly across disciplines, always working at the leading edge of change. Be it production design for feature film and commercials, event design or architecture: His work is about spaces that tell and frame stories. Tino is a regular guest speaker at universities and conferences worldwide, whilst also regularly contributing on film design to ‘Mark’ and ‘Build’ Magazine. His designs have won various awards and have been widely featured in internationally renowned publications. [Image]Aaron E. Walsh, MediaGrid Walsh is Director of the Grid Institute, an international best-selling author, and a Boston College faculty member. In 2006 Walsh received the Teaching with New Media award for his work on Immersive Education. He received this prestigious national award for his pioneering work on immersive education, which was recognized as “…innovative, promising technology which holds the potential to significantly affect society in the near future.” In 2007 Computerworld named him one of the forty most innovative people in the information technology industry. After more than a decade of research and development in the field, Walsh began using his prototype technologies to teach Boston College courses from a distance. At that time he coined the term “Immersive Education” to describe learning platforms that combine interactive 3D graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat, Web cameras, and rich digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms. [Image]Howard S. Lichtman, Human Productivity Lab Howard S. Lichtman is a productivity-focused technology technologist, author, publisher and consultant with specialties in telepresence and visual collaboration to improve organizational and personal productivity. He is the founder and president of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent consultancy and research firm that helps organizations design telepresence strategies and deploy telepresence solutions. He is the publisher of Telepresence Options, the #1 website on the Internet covering the telepresence revolution and editor of the Telepresence Options Telegraph, the world’s most widely read publication covering telepresence technologies. [Image]Bruno Uzzan, CEO & Co-Founder Total Immersion Bruno Uzzan has been driving the growth of Total Immersion since 1999 – from start-up to the company’s current position of global category leader. As a pioneer and AR visionary, he has led Total Immersion’s global expansion and built the company’s client roster with blue chip accounts that include Disney, McDonald’s, Mattel, Twentieth Century Fox and Nissan Motors. He also is responsible for developing strategic alliances, bringing his vision for the potential of next gen AR to these relationships. Before establishing Total Immersion, Uzzan served as a consultant for Pierre Henri Scacchi and Associates (Price Waterhouse Group). He holds a masters degree in management from the University of Paris Dauphine.

Immersive Technology Summit Agenda (From the Immersive Technology website)
Time Event/Topic Speaker
8:00am Registration & Morning Refreshments
9:00am Welcome Ken Rutkowski & Harold Tan
9:10am Collaboration Successes Jody Turner
9:25am Collaboration Challenges John Canning
9:40am I-Cocoon Tino Schaedler
9:55am Q&A Panel
10:10am Virtual Choir Eric Whitacre
10:15am Panel Discussion TBA
10:30am Refreshment Break & Networking
11:15am Video
11:20am Telepresence Howard S. Lichtman
11:35am Immersive tech in physical therapy Dr. Sheryl Flynn
11:50am Immersive education Aaron Walsh
12:05pm Q&A Panel
12:15pm Imagined Communities Bonnie Bucker
12:30pm Lunch & Dome presentations
2:00pm Video
2:05pm Institute of Creative Technologies Dr Belinda Lange (USC)
2:20pm Augmented Reality Bruno Uzzan (Total Immersion)
2:35pm The Allosphere Dr JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (UCSB)
3:05pm Brain-Computer Interfaces Greg Hyver (BCINet)
2:50pm Q&A Panel
3:05pm Immersive Tech Awards Arts / Health / Education / Communication / Startup
3:30pm Refreshment Break & Networking
4:20pm World Builder Bruce Branit
4:25pm Future Visualizations of Spatial Relations Tali Krakowsky, Ed Lantz, Greg Downing, Bruce Branit
4:40pm Science Fiction & Immersive Tech Chris Noessel
4:55pm Immersive Tech Ubiquitousness Benjamin Bratton (UCSD)
5:10pm 10 Years and Beyond John Smart
5:25pm Closing Remarks