Virtual and augmented reality has garnered widespread acclaim in recent years, from Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus in 2014, the NYTimes’s delivery of over 1 million Google cardboard headsets last year, or Magic Leap’s billion-dollar+ seed round of funding.
But what is virtual/augmented/mixed reality, and why should you or your organization take an interest in it?
DigiCapital forecasts that the AR/VR market could hit $150 billion revenue by 2020, with AR taking the lion’s share. High-performance head mounted VR displays from Vive, Oculus and Sony are launching this year, but exactly how do they differ from 360 video? And what is the difference between them and mobile VR headsets? Will they change the way we consume media or fundamentally relate to one another?
In this single session primer, immersive journalist Dan Archer, founder of VR/AR storytelling agency Empathetic Media, will walk you through the core concepts and potential of this transformative technology.
Course fee is $25. Participants will receive a free cardboard VR viewer (while supplies last).
Dan Archer has created several journalistic VR experiences using the Unity software including Ferguson Firsthand published by Fusion in 2015 and Arc, an augmented reality app that features content from the Associated Press, United Nations, Columbia University’s Tow Center and the Washington Post. Dan writes about VR on Medium.
Dan Archer is the founder of Empathetic Media, a multimedia agency that uses graphic journalism, virtual and augmented reality to tell news stories in an immersive new way. He is a recognized thought leader in the VR/interactive storytelling space, having lectured and given workshops at different occasions such as: Future of Storytelling conference, Society of News Design and Online News Association among others. His work has been published among others by BBC (additionally featured in the BBC’s Future of News Report, January 2015), Canadian Broadcasting Corp., American Public Media, Vice magazine and Fusion. He is a 2016 Fellow at the Tow Center at Columbia University (New York), was a 2014 Reynolds Journalism Institute Fellow at the University of Missouri and 2011 Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, where he also taught non-fiction graphic novel writing 2008-14. In 2014 he was awarded the EIC/Maynard Institute grant for mental health reporting for a comic on affordable housing for the mentally ill homeless community in San Francisco, published in the San Francisco Public Press. In his spare time he meditates and rock climbs. Not together.
With Marcelle Hopkins and Bob Sacha. $449. More info.
With Dan Archer. $799. More info.