What's up with this blog? - Still blogging?

You might be wondering why there's not much going on here on this blog since a while and if I stopped blogging. Well no, I still keep on blogging but focus my efforts more on the Valorem Reply company blog with similar contents.

 Please go here for my latest blog post.

Advanced Mixed Reality Development and Best Practices - Content for the MR Dev Summit 2019 Session

Greetings from London where we are having a good time at the MR Dev Summit 2019 networking and learning with passionate Mixed Reality experts.

I also delivered a session "Advanced Mixed Reality Development and Best Practices".
The presentation covered my Top 10 of HoloLens / Mixed Reality development best practices, including Deep Learning and WHY Azure Spatial Anchors are a transformational technology and HOW to develop applications.
I also had a live demo for a spatial-persisted sticky notes AR app with native versions for Android ARCore and iOS ARKit. The code is available on GitHub and I walked attendees through the architecture and the technology under the hood.

The slide deck can be downloaded here. It's quite large with embedded videos and I recommend to download it.
The demo source code for the Azure Spatial Anchors app is available here on GitHub.

Developing Mobile AR Applications with Azure Spatial Anchors - Content for the Microsoft Build 2019 Session

Greetings from Seattle where we had a blast delivering our breakout session at Microsoft's largest developer conference Build 2019.
The title of our talk was "Developing Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) Applications with Azure Spatial Anchors".

This was my 5th time in a row speaking at Build as an external, non-Microsoft speaker. What an honor.
This time I was co-presenting with Paris Morgan from the Azure Spatial Anchors team. An even bigger honor.

The presentation covered WHY Azure Spatial Anchors are a transformational technology, what a Spatial Anchor is and why mobile AR is very much relevant even when we have advanced head-mounted devices like the HoloLens 2. I also showed lots of examples and use cases for enterprise and consumer scenarios. Then Paris explained HOW to develop these applications yourself. We also had a live demo for a spatial-persisted sticky notes AR app with native versions for Android ARCore and iOS ARKit. The code is available on GitHub and we walked attendees through the architecture and the technology under the hood. Paris also covered UX best practices including how to best place anchors and we were able to answer a couple of questions.

The slide deck can be downloaded here. It's quite large with embedded videos and I recommend to download it.
The demo source code is available here on GitHub.
You can watch the session recording here or embedded below.
There seems to have been a glitch with the recording around 21:50 minutes where the production crew had to cut out 1 minute of content. :-( I will post the MR Dev Days video once it is out which hopefully does not have such a recording/processing issue.

Content for the DevTernity Session - Advanced Mixed Reality Development and Best Practices

DevTernity in beautiful Riga, Latvia was a great conference and I had good fun delivering my session called "Advanced Mixed Reality Development and Best Practices".

The presentation covered best practices we learned while developing for the HoloLens since 2015 and my Top 10 HoloLens Developer Recommendations 2018. I also talked and demoed exciting new things with MR + AI showcasing near real-time object recognition running on the HoloLens and leveraging WinML for on-device Deep Learning inference. You can see a video of the demo embedded at the bottom of this post. I also showed how the new RS5 Windows 10 update brings hardware-accelerated inference to the HoloLens via DirextX 12 drivers.

The slide deck can be downloaded here. It's quite large with embedded videos and I recommend to download it.
The WinML object recognition demo source code targeting RS5 APIs is here.
The session was recorded. You can watch it here or embedded below:



Also, here's a video recording of my WinML object recognition demo targeting industrial scenarios:

The Sky is NOT the limit - Content for the European Space Agency ESA Keynote and Talks

The European Space Agency ESA invited me a while ago to give a keynote for the Visualisation and Science Communication track at the first ever Φ-week conference. I also was the chair for the track and made sure speakers were on time, managed questions, etc. Plus I gave another session at the VR/AR workshop and helped with the closing panel discussion that proposed advises how the ESA could leverage VR/AR in an earth observation context.

I felt really honored the ESA invited me to keynote their first event and I had a great time at the ESA ESRIN facility in beautiful Frascati which is near Rome, Italy.
The ESRIN is planning another Φ-week conference for 2019, so keep an eye out in case you want to go there as well.

My keynote "Beam me up, Scotty! Teleporting people and objects via 3D holographic livestreaming." showed how Immersive Telepresence and holographic 3D communication will play an important role for space travel and colonization. Of coursed it included our HoloBeam technology and how it is making science-fiction a reality, enabling those use cases. I also showed some AI Deep Learning research we are running for various, related scenarios and gave an outlook for future holographic projection research.
My other talk was titled "Look, holograms! A short introduction to Mixed Reality and HoloLens." and was exactly that. I also performed live demos of some of our HoloLens apps.

The ESA ESRIN also had two sketch artists on-site who created a funny, little summary of  the Visualisation and Science Communication track that I chaired and gave the keynote for.

The slide deck for my keynote and the other talk can be downloaded here. Both are quite large with embedded videos and I recommend to download it.
The keynote was live streamed and recorded. You can watch it here or embedded below (the stream starts 5 minutes into the video):

Content for the Digility Session - Advanced Mixed Reality Development and Best Practices

I had a good time at the Digility conference in Cologne delivering my session "Advanced Mixed Reality Development and Best Practices".

The presentation covered best practices we learned while developing for the HoloLens since 2015 and my Top 10 HoloLens Developer Recommendations 2018. I also talked and demoed exciting new things with MR + AI showcasing near real-time object recognition running on the HoloLens and leveraging WinML for on-device Deep Learning inference. You can see a video of the demo embedded at the bottom of this post. I also showed how the new RS5 Windows 10 update brings hardware-accelerated inference to the HoloLens via DirextX 12 drivers.

The slide deck can be downloaded here. It's quite large with embedded videos and I recommend to download it.
The WinML object recognition demo source updated to RS5 APIs is here.
The session was recorded and the video is available here and embedded below:




Also, here's a video recording of my WinML object recognition demo targeting industrial scenarios including an Easter egg:

Content for the Unite Berlin AutoTech Summit Session - Industrial Mixed Reality

The Unite Berlin AutoTech Summit was amazing and I had a great time delivering my session at Unity's largest conference in Europe.

The title of my talk was "Industrial Mixed Reality – Lessons learned developing for Microsoft HoloLens".

The presentation covered best practices we learned while developing for the HoloLens since 2015 and my Top 10 HoloLens Developer Recommendations 2018. I also talked and demoed exciting new things to come with MR + AI showcasing near real-time object recognition running on the HoloLens and leveraging WinML for on-device Deep Learning inference. You can see a video of the demo embedded at the bottom of this post. This is a brand new demo video fitted more for an industrial and automotive context recognizing car parts and tools.


The slide deck can be downloaded here. It's quite large with embedded videos and I recommend to download it.
The WinML object recognition demo source code is here.
The session was recorded and the video is up on Unity's YouTube channel and embedded below.



Also, here's a video recording of my new WinML object recognition demo targeting industrial scenarios including an Easter egg:

Content for the Microsoft Build 2018 Session: Seizing the Mixed Reality Revolution – A past, present and future Mixed Reality Partner perspective

Build 2018 is a wrap! I had a blast delivering my breakout session at Microsoft's largest developer conference in Seattle.

The title of my talk was "Seizing the Mixed Reality Revolution – A past, present and future Mixed Reality Partner perspective".
I was told I was the only external, non-Microsoft speaker with a full 45 minute breakout session. What an honor.

The presentation covered best practices we learned while developing for the HoloLens since 2015 and my Top 10 HoloLens Developer Recommendations 2018. I also talked and demoed exciting new things to come with MR + AI showcasing near real-time object recognition running on the HoloLens and leveraging WinML for on-device Deep Learning inference. You can see a video of the demo embedded at the bottom of this post.

A funny anecdote: an attendee was wearing the HoloLens during my talk. I saw the white LED was turned on, so I assumed he was recording my session with the HoloLens. I asked him afterwards what he was doing and he was in-fact live streaming my session to his colleague on the east coast using the new Remote Assist app.

The slide deck can be downloaded here. It's quite large with embedded videos and I recommend to download it.
The WinML object recognition demo source code is here.
The session was recorded and the video is up on YouTube and embedded right below:


After the session I was interviewed by Lucas and we talked about why fast Deep Learning inference with Windows Machine Learning is a key technology. Watch it here:

Finally, here's a video recording of my WinML object recognition demo:

Big in Vegas! - HoloBeam at CES

Last year has been exciting for our Immersive Experiences team and we reached some nice milestones and coverage with our proprietary 3D telepresence technology HoloBeam.

I wrote a post for the Valorem blog with more details about the new version of HoloBeam we are showing at Microsoft's Experience Center (IoT Showcase) at CES 2018 in Las Vegas.
You can read it here:
HOLOBEAM CONTINUES TO PAVE THE WAY FOR IMMERSIVE TELEPRESENCE