The fourth AUREA Award will highlight the latest trends in immersive world-building and storytelling, celebrate excellence, and kickstart collaboration. Here are just a few reasons to attend this year’s event.
The countdown is on! The fourth AUREA Award is taking place on-site, online, and virtually from January 21-22, 2022. We’ll be highlighting the latest trends in immersive world-building and storytelling, celebrating excellence, and kickstarting collaboration. There’s a lot to look forward to, but here are just a few reasons to attend this year’s event.
AUREA Award is well-known for showcasing the most innovative technologies in immersive entertainment. But the event isn’t just about show-and-tell. It’s also a forum for groundbreaking creators to develop life-long relationships.
At the second edition of AUREA Award, the team at Holoride (led by Nils Wollny) took home top prize in the experience category. The German startup transforms vehicles into moving theme parks by combining real-time motion data with in-vehicle entertainment. The AUREA jury weren’t the only people who were impressed by Wollny's team – presenter Clark Parsons was blown away too. The two connected and quickly hit it off. They continued to keep in touch over the next two years before, in early 2021, Parsons joined Holoride’s Advisory Board.
"What began with a VIP event for professionals has now become a community of leaders in VR, AR, and entertainment,” Parsons says. “The AUREA community is a forum for high-level networking, exchange, and fellowship among those who are working at the cutting edge."
Through breakout sessions, networking parties, and impromptu chat roulette sessions, you’ll be able to make valuable connections with industry leaders.
The AUREA community is at the heart of everything we do. We strive to welcome creatives who are new to the immersive entertainment space and ensure that their outstanding work can be recognized. Athena Demos is just that sort of creative.
Boasting a successful career as an actor and producer, the pandemic offered her an opportunity to dive into XR for the first time. Along with her business partner, Doug Jacobsen, she co-founded Big Rock Creative (BRCvr), a multiverse designed to recreate the Burning Man experience in a year when the physical event couldn’t take place. While Burning Man already had a number of communities that regularly interacted in the game Second Life, advances in technology offered a chance to foster interaction between people on a whole different level. Her ultimate vision? An AR activation of Burning Man in which 3 million people can be together.
“We’ve opened Pandora’s box,” Demos says. “XR, by its very nature, aligns with many of the founding principles of Burning Man: inclusivity, radical acceptance, and communal effort.”
The project caught the attention of several community members who nominated the project for AUREA. BRCvr ultimately took home top prize in the creative category. Since then, she has become an active member of the AUREA community, attending virtual events before finally meeting many of her peers in person at this year’s AWE.
After attending the last edition of AUREA remotely, Demos will be on site at this year’s event. As a former winner, she’ll be part of a five member jury of leaders in the AUREA community. The group will be led by chair Kathleen Cohen, an XR Immserive Strategist at The Collaboratorium and one of the catalysts for AUREA Award’s inception.
The group also features Cathy Hackl (Chief Metaverse Officer at Futures Intelligence Group), Frank Govaere (Team Manager of Virtual Film Production at ICT AG and former VFX Supervisor at UFA Serial Drama), and Thomas Wagner (Co-founder and CEO of VR Coaster). Together, they’ll evaluate some of the most exciting projects in five categories: innovation, experience, impact, interaction, and creative. The awards seek to not only identify the best products and services but demonstrate the potential of this sector for technology and entertainment as a whole.
This year’s AUREA Award promises to be the best edition yet. Building on the success of last year’s digital event, this year we’re introducing a hybrid event featuring on-site, digital, and virtual formats.
What does that look like, exactly? In addition to the conference and awards show taking place on site at Europa-Park, you can experience the AUREA Award in virtual reality via Spatial. The virtual space (designed by community member Gabriele Romagnoli) offers you the chance to interact and engage with some of the foremost thought-leaders in the VR and AR space, no matter where you are in the world. Additionally, we’ll be live streaming selected keynotes and panels via Hopin.
For a limited time, we’re offering 50% off online tickets to the fourth AUREA Award when you use the code AAlaunchspecial at checkout. No matter how you choose to tune-in, don’t miss this opportunity to experience the leading conference in immersive entertainment!
