The VRLA (Virtual Reality Los Angeles) conference is coming to the LA Conference Center on May 4th and 5th. The conference is in its fth year and is dubbed as one of the largest VR conferences worldwide. Indeed there is something special about this conference.
For starters, it is one of few conferences that is a VR / AR standalone conference, which means it is not an extension of a larger conference that tries to establish some coverage of the AR/VR space. The first conference was held in 2011 and has grown steadily since then.
The second interesting fact is that the conference is trying to be both a B2B as well as a B2C conference. The way they achieve this is by focusing during the first day on B2B content and the next day on B2C. How do you control the crowds you ask? They charge much more for entrance on the first day than they do for the second. While a two day pro pass costs $299, the Saturday only pass costs only $40 or $30 for students. Besides the low entry fee, the high number of visitors still makes this a large venue event.
In total the number of attendants reached 100,000+ in 2017 and with even more exhibitors and events this year the goal is to beat that number by a good margin. With nine keynotes, eleven panel discussions, nine presentations and many exhibitors large and small, the attendants will certainly find enough stimulations for a day or two.
VRLA 2018 SponsorsEven the sponsor list is pretty impressive with an even emphasis on hardware and software. On the other side the show seems to be more about content development and the development of applications that can sustain AR and VR now.
While most of the AR / VR conferences are driven by hands on experiences, this number of visitors may cause an issue with trying out every VR demo that there is. This is where a lot of the panel discussions and presentations will come in to keep the visitors occupied with something other than waiting in line.
While the sponsors are presenting mostly keynotes. the smaller companies give presentations to push their ideas for AR / VR. Both of them should be interesting to say the least.
A good portion of the presentations and workshops is focused on VR as a business from investing to making money. The latter may be a hot topic for many small companies entering this field with the intention to become the YouTube of VR. So far AR / VR is far from the ‘next big thing’ that many hoped for, especially when we look at the hardware side of things. Today the money is in the software and content side, which is normal for entertainment and business applications. However, if the hardware revenue remains so low that many developers discontinue their efforts, this will also have a detrimental affect on the software revenue. What is great content without a good hardware platform to watch it on? It is like watching the latest 4K UHD HDR movie on your 30 year old color CRT TV. Nice, but useless for the most part.
If you happen to be in Los Angeles in the beginning of May, this maybe a great way of spending two days with the latest from the AR / VR space. NH
