My experience at the Immersive Architecture

This weekend I’ve attended the Immersive Architecture in Venice. Today I want to talk you about my experience, so that if you are unsure if attending it or not next year, I can help you in deciding. So, has it been interesting? Has it been worth the price (of the travel, because I got a free entry pass)? Let me explain you.

The location

The location of the Immersive Architecture is fantastic. First of all, you’re in Venice and we all know that Venice is one of the most beautiful (and romantic) cities of the world. The exact location of the event is the Isle of San Servolo, that is a very little isle that you can reach by boat in 20 minutes from Venice center. This isle is just marvelous: there are a lot of green spaces with trees, grass, and flowers that in spring spread some fragrant scents; all around you there is the relaxing sea; even the buildings are beautiful. Being there is a pleasure for all the senses: sometimes I just enjoyed departing from the group of all other participants and have a stroll in the island, admiring the sea and smelling all the perfumes that were in the air. It was very relaxing.

There are only two problems with the location:

1. Being an isle, you can’t go away whenever you wish, unless you want to pay for a water-taxi. Especially in the evening, this is a problem, since there is a boat departing only every hour: the last day we were just 5 minutes late to take the ferry and so we had to wait another hour;
2. Since the event is on an Island and not in the city center and it starts in the morning and ends in the evening, you actually have no time to tour Venice. If you want to visit Venice, you have to reserve other days to be a tourist.

The organization

The event was organized as follows: from 10 am to 6 pm circa there were talks made by people in the creative and/or VR field. Every 2/3 talks there was a break (coffee break, lunch break, etc…) during which we could go to another building to eat a lot of food and try some VR demos. During this breaks, the first thing we all did was rushing to food and eat until our stomach exploded: food was delicious, especially the croissants. When we had reached the same weight of Peter Griffin, we went to the so-called “VR rooms”.

The “VR rooms” where some rooms where companies and universities had prepared some little booths to showcase their work in AR and VR: this way, it was possible to see some interesting VR experiences and meet some cool companies.

At 6 pm circa there was a buffet dinner and after that, free time to spend together with the other participants and the speakers.

There have been little problems with the organizations, especially during the conferences (e.g. problems with the mic or with adapters, some delays, etc…) but absolutely no dramas. In the end, everything was organized well.

The conferences

I’ve not attended the workshops of the event, but I attended almost all the talks. I have to say that honestly, this is the part that has disappointed me the most of the whole event.

All the speakers were high-quality ones: there were people from Epic Games, there was the creator of the Modigliani VR experience, there was Enea Le Fons of #30DaysInVR and a lot of other interesting people. I was amazed by listening such cool people. The problem is that at least half of the talks were below my expectations: some were too shallow, some others were boring, some others were just promotional ones. Talking with other people of the audience, I noticed that no one was amazed by the conferences. Anyway, I also noticed that we were disappointed in a different way: some people loved the conferences that I didn’t like and vice-versa. It also depended on the background: as a VR dev and blogger, I wanted more technical insights, while for instance some architects that were there to understand what VR is, were happy in having just a brief introduction to some matters. Maybe the organizers tried to please all categories of people and so the final results were that everyone was not happy nor disappointed.

Anyway, I’m not saying that conferences were terrible: some of them were really worth attending. For instance, the one of a well known Japanese guy that was very inspiring and told us that AR shouldn’t add virtual objects that resemble the real ones, but create a completely new layer to reality, a new kind of reality that is more powerful than current one.

Then Enea Le Fons, as always, decided to break all the rules and after having spoken about his #30DaysInVR performance, he asked me and Martyn Day to go on stage to have a live debate about his experience. We had not scripted the questions, but we just started talking with him and the result was at the same time interesting and funny. The audience appreciated a lot that this conference was not only a Powerpoint, so it could be a great idea to set up some debates in the edition of next year.

A funny thing that people don’t know is that originally I shouldn’t have been on stage. I discovered that I was going to be on the stage just the night before when Enea called me at 3.30am to say that he had this genius idea of having a debate around VR during his conference. In that exact moment, I was having the genius idea of sleeping and my only thought was asking myself why artists like Enea don’t have a creative process that runs only from 12 pm to 8 pm. Anyway, his night idea was cool and everything went great. Great job, Enea.

VR Rooms

In the VR Rooms, it was possible to try some VR experiences. The quality of them was mostly high. I’ve been able to experience:

• Having a bath in a $20000 Jacuzzi. The great part of this experience by Neiko is that I was able to feel the phantom-touch of the water sprays on my skin;
• Being on a yacht. Yes, Jacuzzi and Yachts… you could feel rich for a moment;
• The Modigliani VR experience that has been showcased at Tate: very beautiful, because it could really make you feel the smells, the colors and the mood of the room where Modigliani have spent the last days of his life;
• An innovative VR museum. I don’t like the idea of seeing 2D pictures in VR, but the 3D structure of the museum and the navigation mode were original;
• An aperitif on Mars created in Unreal Engine by Enea Le Fons and some students of the University of Venice;

• A Star-Wars themed AR app;
• The “Beyond the Castle” experience by Beyond The Gate, that let you feel as inside the Castello Sforzesco in Milan during the middle ages and let you play with bow and arrow while it taught you a lot of interesting things about the history of the castle and the city of Milan;
• A lot of mini VR apps created by that epic man of Alex Coulombe of Agile Lens.

The VR Rooms were not only great to try some VR experiences, but also to meet interesting companies in the VR field. I’ve spoken with a lot of interesting people and met new companies with which I’ll maybe collaborate in the future. Furthermore, I’ve been able to try a lot of headsets, like the new Daydream View, the Dell WMR headset, the Lenovo Explorer, the Vive Pro, etc…

For these reasons, I loved the VR Rooms: the only problem was that every booth had a lot of people wanting to visit it, so I had to wait before trying every experience.

Networking

What Immersive Architecture does in a wonderful way is to let you grow your network. The atmosphere is very informal and very happy, so in every moment is easy to start talking with someone and discover that you have some interests in common. Thanks to the various breaks and the VR Rooms, I’ve exchanged a great number of business cards. I also had the occasion of speaking with some of the speakers and especially the secret Japanese guy was very inspiring for me. I met a lot of awesome people from different backgrounds and have enriched myself talking with them. I’ve also tried to enrich other people by telling them about my experience as a consultant and blogger and giving them advice on how to improve their professional lives.

I had the opportunity to meet in person some people that I only knew via Twitter of Facebook, like Alex Coulombe, that is really an awesome guy: he is not only very competent, but he has this smile always in his face that makes you want to spend a lot of time with him; or the great Marco Arena of Beyond The Gate, with which I spent fantastic moments talking about VR, startups… and also girls :D.

Doing networking I’ve discovered that when people meet me in person, they always tell me these things:

1. Why your nickname is “Skarredghost”? (It’s a secret)
2. Compliments for your blog! (Thanks, I do my best)
3. How is Mister President? Do you really call him “Mister President”? Have you ever met him? (I’ve met him and I can assure you that he is awesome and yes, I really call him “Mister President”)

The networking opportunities are worth the price of the ticket alone, both on the professional and the personal side. Immersive Architecture is all about doing networking while having fun.

Final judgment

I have been very satisfied by my experience at Immersive Architecture: I met a lot of new interesting people, I’ve enriched myself, I’ve learned new things, I’ve lived in a beautiful environment, I had fun. Yes, it has still to improve on some sides, but the final judgment is surely more than positive. Furthermore, the organizers told me that they’re already working on solving all the issues of this year for the next year edition.

Of course, you have to attend this event only if you can have some relationship with the architecture/design/creative sectors. As a consultant, for me is ok working on an architecture project, so it has had sense for me being there. If you are a VR psychologist, maybe this event is not for you.

And that’s it. I hope that this post will help you in deciding if attending the Immersive Architecture next year! Have a nice VR day 🙂

(Header image by Immersive Architecture)