The latest augmented reality (AR) technology, and some of its leading producers, packed the house at the NYU Data Future Lab last night in SoHo, at Chris Pfaff’s ‘AR for Producers: Bending the Arc in Real Life’ event, presented with the VR/AR Association, New York Chapter. The event was held at the end of the first day of Advertising Week New York 2016, and brought together technologists and producers alike for demos and discussions regarding AR’s application to multiscreen content.

Ariff Quli, chief commercial officer, Americas for Blippar answers a question at ‘AR for Producers’ at the NYU Data Future Lab

A full house of more than 75 people crowded into the Think Tank at the lab, and witnessed a presentation of Provision’s Holovision holographic display unit, which is used by several leading consumer brands. Ted Iannuzzi, creative business technologist with design and development firm Ixonos detailed the product’s significance in the context of his long history in emerging technologies. Ixonos is currently working with Provision to design the next generation of the Holovision experience, which will incorporate the first ‘touchless’ touch screen.

Ted Iannuzzi, creative business technologist with Ixonos, demos the Provision Holovision holographic projection kiosk, and discusses past visions of AR

Blippar’s US director of commercial operations, Ariff Quli, led off the event, showing how the Blippar app drives interactive engagement for brands including Spotify (a playlist driven by Blippar from a Coca-Cola can) and others. Ariff even pulled an audience member aside to draw a picture, which was then rendered elegantly using Blippar’s recognition technology.

Ariff Quli demos Blippar; activated Spotify playlist, tagging physical objects, and bringing audience member’s drawing to life (a butterly!)

Diego Florentin, head of business development for Montevideo, Uruguay-based Squadability, showed some of his company’s industry-leading AR work for brands, including the Harry Potter exhibit at Universal Studios. He made a passionate pitch for producers to drive more content with AR tags and hooks, to enable greater development.

Diego Florentin, from Squadability, inspires the audience with demos of AR work for brands and media companies

Futurefly’s founder and chief product officer Ozz Hakkinen discussed his career as a successful game publisher, who wanted to move into game development, and how that spurred his latest work, the RAWR app, which applies contextual content hooks to an avatar-based experience that enables a new kind of chat.

Ozz Hakkinen, founder and chief product officer of Futurefly, demos the RAWR app, with contextual emojis for avatar chat

Much discussion ensued regarding the coming of Magic Leap’s platform; head-up displays (HUDs), including Osterhout Digital Group’s glasses, and the incredible impact that Pokémon Go has made on the AR industry. Much discussion took place around the latest developments in AR from the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

Chris Pfaff, CEO of Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC, and Ted Iannuzzi, before the event

Paul Wilford (gesturing), research director at Bell Labs, talks about VR as a Service (VRaaS) before the event

Mina Salib, manager of the NYU Data Future Lab, welcomes the audience

On Wednesday, May 20th, in the middle of Internet Week New York 2016, CleverTap and Chris Pfaff Tech Media produced an event with some of the leading New York players in the mobile app space, including CleverTap’s own Arkady Fridman, as well as Al Jazeera Media Network’s Tian Chen; Cachette Group’s Ellie Cachette, and Rumble Fox’s Julie Andrews.

Julie Andrews, Arkady Fridman, Ellie Cachette, Tian Chen, and Chris Pfaff at ‘The Full Stack: Creating an App From Beginning to End’ at General Assembly, 05.18.16

Chris Pfaff joked that the crowd was gathered together to pay its respects, “with a 1.5 nanosecond moment of silence,” to Windows Phone, which had essentially been killed by Microsoft the day before.

Julie Andrews, from Rumble Fox, presents

‘The Full Stack: Creating an App from Beginning to End,’ assessed a wide range of issues connected with the design, development, maintenance and promotion of apps. Julie Andrews presented a case study that showed how Rumble Fox created a hybrid web-mobile app for the Health Management Academy that integrated with existing data systems and worked with an easily maintainable code base. Tian Chen showed the evolution of Al Jazeera America’s app, and discussed the decisions that forced design changes and overall structure of the app. Arkady Fridman showed the CleverTap dashboard and discussed the need for better app engagement with users.

Tian Chen, talks about Al Jazeera Media Network’s app

The crowd at General Assembly was comprised of 100 people, mainly tech and media professionals, many of whom were in the process of building an app, or planning an app. The panel discussion provided a range of topics, led by Chris Pfaff, that included forecasting an app’s performance; dealing with apps that never seem ready for primetime; the best tools to use for development and quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA); how brands view apps and how developers and designers need to consider overall brand touchpoints, and how to communicate with app users without overwhelming or annoying them through notifications.

Julie Andrews answers an audience question

This was the third CleverTap-General Assembly event in New York, and there is clearly a growing community for this kind of forum.

Arkady Fridman; Julie Andrews; Chris Pfaff; Tian Chen, and Ellie Cachette, after the event

Julie Andrews, Tian Chen, and Arkady Fridman, prior to the event

Tian Chen with Ted Iannuzzi, from Ixonos, after the event