As AR starts to take root in some key aspects of our lives I thought it would be useful to collect below some of the best talks (yes physical presentations vs overt demos) in the Gamified / Augmented Life space. These are  thought leader presentations asking the key questions about why, how, should we, who for and so on. Some talks are a couple of years old (with many from TED) but they need to be seen by upcoming AR & Experience Creators as these passionate presentations look backwards but mostly forwards to our soon-to-be-enhanced lives – through this inevitable, always-with-us, digital overlay.

The speakers are writers, inventors, company owners, commentators and all go that one important step beyond where we are now which is an AR oil rush where no one has quite found the oil (yet) but there is certainly lots of planting flags in the ground where they reckon the best oil deposits are…I could go on with that tangent but might save it for my own lil talk next week at the Augmented Reality Event but for now lets get to it,  on with the proper talks (in no particular order!)…of course I probably missed the most important ones – thats what the comment box is for 🙂

1 Opening & Keynoting the Augmented Reality Event in 2010 we have AR visionary & guru Bruce Sterling – consider yourself as Experience Designers

The Augmented Reality Event: Bruce Sterling’s keynote from Ori Inbar on Vimeo

9 more to follow

 

2 Seth Priebatsch at TED talking about his methodologies in building game layers on top of the world

 

 

3 A talk that opened many peoples eyes to why consumer centric thinking needs to be brought into our planning – Jesse Schell’s talk on Life, Games, Experience and Augmented Reality at DICE 2010

 

 

4 Pranav Mistry caused a storm at TED over the past couple of years when he presented his SixthSense technology ideas and prototypes

 

 

5 Helen Papagiannis looks at the more aesthetic aspects of AR and how a sense of wonderment will bring creativity into mixed and augmented reality environments at TEDxYorkU 2010

 

6 Julian Oliver, takes a great user centric approach and goes beyond thinking just about the tech on his “How to improve reality” talk at TEDxRotterdam

 

7 Although not overtly AR or gamification, Jane McGonigal makes a good case for the importance of Social Gaming and how it can make a better world

 

8 The Wow factor is critical for any new ‘medium’ and Total Immersion  (amongst others) are magicians when it comes to live, large scale, AR presentations. This is one of the first that raised eyebrows.

 

 

9 Another spectacular demo and the best ones go beyond what we are actually seeing on the screen and raise thoughts immediately towards “if we can do this now, imagine what we will be doing in a few years time” Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos augmented-reality maps at TED again

10 To finish we have Jesse Schell again asking the difficult questions and giving some difficult answers at the end of Augmented Reality Event 2010

“Augmented Reality will be one of the things that fundamentally define the 21st century”

The Augmented Reality Event 2010: “Seeing” – Keynote by Jesse Schell from Ori Inbar on Vimeo

 

11 OK one final overt demo again from the Total Immersion camp – or rather a partner called Ad-Dispatch doing a slick presentation of 2nd generation marker AR to a Canadian advertising crowd. Although more tech than consumer centric the industry needs a strong nod from the marketing industries.