Two XR pioneers.
50+ years building.
Nearly two decades of keynote speaking, thought leadership, and designing Augmented Reality (AR) experiences including work for Louis Vuitton, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and Snap.
Helen started her career building with AR in 2005 as an artist and designer. Her practice-based Ph.D. focused on AR as a new medium for creative expression and storytelling at a time when the technology was heavily focused in the realm of Computer Science. During her tenure as a Senior Research Associate at the York University AR Lab, she helped to pioneer easy to use drag and drop AR authoring tools for creators and non-programmers in 2007.
Most recently, Louis Vuitton named Helen a “Global Visionary” inviting her to reimagine the iconic trunk with AR in celebration of the brand’s founder’s 200th birthday. The artwork appeared in 500 store windows worldwide, a travelling exhibition (Paris, Singapore, Los Angeles, and NYC), and will be on auction at Sotheby’s with all proceeds to charity.
Helen is the bestselling author of “Augmented Human: How Technology is Shaping the New Reality” (O’Reilly, 2017), which is available in 5 languages worldwide. She is the founder of XR GOES POP, a consulting firm focused on immersive technologies across retail and popular culture. She is also a member of The World Economic Forum’s invite-only Global Future Council on Augmented and Virtual Reality, and a Metaverse Initiative Partner.
Prior to this, Helen was the Chief Innovation Officer at Infinity Augmented Reality Inc. (acquired by Alibaba). She also worked for the internationally acclaimed Bruce Mau Design studio, where she was project lead on “Massive Change: The Future of Global Design”. This 20,000 square foot touring exhibition and bestselling book examined the inventions and technologies reshaping our world.
A top requested professional keynote speaker, Helen shows audiences the fantastical future of Spatial Computing and XR framing it within the needs of a diverse range of industries. Her sold out SXSW 2019 opening keynote was the #1 requested presentation in the XR track and her TEDx talk was named one of the top 10 on AR and gamified life.
Dr. Helen Papagiannis
Avi Bar-Zeev
Over three decades of leadership in Spatial Computing for companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Disney.
Avi Bar-Zeev has been at the forefront of Spatial Computing for more than 30 years: launching Disney’s groundbreaking Aladdin VR ride in the early 90s, crafting Second Life’s 3D worlds and co-founding Keyhole (Google Earth) mirror-earth 3D browser around 2001. He co-invented the Hololens AR headset in 2010, helped define Amazon Echo Frames in 2015, and lead the Experience Prototyping team for Apple's Vision Pro and more from 2016 to 2019. All in all, he's helped at least 10 hardware projects, but he remains focused on bringing magical user experiences to life.
After Apple, he’s consulted privately for top XR companies and investors. And he’s taken a more public stance by writing and speaking publicly on important issues like privacy, biometric sensing and mental autonomy, targeted and future experiential advertising, DEI and harassment in XR, and various Metaverse and web3 architectures.
Most recently, he is a founder and President of The XR Guild, a new non-profit membership organization that seeks to support and educate professionals in XR on ethics and most positive outcomes for humanity.
