RealTime Conference Announces Lineup for May Event

Speakers from Adobe, Dassault Systèmes, Epic Games, Ford, IKEA, Walt Disney and More; Special Star Wars Day Event from Visual Effects Society with ILM Creative Director Dennis Muren

NEW YORK

April 30, 2020

Following the success of its inaugural event, the RealTime Conference today announces the lineup for its second show, featuring over 40 individual sessions and keynotes. Set for May 4, the event will highlight the practical and potential uses of real-time technology across multiple markets, including design & manufacturing, volumetric capture, XR for entertainment and more. Speakers include members of Walt Disney, IKEA and Looking Glass Factory, with all sessions free to the public. Registration is open now.

“With more than 4,000 registrants from 87 countries, we are extremely pleased with the success of the first conference,” said RealTime Conference co-founder Jean-Michel Blottière. “We received amazing feedback from the community, proving that there is a real benefit to a show like this. We can’t wait to see how that community continues to grow through future events!”

Debuting April 6-7, the inaugural RealTime Conference featured speakers focused on the growth and application of real-time technology in architecture, virtual production, automotive, intelligent agents, digital humans and more. Over the course of two days, each of the nearly 70 sessions saw hundreds of concurrent participants, with the keynote addresses attracting nearly 1,000 people each. Videos of each session will be added in the coming weeks.

Next week’s conference will highlight all new sectors, beginning with design & manufacturing, followed by volumetric capture, including light fields and holograms. Additional sessions will then shift to universal scene description (USD) in real-time, as well as XR for entertainment, emphasizing both technical uses and artistic insights. Experts and pioneers will discuss everything from ideation to immersive design to how real-time technology can change the creative process. Beginning at 8 a.m. ET, the day will include in-depth presentations, Q&As, roundtable discussions and more.

The May event will also feature a keynote address given by Martin Enthed, the digital manager leading the IKEA Digital LAB and DevOps IT. He will be joined by IKEA 3D manager, Dan Frith, to discuss how IKEA is taking advantage of real-time graphics for consumer-facing displays, and where they see that technology going in the future.

Visual Effects Society Special Event

During the May 4 event, the RealTime Conference is partnering with the Visual Effects Society (VES) to co-host a special event titled “May the 4^th Be With You,” highlighting the legacy of Star Wars. Hosted by VES communications director Naomi Goldman, the event will feature an in-depth conversation with special guest Dennis Muren, A.S.C., visual effects artist, supervisor and creative director at Industrial Light & Magic.

Muren will discuss his involvement with Star Wars that began four decades ago with Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, along with his career at ILM and some of the pioneering techniques he helped create that became a benchmark in visual effects. He will also discuss some of the highlights from his career, including working with the CG dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, creating flying bicycles in E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and much more.

Additional RealTime Conference May speakers include:

Elizabeth Baron – Vice president, Immersive Solutions – Silverdraft; Former immersive realities technical specialist – Ford Motor Company
George Elkoura – Senior software engineering lead – Pixar Animation Studios
Alex Hornstein – Co-founder & CTO – Looking Glass Factory
Mike Jelinek – Senior product manager – Wacom Technology Corp.
Tim Macmillan – CEO – Area4 Professional
Kaki Navarre – Director, content technology – Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International
David Nahon – Immersive experience director, 3DEXPERIENCE Lab – Dassault Systèmes
Colleen O’Hagan – Head of engineering – RYOT | Verizon Media
Davide Pesare – Head of 3D & Immersive Labs – Adobe
Hadrien Szigeti – Director of corporate development, manufacturing & supply chain – Dassault Systèmes
Heiko Wenczel – Head of Detroit Lab | Industry Manager – Epic Games

A complete program can be found here.

Following May’s sessions, the RealTime Conference will return on June 8 with an event focusing on a new slate of topics including: virtual production through the eyes of European Studios, immersive storytelling, digital humans (with an emphasis on artificial intelligence, machine learning and general adversarial networks), games cinematics, open source in real-time and more.

The RealTime Conference is organized in cooperation with Visual Effects Society (VES) and is sponsored by founding partners Intel and Epic Games, along with leading partners Adobe, Foundry, HP and Sony. See the full list of partners here.

About RealTime Conference

The RealTime Conference is the World’s Premiere Event For Real-Time Communities. RTC was founded as a means of bringing businesses, technology and policy leaders together to discuss and highlight the potential of real-time graphics and data. The conference was founded by Jean-Michel Blottière, Dave Gougé and Thomas Haegele, connecting decades of technological and event planning experience. Blottière and Haegele previously collaborated in overseeing FMX before founding the RealTime Conference, while Gougé has put together over 100 events as curator and host. They are joined by Manny Francisco, the former VP of advanced creative technology for NBCU/DreamWorks Animation, and more. The full RTC team can be found here.

The RealTime Conference is also supported by the RTC Advisory Board, a group dedicated to bringing people together while offering recommendations to strengthen the program. The full list of RTC Board members can be found here.

The fully virtual events will allow participants the opportunity to engage with experts across multiple industries to see the enabling technologies and present-day applications. Focused collaborative sessions offer creative collisions across industries and help spark new ideas. The RealTime Conference is about shaping the future.