At Laval Virtual, France - the People & Tech
Eirmersive's CEO Camille Donegan attended Laval Virtual, one of Europe’s largest XR events at the Mayenne Espace event venue in the town of Laval, Western France and was joined by Board Director and founding member Jacinta Moore.
Jacinta Moore with Camille Donegan, outside Mayenne Espace for Laval Virtual
As a first stop, they attended the NL (Netherlands) delegation stand where 10 Dutch XR companies were presenting. There they met with Arno Gransma, Entrepreneur, Industrial Additive Manufacturing expert and Immersive Experience community builder who introduced Camille to exhibiting Dutch companies and their teams, including Mesh Masters, Presence EU XR project, and Saxion University of Applied Sciences. They were also introduced to Monique Voguel Immersive Learning Specialist with fectar, a VR and AR platform, who demonstrated the company's work with museums, 3D scanning etc. Jacinta also met with Simon Moss, Product Lead and Consultant, and Mohamad Hjeij, R & D Engineer, with the Presence EU XR project and trialed their live holographic VR platform, speaking with a hologram of a team member in Barcelona.
Camille Donegan speaking with Arno Gransma
One of the striking things about Laval Virtual is the innovative hardware use cases. Given the amount of rain we get in Ireland, Camille was keen to try a Taiwanese student project where a physical umbrella was mapped to a virtual umbrella. Camille spoke with team members of Mahōo and tested the VR umbrella, an immersive experience aiming to make a positive impact on emotional relationship with rain!
Camille Donegan with Mahoo VR
At the HTC stand, Camille met with Ian Ryan, PR & Social Media Manager at HTC Vive and Nadia el Harradi, Head of Sales Western Europe, who provided an overview of the latest devices and developments. It was great to meet Nathan Gaydhani from the Viverse team, a member of Eirmersive, in person following recent calls together exploring HTC partnership.
Nadia el Harradi, Head of Sales Western Europe at HTC, with Camille Donegan
Jacinta met with Jorge Baroza and trialed the Paul Gauguin Canal experience which showcased the history and life of the artist and his artworks.
Later in the afternoon, Camille and Jacinta met with Maxime Vidal and Marin-Victor Berthelot who demonstrated the Snap AR glasses, following which the Eirmersive team trialled the spectacles. Eirmerisve look forward to continuing the conversation with Maxime to ensure Eirmersive members have access to this progressive new AR tech.
In the afternoon, Camille attended an EU commission roundtable meeting. Camille took part in a think tank on 'Doing Business' along with Benjamin de Wit of Immersive Tech Week and Katharina Haverich, founder of the Berlin School of VR.
Camille travelled on to Paris where she joined the Irish delegation who were presenting at the New Images Festival.
Jacinta attended Recto VRso, an immersive and interactive art festival at the La Quarante venue in Laval. This 3 day event produced by artist-researcher and VR/MR developer Judith Guez and Cultural Coordinator Fabienne Mésenge, showcased works which included live AI conversationalists, plant tech touch installations, VR sketching, AI digital reflections and colour labyrinths of light.
Jacinta met with some of the key artist creators including VR/AI artist Sigrid Coggins, Creative Technologist and Director of Innovation at We are Social, Stéphane Maguet, Digital Artist, Alessia (Alex) Fallica in collaboration with artist and Cultural Project Manager Martina Pizzigoni, and Sam Egan of Smode Tech.
All in all a very productive week of networking and connecting in France for two of the Eirmersive team. We look forward to feeding the findings into our multi-faceted membership offering.