This year's Visual 1st Ph.D. lineup:
Dive deep into 3D sensor technologies, camera AI-empowerment, and large-scale UGC photo monetizing with three Ph.D.-holding business leaders
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[Scroll down for And a few more things... industry news highlights];
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My partner Alexis and I are extremely pleased to announce three world class presenters in three separate fireside chat sessions at Visual 1st, Oct. 14-15. What do these speakers have in common? Not only do they have stellar academic backgrounds that include Ph.D.s in challenging fields, they are also business leaders driving imaging innovation through real-world products.
Join us to not only hear what’s happening today, but also what’s trending on – or over – the horizon.
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Buy your $99 Early Bird Ticket Now!
Early Bird ends Sept. 30
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Enabling 3D sensing
What if cameras captured not just high-fidelity 2D content, but also the accurate distance to each element in the photo, video or livestream? How would this spur the development of applications – ranging from AR to photo editing to robotics – that are smart, autonomous and versatile?
Hear from André Wong, VP, Product Line Management, 3D-sensing at Lumentum, a world leader in providing diode lasers for high-volume 3D sensing applications in the gaming and PC markets who are now also driving the technology for adoption in mobile devices and other next-generation applications.
André was educated at the University of British Columbia in Canada where he obtained a Ph.D. in Materials Physics. After obtaining his Ph.D., André was an NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Post-doctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, where he conducted research in fabricating low photon count detectors using CMOS sensors.
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Empowering cameras to act like humans
What if you could create human-centric AI–enabled cameras that see, understand, and respond to humans in the same way that people do?
That’s what Paul Kruszewski’s third AI startup, wrnch, does for some of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world. wrnch’s flagship product, the wrnchAI engine, processes digital images from cameras and videos using deep learning models to detect humans in images, recognize skeletons and shapes, understand motion and gestures, and deliver results so that computers can respond rapidly to what is seen. Wrnch counts Nikon and Mark Cuban among its investors.
Hear from serial AI entrepreneur Paul Kruszewski, who has been at the bleeding intersection of real-time AI and computer graphics since 2000. Paul holds an MA and Ph.D. in computer science from McGill University.
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Managing commerce-focused user-generated photos at scale
We’ve known forever that, when it comes to selling products, photos are indispensable. But it’s a whole new ballgame when the photos are taken by non-professionals, supporting 350K+ new items listed every day. Welcome to Japan’s first unicorn, Mercari, a community-based shopping app that operates in Japan and the US. How does Mercari develop smart solutions to streamline and optimize photo submission at scale?
In this session Mok Oh, Mercari CTO, will share his perspectives on user-generated visual content optimization, and some of the key lessons he has learned throughout his career, including with Moju Labs, a photo app startup that he discussed at Visual 1st 2014.
We look forward to tapping into Mok’s broader perspectives on where consumer imaging can – or should – be heading.
Prior to founding Moju Labs Mok Oh was Chief Scientist at PayPal, and entrepreneur-in-residence at North Bridge Venture Partners. After Moju Labs, Mok became Corporate VP at Samsung and later joined Mercari in 2018 as CTO.
Mok holds a Ph.D. from MIT, an M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania, and two B.A. degrees (Computer Science and Art History) from Oberlin College. He holds 12 patents.
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Why is attending Visual 1st - 2020 Virtual Edition a must for any photo or video product executive or entrepreneur?
A. Innovative presenters from all over the world
- The Visual 1st Star Performer Alumni Check-In
- Having initial success with your photo app is one thing, but how do you keep growing from there, fend off the Facebooks, Instagrams, Snapchats, TikToks, Googles, Apples, Adobes, and Amazons of the world and have a shot at becoming a unicorn? Hear how two photo app developer trailblazers we previously featured at Visual 1st fared after their initial successes, what triggered their explosive subsequent growth, and what might be in store for them going forward.
- Hear from Lightricks and Perfect Corp.
- Photo Print Product Success Stories – today’s rising stars
- The photo print product market is a relatively stable one, dominated by long-term incumbents, who have gone through a fair amount of market consolidation. But then there are others who shake things up by offering innovative print products, superb user experiences, re-engineered business models, or plain-old excellent execution.
- What's behind the successes of PlanetArt, Popsa, and Google Photos Printing?
- Beyond Auto-Tagging: Making imaging machine learning smart
- While AI-based image recognition technologies were initially used to enable us to manage and curate our photo collections in unprecedented ways, they’re now increasingly leveraged for a great variety of use cases, ranging from large-scale smart photo enhancements on the fly, to anonymizing and hiding sensitive content in photos or videos.
- Hear from Viesus and two soon to be announced imaging machine learning startups.
- 30 Show & Tell fast-paced presentations
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Check out the first 18 presenters from 9+ countries, as well as the stellar judges from Speedinvest, Spintop Ventures, Palmarés Advisors, and Google.
B. Innovative networking opportunities before, during and after the conference
For attendees only - Find out who else will attend and engage with potential partners before, during or after the conference.
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Explore potential partners beforehand through our video introduction page.
- Be discovered by other registered attendees or check out and reach out to the right fellow attendees before – or after – the conference. Share a short video message by introducing yourself to your fellow attendees and tell them with what types of partners you’d like to engage. Check out fellow attendees’ videos or search by company, job title or name, and reach out to them by means of their LinkedIn link.
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Mingle in real time during the conference
- Send private messages to fellow attendees during the mingling time prior to the conference, during the break and up to 30 minutes after the conference ends.
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Join any (or all) informal get-together roundtable meetings the week after the conference:
- October 21, 22, 23 and 24, at 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM Pacific Time. For female attendees: mark your calendars: the first get-together roundtable will be October 21 as an informal Women in Imaging gathering, replicating the inaugural Women in Imaging lunch meeting we hosted last year. The topics on the other days will be selected through polls during the conference.
C. Special virtual edition pricing this year
This year’s ticket pricing: $199. Early Bird special pricing ends September 30: $99 – sign up NOW!
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And a few more things... other news
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Lightricks. Going music video. Lightricks, the Israeli makers of the Facetune and Videoleap apps who’ll be presented in our The Visual 1st Star Performer Alumni Check-in panel at Visual 1st – launched a new app, Beatleap, in collaboration with music-tech company Epidemic Sound. Beatleap enables audio-driven video editing by automatically matching songs with clips in seconds. Utilizing machine learning, the app determines the exact moment to slow down or speed up a user’s video to align with the beat of the music.
Dotphoton. Raising $. Swiss compression software company Dotphoton raises a 7-digit pre-Series A round. CEO Eugenia Balysheva will demo her company’s lossless raw image compression solution in a Show & Tell solution at Visual 1st.
Vecnos. 360 going phodeo. Vecnos, a spin-off from Ricoh lead by the former execs who developed the Theta 360 cameras, announces more details about their magic wand-like iQUI camera, featuring 4 cameras and made to work with their recently released IQUISPIN app, which converts 360 files to short-form MP4 videos of 6-10 seconds (falling into the phodeo category). The camera will retail for $299.
Wildfires. What does Auto White Balance have to do with it? Photographers in cities like San Francisco and Portland have been sharing apocalyptic images of red/orange skies as wildfire smoke literally blots out the sun. But many smartphone photographers trying to do the same thing have tried and failed over and over. It turns out Auto White Balance is ruining their shots, but there are apps to fix that. Fixing climate change is a different ballgame.
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