Explore the Metaverse at college’s NEXT conference

By Lethbridge Herald on February 16, 2022.

Lethbridge College photo by Rob Olson Mike McCready, Lethbridge College’s President’s Applied Research Chair in Virtual and Augmented Reality, will be helping to host the virtual conference NEXT: Beyond the Metaverse.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman – Lethbridge Herald

Lethbridge College’s Spatial Technologies Applied Research and Training (START) centre is hosting a virtual conference on the latest computing revolution for NEXT: Beyond the Metaverse.

Today’s event will connect some of the world’s top virtual and augmented reality experts with industry and individuals alike. Those in attendance will be able to hear from speakers such as April Speight from Microsoft and Matt Todd from Ubisoft.

“It’s really exciting, the NEXT conference is really the next evolution, no pun intended, on kind of where we’re going with the college,” said Mike McCready, Lethbridge College’s President’s Applied Research Chair in Virtual and Augmented Reality, while speaking to media on Wednesday.

He said in 2008 they put on the world’s first VR conference held in VR emerging realities and this event is building off of that and the excitement and interest.

“We wrapped together speakers from technology and leaders in the space from Unity and from Microsoft. George Bloom, our keynote, is a visionary who has been working with technology in Hollywood for many years,” said McCready.

He said Bloom will be talking about what the Metaverse is and what it is not, and how organizations can prepare.

“One of our mandates within the Spatial Technologies and Applied Research centre, or START, at the college is helping organizations to navigate this new spatial technology world and how they can implement that,” said McCready.

He said this type of technology has the potential of evolving how we communicate and do business online.

“Spatial computing and the way we kind of interact with each other and information, will change and the sooner organizations can start to prepare and think about how it’s going to affect them the better,” said McCready.

He said there has been a lot of excitement and response to the event, with over 600 people registered at the time of this media conference, from all across the world.

“The excitement stems partly from Facebook renaming their parent company to Meta in the fall and people hearing a lot about the Metaverse and understanding it, but also the caliber of the speakers that we’re bringing,” said McCready.

He said those in attendance will have the opportunity to network, connect and ask questions, learn together and also have the opportunity to receive some prizes that were given away to try to help people be able to experience and create in this new medium.

For more information and to register visit https://lethbridgecollege.ca/events/next-conference

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