VR Night a success, virtual, real, all kinds

Please forgive us for tooting our own horn, but BuiltWorlds did it again this week!

Tuesday night, in collaboration with Chicago VR Meetup, we co-hosted a casual, catered event focused on Virtual Reality, its very real creators and enthusiasts, and even some practical applications for the built environment. Attendees networked and participated in hands-on trials with Oculus Rift headsets, and virtual Q&As with remote presenters Shane Scranton and Amr Thameen from Burlington VT-based IrisVR, and San Francisco-based, AEC Hackathon cofounder Damon Hernandez, of IDEAbuilder and Spiral Concepts.

“Truly an amazing experience,” said Matt Abeles, BuiltWorlds managing director. “Outstanding, mind-blowing technologies, and probably twice as many people as we had originally expected. Some thought this night would just be geared toward gamers, but the connections to the built environment were clear for everyone to see.”

Guests included Mickaël Jordan, co-founder & COO of Paris-based Augment, which offers (very cool) immersive reality tools for marketing and business development in architecture, real estate, and other industries. Despite the firm’s French headquarters, “MJ” is based here in Chicago (naturally!), where he focuses on the U.S. market. Also on hand were Ryan Rogers, Laura Blaydon, and Diba Salimi, all from design startup Mu/Dai, a new subsidiary of St. Louis-based design-builder Clayco. (Of note, Clayco last month received clearance from the FAA for commercial drone use — one of the only U.S. contractors to win that designation — so look for their ‘pilots’ here at future Demo nights!)

Guests included filmmaker John McCarthy of InterImage (left), and Clayco‘s Diba Salimi, Ryan Rogers, and Laura Blaydon, all three from the contractor’s Mu/Dai ‘practical innovation’ startup.