Augment your Reality at the AWE EXPO! I attended AWE 2024 at the Long Beach Convention Center in June. I found it inspirational, fun, and educational! You can choose a room and plop yourself down in front of experts to learn very specific aspects from those on the forefront of virtual and augmented reality. Or, stage dive into the belly of the beast, down in the lower floor where scores of exhibitors are showing off their toys. At first glance, many of these booths may look similar, most have the iconic VR goggles, but dig in, chat with the vendors, try their products. While they all play in the AWE sandbox, they come from many different directions, disciplines, and sport a plethora of very cool and thoughtful inventions - be it hardware or software.

Here are just 3 of the many many exhibitors that stirred my intellectual creativity at the AWE EXPO:

Patient Education: HouseCallVR.com They're developing a host of interactive playful AR tutorials to help patients understand their sicknesses, and how best to heal and manage them.

Medical Student Education: OneBonsai.com They've created a virtual patient capable of suffering from any number of ailments and viruses - all without pain. He looks real and his issues present as real, so med students can gain valuable “simulation” experience.

"Soft Skills" Training: The Traininglab.ai team is integrating AI with VR to help train employees to interact more productively with other team members. How good are your people skills? Are you up to let VR improve them?

Cutting edge tech is exciting and rife with possibilities. To be in a room with so many smart movers and shakers, putting their time, passion, and suffering into ideas they believe in - that stuff's gold!

-- Books by Author/Illustrator Ross Anthony --