We sent a team to the 8th annual Augmented World Expo (AWE 2017) last week in Santa Clara, CA. AWE 2017 is widely recognized as the largest augmented reality (AR) conference in the world. The team was excited to attend! Not only was CEO Jesse Schell speaking, but we were exhibiting three of our experiences; one of which was nominated for an award!

Jesse’s Talk

Jesse spoke a few days into AWE about the growth and adoption of AR technology. His talk was called, “Updates From The Future.” You can see it below. Click here to access his slides.

Jesse sees the potential of AR, but his talk highlighted how the adoption of it will be slower than many people had anticipated.

Our Exhibitions

The team was at AWE 2017 showing three different experiences- Happy Atoms, Domino World, and SuperChem VR. Happy Atoms, our digital and physical chemistry modeling set, was the experience up for an Auggie Award in the category Best Game or Toy. (spoiler alert: big news at the end!)

The team had a large booth and plenty of room to show all the experiences.

“It seemed like we were the cool kids on the block,” says team member and game designer Ryan Hall. “All the experiences showed really well. We had visitors come back to our booth to show others what we were exhibiting. Even one attendee said ‘I haven’t seen AR/VR for education done like this before.’”

The exhibit hall, Ryan says, was full of designers and developers from all over the world.

Ryan continues, “People really gravitated to Happy Atoms, but Domino World and SuperChem VR drew crowds as well.”

Header: booth with SuperChem VR on screen, picture 1: Domino World and Happy Atoms, picture 2: Happy Atoms in the foreground

The 8th Annual Auggie Awards

The Auggie Awards was the recognition AWE gave to those experiences and projects that excelled in particular categories. First, each category was subject to a public online voting. Once that phase was done, the awards committee picked the top 8-10 of each category as finalists. Happy Atoms made the finalist phase in the Best Game or Toy category.

At the award ceremony, there was a mixture of excitement, anxiety, and confidence among the team members. But, the hard work paid off- Happy Atoms won!

Here’s a video to see the rest of the Auggie Awards ceremony (The Best Toy or Game category starts around 18:08).

Overall Experience

Team member and general counsel Chris Arnold said that he had a great time. Chris loved talking to the people in the booth and was excited to see how people loved playing Domino World. Ryan said, “this is something I would definitely do again. I was glad that Schell Games was a part of this. The event was well organized, and it was cool to see how passionate people are around AR/VR development.”

According to the team, there were a lot of cool projects and experiences around AR developing around the world. Companies from Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and dozens more were in attendance. AWE attracted over 212 exhibitors, 200 speakers and over 5,000 attendees. From AR in Enterprise and training, to experiences that are tied to different movements, people are trying to see how AR will work on our everyday lives.

Until next time!