The video from the Storytelling in VR panel that I spoke on for the VRLA Winter Expo is now online (see it above). The official VRLA Youtube channel has been adding videos slowly since the event, so there might still be content yet to come. Our panel focused on narrative in VR, but we wandered into topics such as ethics, pre-production and blocking actors, even the economics of virtual reality. Jonnie Ross, co-founder of VRLA and Visionary VR lead the discussion, and the other panelists were Bryn Mooser (Co-founder of Ryot) and Annie Lukowski (Co-founder at Vanishing Point Media). As you can see above it was a great conversation, with some healthy differences in opinion on a few topics and total agreement on others.
Our panel was just one of many from the event, you can see them all here, but a few of my favorites are:
- The keynote from AMD’s Roy Taylor
- A rundown of Starbreeze’s approach to VR and experiences to date
- This video of Survios’s experiences so far is well worth seeing
- And for those who want to get into VR, this rundown of the production process for using GoPro balls is a great place to start
The date of the next VRLA event has not yet been announced, but if you wanted to come and waited too long to get tickets, please keep an eye out for the official announcement and try to make it out! This is the single largest event in VR right now, with the greatest number of vendors and the highest volume of sneak-peek opportunities to see VR content months (if not years) before it is officially released. I think that VRLA is going to just keep growing and growing as the industry picks up steam, I personally predict it will get at least as big as SIGGRAPH at its height if not Comic Con or E3-sized. So get in on the magic now, like the 300 people who went to Comic Con in 1970 
UPDATE: a single day later and they have announced the date for the next VRLA: Aug 5th & 6th. It’s a 2-day event this time (see? doubled in size once again!), with VIP on day 1 and general admission on day 2. Go sign up, it’s worth it!