Global Speakers

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Darren Hubert

Chief Technology Officer

Microsoft Services APAC

Darren Hubert is Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Services APAC, based in Singapore.  In his role, Darren works alongside Microsoft customers and partners to help envision and drive positive business outcomes that leverage Microsoft technologies and cloud services.  Prior to joining the APAC team, Darren served as Lead Architect for Microsoft’s business solutions division in the US.  He has spent the majority of his career working with a variety of Enterprises across numerous industries and as they planned and implemented critical systems based on Microsoft platforms and solutions.  Darren is a frequent speaker at various conferences and industry events where he often recounts his exploits, pitfalls, and musings deploying Enterprise solutions.

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Ajay Mohan

Head of Marketing - APJ

Intel Corporation

Ajay Mohan is Director of Marketing for Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ), at Intel Corporation. He has overall responsibility for Intel’s “connected customer” experience in APJ, which encompasses the company’s marketing investments (on-ground & digital ) and strategies. Mohan leads a team across Asia Pacific & Japan defining Intel’s roles and investments in a breadth of media, developing relationships across the partner ecosystem ( Channel, Retail, OEMs, ODMs), and building marketing capabilities and solutions to connect the customer journey.

Mohan has over 18 years of experience spanning across diverse industries such as OTC Pharmaceuticals (Cosmetics), FMCG, Advertising and Information Technology. He joined Intel in 2011 and has held a number of roles leading teams across various facets of marketing. Over the span of his career he has successfully led teams comprising people from multiple nationalities & backgrounds, in Asia, Europe and Africa. Having worked and lived in India, Germany and Singapore, makes him well conversant with business practices across these regions.

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Amit Mangwani

Director of Retail Marketing - APJ

Intel Corporation

Amit is spearheading Intel’s retail thought leadership and multi-faceted engagements across Asia Pacific & Japan, with over 18+ years of experience across diverse roles & domain,s he is now focusing on new and emerging retail technologies. From leading a first time ever global Conversational UI project to crafting VR / AR retail experiences to creating new innovative e-commerce intersects, he is at the frontier of creating brand value that is future ready.

He has been a prolific speaker having spoken on new and upcoming topics like ‘Retail in Transformation’ & ‘The Future of Airport Retail” among others. He is also a published author having published several articles across leading publications like “CIO Outlook”. He has been a part of the DMA Innovation Lab in Singapore and continues to work with CXO’s across verticals to chart the next journey of retail.

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Klaus Allisat

Sales Director

BMW Group Asia

As a Regional Director Sales at BMW Group Asia, Klaus is charged with driving dynamic sales and revenue growth for BMW across the region.

With extensive experience working in automotive industry for over 15 years, Klaus has worked in various internationally oriented positions in corporate consulting with A.T.Kearney GmbH, Stuttgart and prior to this for Daimler Benz AG, Stuttgart. He was also the CEO and President of Husqvarna Motorcycles.

Klaus has been spearheading the strategic and innovative sales direction for BMW Group Asia, playing a key role in several Augmented Reality and Virtual reality projects as BMW begins to explore this new medium.

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Dr Frank Guan

Assistant Director

Nanyang Technological University

Dr Frank Guan Yunqing has been managing and leading the research for two international collaboration research centres at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, since 2011 as Centre Manager and Assistant Director. His research interests include Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Dr Guan received his PhD degree from NTU in 2007 with specializations in Virtual Reality (VR), computer graphics and 3D image visualization. He graduated from Zhejiang University with first class honor degree in 2002. He also has years of industry experience in software system development and management in MNCs including Panasonic and Motorola.

Dr Guan has published more than 30 papers in top-tier conferences and journals. His research has often been cited by Nature journals. Due to his excellent track record of research, he received the Andrew Fraser Prize from IMechE in 2006. Dr Guan has served in the programme and organizing committee for a number of international conferences. He also has aspirations and passion towards innovation and entrepreneurship and was awarded the SMART Innovation Fellow in 2015 from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

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Matt Pollins

Partner, Head of Commercial/TMT

CMS Singapore

Matt is an international technology, media and telecoms lawyer and a Partner at CMS, a leading international law firm. He advises clients from startups to global tech, telecoms and media companies and governments on business and law in Asia. His practice spans commercial, transactional, regulatory and intellectual property advice across tech, media and telecoms, including content regulation, e-commerce, cloud, data, cybersecurity, payments, apps, adtech, IoT and complex sourcing and supply chain transactions.

Matt is also a Director of the International Institute of Communications in Singapore. He regularly appears on TV and in print media, including BBC World News, Channel News Asia, Wall Street Journal, Mashable and The Straits Times, to discuss the tech/media/telecoms sectors.

His blog, www.connectedasia.com, discusses how the unparalleled and explosive growth in connectivity in Asia-Pacific is driving new technologies and business models and creating new legal and commercial challenges.

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Dillon Seo

CEO & Founder

VoleR Creative

Dillon is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of VoleR Creative. The company is founded by Dillon and is currently working on a project involving artificial intelligence, machine learning, speech recognition and virtual reality. Previously, he joined Oculus VR, the virtual reality head mounted display manufacturer and the virtual reality content ecosystem builder, as a co-founder in 2012. He served the company as a country manager for Oculus VR Korea until the company was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion USD in 2014. During his role as a country manager, he managed the basic company operation, business development and VR content sourcing along with business partner relationship management.

Before Oculus VR, he was also a country manager for a UI tool company named Scaleform, which was acquired by Autodesk for $36 million USD in 2011, and during his service at Scaleform, he managed the sales of its product, Scaleform GFx, business development and basic operation of the company. His previous work experience also involves KOGIA (Korea Game Industry Agency and NDOORS Corporation (Korean online game developer owned by Nexon) as a business development manager.

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Loh Mun Yew

Samsung Gear VR Evangelist & CEO

ReVR

Loh Mun Yew is a passionate Entrepreneur and an inspiring Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Strategist who is based in Singapore. His passion for technology began early on and it has stayed with him ever since. In addition to all things tech, he has an avid interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning.

Throughout the span of over a decade and spending 8 years in Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA, formerly known as IDA Singapore), Mun Yew has acquired extensive expertise in informational technology (IT) and enterprise mobility. To date, he is one of the most prominent mobile techprofessionals in Singapore.

Currently, Mun Yew is working at a virtual reality (VR) & augmented reality (AR) start-up and founded ReVR, which is the very first AR/VR Online Training Academy in Singapore. He aims to utilize this venture in order to transform the training market with virtual and augmented reality.

Additionally, Mun Yew also serves as the CEO & Co-founder of TapTalents, a mobile corporate training platform. He is also currently the President of the Singapore Computer Society’s (SCS) Internet-of-Things (IoT) Chapter and an ICT Mentor under IMDA’s Technical Skills Accelerator (TeSA), a SkillsFuture initiative.

Loh Mun Yew’s primary goal is to enhance the Singaporean ecosystem by cultivating more AR/VR and IoT manpower through intensive technology-enabled training.

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Jason Teo

Associate Director

ArtScience Museum

Jason Teo is the Associate Director for ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Jason brings with him over 15 years of experience of working at the intersection between art, science and technology. He has been in the digital media industry focusing on building interactive, multimedia exhibits, exhibitions and galleries. He is currently responsible for the digital permanent exhibitions at ArtScience Museum such as Future World: Where Art Meets Science and Into the Wild: An Immersive Virtual Experience. Jason also oversees the operational and commercial aspects of the museum.

Prior to joining Marina Bay Sands, he was an Account Director at Pico Art International, focusing on interactive multimedia experiences for museums and permanent corporate galleries. Prior to that he was in charge of various experiential exhibitions at the Media Development Authority and the Science Centre Singapore.

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Vanessa Radd

Founding Member of XR Alliance & President

VR/AR Association, Singapore Chapter

Vanessa Radd is ranked among the global top 3 augmented reality influencers and is a founding member of the XR Alliance. Radd is also founder of the VR/AR Women in Asia Society, President of the global VR AR Association Singapore and a Board member of The Media Alliance. She has more than 17 years of tech and broadcast content,  technology media value chain (from production, post production & content delivery, to hardware, software, image processing and cloud/virtualization – utilized as the broadcast industry standard for the Olympics) experience representing international media & tech brands in Asia.

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Robert Kubon

Project Manager

BMW AG

Throughout his 16 years with BMW Group, Robert has held many key roles in different business areas, including being the Area Manager for importer markets and the head of BMW Motorrad for sales region UX-V1-CS. He also played a vital role in leading and developing the dealer base for BMW Motorrad.

In the past three years, Robert has been spearheading the strategic and innovative retail direction for the BMW Group. One of his important projects involves digitalizing a premium retail experience for customers through employing cutting-edge technologies. He explored the use of Virtual Reality to transform automotive retail as we know it as well as incorporating other digital elements to differentiate BMW from other competitors.

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Jervais Choo

Senior Assistant Director

National Museum of Singapore

Jervais Choo is Senior Assistant Director at the National Museum of Singapore, a social history museum with a rich 130 year history that prides itself in being the oldest museum in Singapore, but with the youngest soul. He leads the digital transformation efforts for the museum and has a keen interest in bringing together new methods of bridging experience and understanding through contextual layering and interventions.

In the area of digital innovation, Jervais has overseen the development of projects such as Gallery 10, which is a gallery in the museum dedicated to digital works and creation; as well as Story of the Forest, a 15 metre high immersive digital artwork commission inspired by the museums key collection, the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings. The museum also introduced an AR/VR enabled architectural tour built on the Google Tango platform in 2017, and is currently embarking on a digital and cultural innovation program that aims to bring artistic and industry partners together for creative experimentation to build a vibrant cultural sector invested in digital innovation.

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Tejas Damania

Director of Digital Technology

Deloitte Digital

Tejas Damania leads the Digital Technology practice at Deloitte Digital in South East Asia, based in Singapore.  He is a practitioner who works with customers across industries to realize their digital transformation through customer centric design and technologies. Techie at heart, Tejas is constantly in search for the new technologies to solve complex business problems. He holds a patent on a design which still powers the core of an industry leading software platform. He is betting on the interplay of the digital reality with artificial intelligence enabled behaviors to drive the next phase of innovation, which he firmly believes will change the way people live their everyday life.

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Ng Lai Xing

Scientist

A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research

Dr. Ng Lai Xing is a Scientist in I2R in the Visual Computing Department and is working on implementing AR for maintenance and visual inspection tasks. He received his Ph.D in 2014 from National University of Singapore where he worked on an AR 3D design space using bare hand interaction. He entered the AR/VR simulation industry upon graduation and had developed AR/VR projects for training, education and navigation. His past employers include a local SME and EON Reality. Currently, his research interests include computer vision, visual perception, task reasoning and automated content creation for AR and VR applications.

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Lionel Chok

Founder/Creative Technologist

iMMERSiVELY

Lionel decided to trade in his work life to take on a student role yet again, when news of how Oculus was acquired by Facebook back in 2014. Researching deeply about Virtual Reality during that period, Lionel realized this emerging technology could be the game-changer for media and content, and thus – quit his job, packed his bag and uprooted himself and his family to move to London to pursue a Masters degree in Creative Technology; specializing in Augmented and Virtual Reality. There, he produced London’s first ever 360 Virtual Reality Dance staged at Middlesex University and also Singapore Inside out (London) a VR experience ( www.sgiolondon.com) for the the touring exhibition by Singapore Tourism Board. After completing and achieving distinction in his postgraduate studies, he returned to Singapore and immediately became a much sought after consultant and speaker in the fields of Virtual Reality.

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Nicholas Ng

Product Innovation Manager

Samsung Electronics

Nicholas is part of the Product Innovation Team at Samsung Electronics; translating SE Asia consumer insights into breakthrough concepts as part of Samsung’s future product roadmap. Leading product development and management initiatives in mobile phone, VR/AR and display product categories, he is passionate about using technology to create new products that changes people’s lives. Prior to his current role, Nicholas was in the Advanced Display Product Team at Samsung in Seoul exploring HMD-less VR and retinal projection, ran a London-based sports social network start-up and did strategy consulting in Taipei. An avid road cyclist, Nicholas spends his free time tinkering with bicycles, technology and cryptocurrencies.

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Zeca Carvalho

CEO

SW Interactive

Zeca joined SW Interactive in January 2017 as CEO, and is responsible for the company’s global launch and development. His key focus is driving market growth — beginning with the yacht industry – through virtual reality products that enhance client engagement and promote sales.

He brings to the company almost 10 years’ experience in building and scaling tech companies in South East Asia and Latin America. Since moving to Singapore in 2014, he has worked with start-ups such as EasyTaxi and StyleTribute.

He was previously a business analyst from McKinsey and Company, and was engaged in several projects in his native Brazil and the US. Prior to that, Zeca founded and sold the second collective-buying web platform ever launched in Brazil.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of São Paulo in Brazil.

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Dr Antonio Feraco

Head of Business Development

Fraunhofer Singapore, Nanyang Technological University

Dr. Antonio Feraco is Head of Business Development at the Fraunhofer Singapore. He owns a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Psychology of Programming focusing the major of his activities in developing business models for Digital Transformation. His work focuses in merging industry needs with novel interactive and digital solutions developed by Fraunhofer to optimize processes within and outside the industry environment itself.

Fraunhofer Singapore, that belongs to the largest Applied Research Institution in Europe, enhances the usage of Interactive Digital Media, Virtual and Augmented Reality through the continuous experimentation of new interactive paradigm and devices, such as multi-touch interfaces and gesture based controllers, coping them with intuitive interfaces trying to optimize the overall cognitive processes of information gathering from real-time and from IoT sensors and their management in sectors such as big data, Industry 4.0 and Digital Economy.

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Theo Valich

Head of Growth Datum Foundation and Executive Advisor

VR First

Theo Valich is currently serving as head of growth in Datum.Org, a noDB encrypted cloud data storage and marketplace provider. Mr. Valich also founded VR WORLD Limited, a consultancy and media group from Hong Kong, as well as serving as a consultant for private companies and governments in EU and ASEAN. His AR/VR efforts are visible through VR World website and VR First foundation, a non-profit dedicated to spreading knowledge on next-generation content creation among several hundred educational institutions. Focused on adoption of graphics and central processing technology in established and developing applications. Mr. Valich has in-depth knowledge of IT industry and is on forefront of emerging technologies and markets such as GPU Computing (GPGPU), chip manufacturing technology, market and guerilla growth/marketing strategies.

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Amer Iqbal

Director of Digital Strategy

Deloitte Digital

With 16 years in digital marketing, transformation and business leadership, Amer leads delivery of digital strategy across the South East Asia region for Deloitte Digital. He has helped to build several successful startups and digital marketing businesses, including one of Australia’s most highly awarded agencies. He’s delivered transformative work for clients including Unilever, Ferrero, Foxtel, Nickelodeon, P&O Cruises, and AON Insurance.

Amer holds a degree in Computer Science as well as an MBA majoring in Marketing. He was a finalist for 2011 Young Executive of the Year and has been featured in numerous publications including Australian Financial Review, AdNews, B&T, and Contagious. He is regularly engaged as an industry thought leader, speaker, and facilitator.

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Frederick Chong

Market Development Manager

HP Inc Singapore

Frederick is a dynamic IT professional with more than 15-year experience in top MNCs. As a market development manager for HP workstation, Frederick works with Sales & Marketing cross-functional teams, manages product lines from cradle to grave, justifies new product development investments, determines and documents new product requirements, develops sales forecasts and product pricing, and launches new products to the marketplace. With his extensive experience in managing key account relationships and large-scale projects, Frederick plays a key role in building long-term relationships between HP and its major stakeholders.

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Sahil Kumar

Assistant Manager

KPMG

Sahil has extensive experience in developing and serving the exploding VR/AR Market in SEA for more than 4 years now. In this time, he has led complex sales cycle and project deployment across Healthcare, Education, Defense, Aerospace, Retail, Real Estate, Industrial Training, Marketing and Advertising across Government and Enterprise Sectors. Sahil has worked with C-Level executives, Senior Leadership of leading MNCs, Government Organizations, SME to foster accelerated growth in this space. Sahil has been featured on Straits Times (Singapore Editorial) as a thought leader in VR/AR and led innovative projects with Singapore Government agencies like IMDA, GOVTECH to integrate VR/AR as a Innovative Technology as part of the Smart Nation Initiative.

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Ender Jiang Shutao

Founder & Chief Marketing Technologist

Hiverlab

A futuristic storyteller, techno-philosopher and life explorer, Ender has always been exploring how to create unique storytelling experiences via cutting-edge technologies. During his career in the creative industry in the past 10 years, Ender has made numbers of short films about urban lifestyle, social challenges, and concepts of future cities.

Ender has also been exposed to various technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), Holographic, mapping projection, etc.. Along the way, he has developed his philosophy behind each technical solution, so as to create meaningful interactions through his professional work and personal experimental projects.
Since 2014, Ender has been working on Hiverlab, a local start-up founded by him which focuses on virtual reality storytelling experiences. As a pioneer VR content production team in Southeast Asia, Hiverlab has produced a series of VR stories, firmed up partnerships with Letv and Samsung, and is now aiming at continuously upgrading their technologies to create better futuristic storytelling experiences.

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Ariel Talbi

Managing Director

TaKanto Virtual Reality

Ariel is the Founder and Managing Director at TaKanto Virtual Reality. Working with leading global brands such as Air Asia, Flight Centre, Tourism Queensland and more, TaKanto specializes in premium 360° Virtual Reality productions and interactive app development. With over 14 years of experience in Business Development, Consulting and Leadership roles in B2B and B2C, Ariel focuses on promoting the usage of VR technology as a mainstream business tool that can improve brand perception, increase sales and enhance customer experience. Ariel is a noted speaker and VR community participant at key events such as ‘All That Matters’ and ‘ITB Asia’. He is considered a VR thought leader in APAC and widely quoted in news outlets that include: The Business Times, Channel News Asia and Travel Daily Asia.

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Deitrich Mohan

Director

3bode Media

Deitrich Mohan is a singaporean born producer. As one of the owners of HWMiT Studios, he has produced various shorts films, music videos, and commercials. Deitrich is currently the director of 3bode, an integrated studio combining all elements to make immersive 360 video projects, imaging immersive content and breaking boundaries to bring new storytelling methods.

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Abhi Kumar

Chief Creative Director

Warrior9

Abhi is first and foremost a storyteller who wants to leverage technology and new mediums to provide innovative narrative experiences. As the co-founder and chief creative director at Warrior9 and currently working on a sci-fi animated VR series, The PhoenIX. The pilot episode was selected for Cannes 2017 NEXT VR Library.

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Dean Reinhard

Co-founder

MeshMinds

As the co-founder of MeshMinds – impact investors in creative technology for good – Dean is looking to collaborate on the world’s most impactful ideas for projects and prototypes that fuse art with emerging technology. Dean is also the Creative Tech Director (APAC) at iris and has a wealth of experience working on interactive VR/AR/MR installations in Asia and Australia. Dean has led the technical direction of Singapore’s first creative innovation lab, MeshMinds 1.0: Art x Tech for Good, which opens on 25th January at ArtScience Museum, in partnership with Autodesk, HTC Vive, and Lenovo.

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Nick Tan

Founder & Managing Director

360VR

Nick Tan is the founder of AP Media Pte Ltd (now known As Digimatic Creatives) – a firm that specialises in branding, creative content and marketing services to help clients build sustainable businesses. He founded the sub-brands – Anonymous Production, which crafts creative video content, as well as 360VRasia.com, a leading 360 Virtual Reality production house in the region.

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Siddharth Jain

Chief Creative Director

Playware Studios

Siddharth Jain is the Founder and Chief Creative Director of Playware Studios Pte Ltd. Playware is an award winning Serious Games company known for Edtech innovation.

Established in 2005, Playware has been selected for and participated in such Singapore national initiatives as the FutureSchools@SG by the National Research Foundation and the Ministry of Education, Classroom of the Future by the National Institute of Education and SkillsFuture by the Workforce Development Authority. Beyond Singapore, Playware has also worked with the Centre for Learning Innovation, DET, NSW, Australia and the Media and In-Service Centre (E-Hijra) Initiative in Brunei.

Siddharth guest lectures at the Nanyang Technology University, Institute for Adult Learning and the Singapore Institute of Management and is an expert panellist on the National Infocomm Competency Framework.