Alan, along with his wife Julie, are members of the VR/AR Association, and as such, one of the annual XR gatherings they look forward to most is the VR/AR Global Summit in Vancouver, which is just a few weeks away (Oct 31-Nov 2). Alan has the event's executive producer, Anne-Marie Enns, on to talk about what attendees can expect on the show floor this year.

Alan: Welcome to the XR for

Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today's guest is a

great friend of mine, Anne-Marie Enns, the executive producer of the

VR/AR Global Summit, coming to Vancouver, Canada, October 31st to

November 2nd. And I am super excited to announce that both my wife

Julie and myself will be speakers at it, and it's hosted by the VR/AR

Association, which we are also members. She's served as the executive

producer for the show for two years and previously was the producer

of the CVR, the Consumer VR Show, also hosted in Vancouver. She's the

founder of Pulled In Productions, a live event production company

that specializes in tech events and live productions. You can learn

more about the VR/AR Global Summit by visiting vrarglobalsummit.com.

Duh.

Anne-Marie: [chuckles]

Alan: We're here now with

Anne-Marie. Thanks for joining me.

Anne-Marie: Thanks so much for

having me, Alan.

Alan: I'm super excited for two

things. One, to come and see everybody in Vancouver and two, to find

out who else was gonna be there speaking at this. So let's get into

it. Tell everybody what is the VR/AR Global Summit, and what can they

expect from this?

Anne-Marie: Well, the VR/AR

Global Summit is going into its second year, and it is two days that

are jam packed full of amazing industry speakers, workshops, speed

dating, great events, amazing exhibits and demos. And so it is just

*the* show to go to if you're looking for great content, great

conversations and awesome networking in a beautiful location.

Alan: I have been a guest

speaker at your conference for a couple of years now, and I can tell

you -- for the people listening -- there's two conferences that I --

or three, I guess -- that I look forward to every year: AWE, which is

by far the most impactful augmented reality conference, and that

takes place every year in San Francisco, and now there's going to be

one in Munich. But then there's the Virtual Reality, Toronto; VRTO:

That one is a small but very powerful group. And the Global Summit is

kind of like taking both of those. Where you've got this small,

intimate group talking about the future of technology. Then you've

got AWE, which is very kind of enterprise focused, how to make money?

And you bring those two together and you've got this global summit.

And it's just incredible because it feels like a small conference,

even though it's not small, it feels like a small conference because

everybody there is super passionate. They're willing to share their

experiences. What can we expect from the speakers this year?

Anne-Marie: Sure. Well, we've

got so many amazing speakers this year, and we take a lot of time to

carefully curate who goes on our stage. So it takes us a while to get

that program launched. But we've got some amazing people this year,

both in the enterprise side -- so talking about training -- we've got

a whole defense and government sector that's happening at the event

this year, a couple hours of that. We've got beautiful immersive

artists and people working in immersive storytelling that are coming.

So we've got Lenovo, Niantic, MasterCard, HP, Forbes, a whole bunch

of great of the big name companies. But then we've also got beautiful

artists that are coming, like Nancy Baker Cahill, and a beautiful

voice, Galit Ariel, who's from Toronto, who was a TEDWomen speaker.

Yourself, Julie, we've got people f