Final chance, if you haven't done already, for you and your colleagues to sign up for Propeller PR and Essence Digital's Turbine panel discussion this Wednesday, chaired by Michael Rundle, Editor of Wired.co.uk.

Speakers:

Andrew Shebbeare - co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Essence
Jason Kingsley - OBE, co-founder of games developer Rebellion and chairman of games association TIGA
Karl Woolley - Creative Technologist at Oscar-winning creative studio Framestore
Kudzai Manungo - Product Management Executive at Thomas Cook
Tamara Sword - futurist and director of TRM&C
Shahid Ahmad - former Sony Playstation developer and one of Develop’s '25 People that Changed Games'

Final tickets available. Hope to to see you there!

Event Summary and speaker biographies:

This year virtual reality is being touted as the next big thing across not just gaming, entertainment and news but also retail, tourism and education. Not surprising with the upcoming release of PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift. But what is it? How can we make the most of it? What will it mean for your industry?

On 27 January Propeller PR, together with hosts for the evening Essence Digital, curate an evening to answer some of those questions and more. Opening up proceedings will be CPO of Essence, Andrew Shebbeare who will be able to set the scene on how VR is being discussed with his clients from his media viewpoint.

Chairing the panel will be Michael Rundle, Editor of Wired.co.uk.

The voice of the games industry will be provided by Jason Kingsley OBE, co-founder of games developer Rebellion and chairman of TIGA - also responsible for re-booting 80s arcade classic Battlezone, considered the godfather of VR, coming first to PlayStation VR and then Oculus Rift later in the year.

Karl Woolley will be joining our discussion from Oscar-winning creative studio Framestore, which has just received another Academy Award nomination for work on The Martian. As Creative Technologist, Karl has worked directly with Oculus on Framestore's award-winning VR experience for Game Of Thrones with HBO, and was involved in the Motion Capture/Walk–Around VR experience for Merrell's ‘Trailscape’. He was central to creating a strategic and fully immersive VR experience for the launch of Fiat’s 500x, and was key in establishing their Virtual Reality Studio in 2014.

Kudzai Manungo will be our brand representative from Thomas Cook. He has been working with the team at Visualise to realise in-store VR experiences for the travel company and he'll be able to share his experiences so far.

Tamara Sword is Director of TRM&C and will be our futurist-in-chief, as she currently provides strategic marketing support to high growth, high tech companies. Her previous role was head of marketing at augmented reality start-up Aurasma - now an HP company. She launched the platform, taking it to over 15,000 commercial partners and four million users in two years. Before Aurasma, Tamara led marketing at venture-backed Light Blue Optics and for a $100 million joint venture between the University of Cambridge and MIT.

Also on the panel is Shahid K. Ahmad, who has been named one of Games Industry International’s 'Top 10 Persons of the Year', Develop’s 25 People that Changed Games, featured in MCV’s Brit List 100 and was awarded Develop’s prestigious Publishing Hero award. Shahid is widely recognised for opening up PlayStation to the developer community and transforming the brand's image.

We are hoping to offer a demo for Battlezone VR from Rebellion on the night, along with the kind folks at Visualise offering 360 degree experiences - more to follow on that!

Hope to see you there for an evening of drinks, networking and fascinating discussion.

Virtual Reality: Are you Experienced?