Kathleen Cohen

Digital twins, a virtual tool used to simulate real environments, are being used by professionals across industries; but what if we took the technology out of the board rooms and into our community centers? The Reclamation digital twin project trains community partners to create sensor-monitored digital twins, and uses the designs to transform blighted urban areas into immersive green spaces. By creating replicable workflows, workshops, and an educational toolkit, the project teaches meaningful tech skills to the community and nurtures a sustainable future for their neighborhoods. Hear from stakeholders about how to implement digital twins for your communities and businesses.

Kathleen Cohen is known as a Tech Humanist, an XR/AI Immersive Strategist and Educator with over 25+ years building both user and guest experiences in media, gaming, world-building, theme parks and location-based entertainment.

Her consultancy, The Collaboratorium, focuses on three areas; XR/AI Research, Client Projects and Public Engagement. Kathleen’s clients range from megacity, gigacity projects to media & entertainment and health & wellness implementations. Her XR/AI Research focuses on key learnings from indigenous wisdom, neurodivergence and conscious leadership.

Currently, Kathleen is teaming up to build a City of Los Angeles Reclamation project – helping to turn abandoned parcels of land into immersive, urban sanctuaries.

This panel gathers several key thought leaders representing the Mayor’s Office of The City of L.A, LA-based Arizona State University and LA Trade Tech College to discuss immersive XR projects happening around town. The discussion will be led by Kathleen Cohen, Tech Humanist and XR Strategist who has brought these brilliant minds together to reflect the current perspectives of local programs.

The City of L.A. uses innovative technologies to address a wide variety of real-world challenges. Dawn Comer and Rachel Kornak from the Mayor’s Office of Finance, Operations and Innovation will discuss several initiatives that focus on providing equitable access to City services, reducing the digital divide, supporting small businesses, training youth for jobs of the future and advancing digital transformation of government services.

Ryat Yezbick of LA-based Arizona State University Narrative and Emerging Media program (NEM), directed by Nonny de la Peña, is launching several city-wide initiatives that seek to harness the power of immersive media through co-creative strategies with local residents across Los Angeles. NEM initiatives will provide skills and jobs training for participants in immersive XR technologies while helping residents restore blighted spaces in their neighborhoods, connect across political divides, and build greater platforms for inclusion through XR and haptics technologies.

This casual discussion outlines the original mission of holoride from 2015, with our co-founder’s vision spun out of AUDI Innovation. Our longstanding partnerships with HTC and Schell Games paint an immersive journey building a solid platform together pairing real time car data, open map data and original content creation. We will explore the successes and challenges within the VR industry that helped us reach our goal of an Elastic SDK, the onboarding of more strategic partners, our RIDE Token, scaling a diverse company, launching a consumer facing product store and rolling this out both in Germany and the US. So what’s in store for the next 5 years, 12 years — and, the long game of mobility, transportation and media & entertainment? Come join the lively conversation.