Tag: IMMERSIVE X

UPDATED! A Report from the IMMERSIVE X Conference, Nov. 11th, 2025

If anything, I urge everyone in our industry to build our digital spaces the way we design cities: with flow, gathering spots, heart and soul. Places that invite people to linger, not just scroll. It’s not just about what people see—it’s about where they feel seen.

—Andy Fidel, State of the Metaverse in 2026 keynote presentation, IMMERSIVE X Conference, November 11th, 2025 (in ENGAGE).

Julian Reyes delivering his talk titled Preserving the Legacy of Digital Culture: The Virtual Worlds Museum Living Archive, which took place yesterday evening my time in a virtual world in Spatial (I’m the blonde in the green T-shirt, sitting in the front row, near the centre bottom of this screen capture).

Yesterday, November 11th, 2025, I had the opportunity to attend three sessions of the IMMERSIVE X conference, held on three different platforms:

  • IMMERSIVE X 2025 Warm-Up: Curator’s Remarks (held in VRChat)
  • Andy Fidel’s keynote, The State of the Metaverse in 2026 (held in ENGAGE)
  • Julian Reyes’ presentation, Preserving the Legacy of Digital Culture: The Virtual Worlds Museum™ Living Archive (held in Spatial)

Warm-Up: Curator’s Remarks (Thomas Zorbach)

Set in a custom-built theatre surrounded by lush rainforest. Thomas Zorbach set the tone and agenda for the conference sessions to follow over the hree days of the conference. My friend Carlos Austin was the videographer for the event (as he no doubt will be for many of the conference sessions!), and he produced the following video of Thomas’ speech, which was posted to the IMMERSIVE X YouTube streams channel (I also took some photos using VRChat’s built-in camera, but I first have to figure out how to transfer them from VRChat to my blog!).

UPDATE Nov. 13th, 2025: I was finally able to add some photos I shot while in VRChat to this section of my blog post (please see the pictures above).

The State of the Metaverse in 2026 (Andy Fidel)

Andy’s keynote was prefaced by a half-hour red carpet awards session where various people were introduced, and several awards were given out (I arrived late for this part, but here’s the 35-minute video from IMMERSIVE X’s YouTube channel). Here’s the blurb from the conference program:

What an entrance! Dress your avatar to impress and flash your most dazzling smile for the photo. Once again, the path to the Opening Keynote leads across the legendary red carpet of the Polys Theater, home of the annual Polys Awards. Thanks to Ben Erwin and his incredible Polys team, this festive event marks the official start of IMMERSIVE X 2025. Don’t miss this prestigious social event in the Metaverse — you might just be in for a surprise or two.

After the red carpet, we all moved over to the main stage where Andy Fidel, the founder and creative lead at Spatial Networks, shared her insights on where the metaverse stands today and where it might be heading.

Andy Fidel on the virtual stage, giving her keynote address in ENGAGE (it was giving TED Talk!)
I took a selfie of my avatar in ENGAGE at the red carpet event prior to Andy’s keynote!

Because I attended the event in my Vive Pro 2 VR headset, I did not take written notes of her talk, but it was excellent! Also, Andy has asked that her talk not be streamed to YouTube, a decision which I can totally understand and respect. However, Andy was happy to share her speech notes with me, so I did not have to rely on my notoriously faulty 61-year-old memory to share a few quotes which especially resonated with me!

Andy started her presentation off with a sigh, stating:

I’m tired of the [metaverse] hype cycle. I don’t know what we’re all waiting for. Because I’ve seen us create real, human digital experiences—moments of presence—every day for the past ten years. This isn’t a sci-fi episode. The metaverse is already here. It’s in your browser tab. It’s not just a concept, a game, or a place. It’s how we’re choosing to show up online.

And my favourite [metaverse] misconception? We’re not escaping reality—we’re extending it.

There were more of Andy’s quotes which I really appreciated. In talking about the shift away from massive metaverse platforms to micro-communities, she said:

We’ve got to find new ways of measuring success when we talk about connection. Every social metric measures visibility, impressions, clicks, followers…that’s activity, not authenticity. And I don’t know about you—but I’m done chasing mass engagement and empty distribution. Because connection isn’t content. It’s presence.

And she talked about how, perhaps, we are a little too narrowly focused on what the “metaverse” is:

Let’s be honest—the metaverse didn’t start with VR. We’ve been building shared digital worlds for decades: Second Life, World of Warcraft, Minecraft…The only difference now? The new emerging tech finally lets us feel presence. VR, AR, digital—these are just new layers on something deeply human. “Metaverse” is just a new name for something we’ve always done: to gather. And to gather, we need space to do so. What’s different now? We have the technology to do it remotely, and feel like we’re right there. With embodiment, body language, haptics, even phantom touch—we’re tapping into all the little things that make our digital space feel more immersive and real.

And:

Virtual presence has become its own form of togetherness. We show up not just in person, but in-world. Because let’s be honest—why show up at all? Because you can feel it.

The metaverse isn’t here to replace the real world. It’s here to layer it with new forms of meaning. It’s not just a playground, [and] not just a marketplace. It’s a new layer of human communication.

And look—if you say, “the metaverse isn’t for me,” that a bit like saying “the internet isn’t for me” in the 1990s. You don’t have to love every corner of it. You just have to find the part that resonates. Because this isn’t about tech for tech’s sake. It’s about connecting—more intimately, across space, time and medium.

UPDATE Nov. 13th, 2025: I was finally able to add some photos I shot while in ENGAGE to this section of my blog post (please see above).

I want to thank Thomas Zorbach for shoehorning me into this avatar-packed session, after I personally begged him to let me in, even though the event was fully booked and no longer accepting signups. I did not want to miss Andy’s speech, and I was not disappointed!

Preserving the Legacy of Digital Culture: The Virtual Worlds Museum™ Living Archive (Julian Reyes)

I was not sure if I was going to be able to attend this session (I was having all kinds of trouble getting Spatial to work for me, and I eventually threw my hands up, gave up on attending in virtual reality, and instead visited via my flatscreen monitor on my Windows home computer instead). However, I am so, so glad that I did! A video stream of the 45-minute presentation has already been posted to the IMMERSIVE X YouTube channel, but I will also add some of my own remarks (since I was on desktop, I took written notes).

This blogpost will be updated as I add pictures and more of my impressions, so check back later today for those updates! I enjoyed all three sessions, and I am very much looking forward to the sessions I will be attending today and tomorrow!

With the deepest thanks to Andy Fidel for sharing her speaking notes with me. Thanks, Andy!

The IMMERSIVE X Metaverse Conference, November 11-13, 2025

I’m laid up with severe neck and shoulder pain, off sick from work today again, lying on the sofa and blogging via iPad, my neck propped up on a good pillow. In addition to visits to my family doctor and my physiotherapist (who also does acupuncture), I’ve started seeing a massage therapist. I had a one-hour massage session Friday morning, and felt wonderful afterward—only to have rebound neck and shoulder aches and pains which scuppered my Friday night plans and put me in a foul, cranky mood all weekend.

This is all coming at a time when I need to be well enough to attend a metaverse conference coming up this week! It’s the IMMERSIVE X Conference, organized and run from Berlin, Germany, but with events taking place in various social VR platforms and flatscreen virtual worlds. Instead of getting on a plane to go to a physical conference in meatspace, I just put on a VR headset and attend in cyberspace!

However, my physical pain today does not bode well for my metaverse excursions on Tuesday (Remembrance Day here in Canada, if not in Germany), Wednesday, and Thursday. Wish me well! I’m probably going to have to take breaks between sessions to pop painkillers, apply cold and heat packs, and do my prescribed physiotherapy exercises to get through this. But come hell or high water, I am going!!

I started preparing for the conference last week, revisiting some social VR platforms that I had not visited in many months, and making sure that I could still remember how to log in and move around in my Vive Pro 2 PCVR setup in my office (sadly neglected since I began my well-documented love affair with my Apple Vision Pro).

I must admit that I was surprised when I signed into my VRChat account on their website, to discover that I first joined VRChat 8 years ago! (You can find all my blogposts about VRChat here.)

And likewise, I had first joined ENGAGE in July of 2018, which means I have been using the metaverse platform for over seven years at this point! (You can find all my blogposts about ENGAGE here.) I am especially excited that the organizers were able to squeeze me into Andy Fidel’s keynote State of the Metaverse presentation in ENGAGE (a big thank you Thomas Zorbach and his team!).

In addition to VRChat and ENGAGE, I signed up for sessions being held on three other metaverse platforms: Spatial, Foretell Reality, and Hubs. I’ve been in Spatial and (formerly Mozilla) Hubs before, but Foretell Reality is new to me.

So I hope to be able to post my session notes to the blog, starting tomorrow. And, in the meantime, I will rest, take painkillers, do my physiotherapy exercises, and pray my body holds up. Stay tuned!

X-HOUR Virtual Reality Showcase Series Taking Place in Austin, Texas and Online During SXSW 2024, March 7th to 11th

VenusSX, one of the participants, sent me a press release about this series showcasing the state of the art in VR, taking place on the sidelines of the actual SXSW 2024 conference taking place in Austin, Texas this week and weekend (I will assume that this series is not part of the official SXSW event). According to the press release:

The organizers of the VR conference IMMERSIVE X, together with Innovation Bridge Europe, are presenting a five-part series of events called “X-HOUR” from March 7th to 11th on the sidelines of SXSW 2024 in Austin, Texas. The series will showcase outstanding and award-winning VR projects from around the world. The hour-long sessions can be experienced Onsite in Austin, in Virtual Reality and via Livestream. Registration is available at https://immersive-x.de/x-hour.

While the Metaverse is often presented as a vision of the distant future, its many possibilities can be experienced even today. This is possible thanks to a creative scene of pioneers around the world who have set out to explore this space and bring it to life with groundbreaking ideas and bold initiatives. The lineup includes the award-winning experiences “Dragon Magic: Freedom Giants” by Juliana Loh and Mada de Leeuw and “Nymphs” by ShuShuVR and Niko Lang, as well as a live DJ set by XR pioneer Celeste Lear, will demonstrate how Virtual Reality enables the expression of cultural creativity. The session “VR for Social Change” will showcase the Africa VR Campus and Center to demonstrate how immersive technologies can promote social empowerment.

IMMERSIVE X and Innovation Bridge Europe have teamed up to present some of the most cutting-edge projects at this year’s tech festival in Austin. The selection of presenters is designed to give a vivid sense of the disruptive energy that Virtual Reality has in store for social and cultural spheres. “Immersive technologies will fundamentally change the way we experience content and interact with each other in the future”, says Thomas Zorbach, managing director of vm-people and initiator of IMMERSIVE X. ”As we enter the age of digital relationships, the Metaverse offers new modes of creative expression and interactivity, and we are revealing the empowerment of somatic experiential learning in a virtual environment.”, adds VenusSX, Virtual Sensory Designer and presenter of the X-Hour session “Unlock Our Potential: PlayroomSX and the VR Somatic Experience”.

There are three different ways to attend the X-HOUR sessions:

  1. Onsite via a rental VR headset in the following location: Innovation Bridge Europe House at the Thompson Hotel, 4th floor rooftop, 506 San Jacinto Blvd, Austin, TX 78701, USA.
  2. Virtual Reality via your own VR headset: If you have your own VR glasses, such as Quest 2, 3 & Pro, Pico Neo 2, or HTC Vive Focus, you can join our sessions from a remote location.
  3. Livestream via YouTube: If you are not in Austin and do not have a VR headset, you can watch the X-HOUR sessions via livestream. Location: https://www.youtube.com/@vmpeople

While the constant capitalization of the word metaverse in this press release makes my right eye twitch, I did sign up for the in-VR sessions, and registration was free. For more details on this series, and to register yourself, please see the X-HOUR website.