New York, NY—The LDV Vision Summit will bring together top technologists, visionaries, start-ups, media/brand executives and investors with the purpose of exploring, understanding and shaping the future of imaging and video in human communication. The summit will be held May 19–20, 2015 at the SVA Theatre in New York City.
“Last year, we organized the first LDV Vision Summit,” said Evan Nisselson, of LDV Capital, the summit’s organizer. “It was the first time that an event combined all the important aspects of technology and business across the visual technology ecosystem. This visual ecosystem includes any individual or business that works with images or videos. We believe the key people in this ecosystem are entrepreneurs building new businesses, investors, visual creators, computer vision experts, technology executives and brand/media executives.
“One of the main reasons we created this event was to increase the opportunities for all attendees across each business priority: recruiting, funding, business deals, networking, strategy, and inspiration,” Nisselson added. “Start-ups are frequently looking to meet investors, recruit employees and sell their services to executives at established companies.”
At least nine companies showcased at the 2014 summit have since raised funding or been acquired, including Magic Leap, $542M, led by Google Ventures; Taboola, $117M, led by Fidelity; Narrative, $8M Series B, led by Khosla Ventures, including True Ventures and LDV Capital; and Aviary, sold to Adobe.
Entrepreneurial computer vision experts attended for inspiration and networking, to meet recruiting companies looking to leverage their expertise, to license intellectual property or to meet others to start new companies. And media execs said they found technical solutions they were looking for to better track, distribute and monetize their content properties.
This year, the LDV Vision Summit spans two days. Day one, May 19, will include discussions on important technical trends. Topics will include computer vision, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, mapping, robotic imaging, medical imaging and computational imaging. Included in the discussions will be the following: When will cameraphones have the technical features and capacity to capture with the quality of high-end professional DSLRs and HD video cameras? When will the masses be able to make 3D pictures on mobile devices with one click, and do they want to? When will we be able to capture images and video around corners?
Day two will focus on the business and product aspects of the visual web ecosystem, including the future of cameras, moving advertising dollars from TV to digital, content (engagement, monetization and publishing), global video distribution, content creation and discovery, future media companies, content augmented reality, analytics and new opportunities to help brands market their products.
Some questions that will be discussed are: Will publishers continue to maintain their own destination sites or will they only publish within major platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter or the next start-up coming out of a garage? Will there be a new breed of media companies or will established players evolve? What are the video user trends and where will people watch in 10 or 20 years? Is Instagram the new real-time news channel? Does humanity want to communicate in pictures or video?
“We believe attendees will want to join each day for different reasons,” said Nisselson. “Business and product-focused attendees will also benefit from the inspiration, insights on trends and recruiting opportunities of day one. Any entrepreneurs looking for cofounders will be able to leverage both days for learning and networking. Technically focused attendees will benefit from the second day similarly through inspiration, insights on trends and finding potential cofounders.
“Our goal is to gather the brightest people from the sectors of the visual web ecosystem. We believe anyone working in and with images or video benefit from the sessions, networking, recruiting, investor networking and finding services to solve problems and increase revenue.”
Early-bird tickets are available for the LDV Vision Summit until April 15, 2015. ldv.co/visionsummit
