I’ve been a longtime fan of virtual events, dating back to the early 2000s when lots of us were attending speaker events in Linden Lab’s online world Second Life. I even devoted a chapter to the trippy intellectual property challenges posed by virtual worlds in my book Darknet.

Back then, you would teleport into the designated space (perhaps an open-air amphitheater) and move your avatar around, through keys or mouse clicks, and type out comments and questions for the speaker and fellow participants while your connection went up and down. High-speed Internet was still years away.

It was fun and cool but ultimately clunky and frustrating. Second Life still exists but mostly its best days are behind it.

Well, a decade and several technological epochs later, a new era is about to unfold, an era not of virtual worlds but virtual experiences propelled by virtual reality, augmented reality or a hybrid of the real and virtual worlds called mixed reality.

And a major player in this emerging space will be High Fidelity, which closed a $35 million funding round on Wednesday with the goal of bringing VR to a billion people worldwide.  [Read more…] about Virtual reality events usher in a new era