Altadyn Is On BBC World News
Altadyn is featured this week on BBC World News, Click program:
Commenting on Altadyn’s new Facebook® app, the BBC World News presenter says: “Over the past few years, these spaces (3D social live spaces with avatars), have become more simple to create and now you can even design one using a Facebook® app. The use of avatars has several advantages over video: it tends to use less bandwidth, allow more people to get involved with a little less personal preparation.”
Altadyn Adds 3rd Dimension To Facebook
Social Movie Watching in your 3D Virtual Home, Social Photo Viewing of Your Holiday Pics During a Facebook® Hangout with Friends and 3D Immersive Social Gaming Are Among Enabled Apps, Thanks to ALTADYN®‘s Patent Pending 3D Immersive Platform as a Service (PaaS) With No Download Required.
Altadyn launches it’s new development platform . Offered in PaaS mode (Platform as a Service) on the cloud, the platform is designed for web developers, including Facebook® app developers, who want to create easily accessible while sophisticated applications where users enter 3D immersive spaces and socialize virtually with each other.
My Loft, a Facebook app powered by Altadyn
The Altadyn development platform is featured this week on BBC World News, Click program:
Commenting on Altadyn’s new Facebook® app, the BBC World News presenter says: “Over the past few years, these spaces (3D social live spaces with avatars), have become more simple to create and now you can even design one using a Facebook® app. The use of avatars has several advantages over video: it tends to use less bandwidth, allow more people to get involved with a little less personal preparation.”
A first sample Facebook® app, namely “My Loft”, has been developed to showcase the features. “My Loft” source code is available free of charge for all registered users of the Development Platform within their free account. App developers can use My Loft source code as a basis for developments to which they add value with:
- their own content : variety of creative avatars and variety of 3D spaces,
- customization features: enabling creative custom homes,
- their own application purpose : gaming, hangouts, photo viewing, video watching, concerts, dance floors, meetings, events, etc…
Read the full press release here: http://altadyn.com/PR/Altadyn-adds-3D-to-Facebook.pdf
Inc. Magazine Article on Altadyn’s 3D Virtual Event
Recently, the Inc. magazine published an interesting article on Virtual Events featuring Altadyn’s solution, and it’s 3D immersive Virtual Events platform used as a Virtual Classroom.
Read it here : http://www.inc.com/ss/8-great-ways-utilize-virtual-events#1
Altadyn CEO, Darius Lahoutifard, Talks About 3D Virtual Events
In a recent Interview, Altadyn CEO, Darius Lahoutifard answers to Jean-Michel Billaut’s questions about Altadyn, the Virtual Events market and more. Jean-Michel is the founding President of Atelier BNP-Paribas, the technology analysis office of the largest European investment bank. He has received multiple awards for his work in the promotion and the development of the Internet in Europe.
The full interview in French can be found here.
A subtitled and shorter version of the interview can be watched below:
The script of the interview can be read below:
Hello Jean Michel
You started a company called Altadyn, can you explain us what it does ?
We provide 3D-VirtualEvents.com. In a 3D Virtual Event, users enter a conference room, a lounge, or an exhibit hall with their avatars, in a more realistic and much more engaging and interactive way than the traditional tools such as Webex. It’s a SaaS platform for running virtual events in 3D immersive mode.
Do you download and install the software?
No. There is no need for that! Our big difference with other 3D immersive platforms, is that thanks to our tiny Java applet, there is no download or installation required. It’s very “enterprise-friendly”.
How does the virtual event market evolve in the US ?
The Virtual Events market is emerging. The 2.5D & 3D market is estimated around $180M, growing fast, and that figure doesn’t include numbers from traditional 2D vendors. If we add them, then we talk about the live collaboration platforms (or web conferencing) market which is estimated at $3B and growing.
And if I want to use your system to run a 3D conference, what should I do ?
There are 2 steps. First, as the event planner, you can setup your event in 3 easy steps thanks to a wizard on our website . You’ll chose the capacity of the event, for instance 50 or 100 persons, then you choose a virtual room among a list of ready-made templates, that you can easily customize with your company logo or other graphics, or add seats in the room, add links to other web pages or resources from the room, decide how attendees can join (login through Facebook or Linkedin,…) and some other setups. When finished with the room and meeting setup, the system provides you with an e-mail invitation including a URL that you can share with the attendees or get them registered for automatic management of the registration from our website which can send out invitations directly.
The 2nd step is when the users enter the space, they receive the invitation e-mail, click on a link, follow a short login process, choose an avatar among a list of 30 models, then they are teleported in a 3D space. They can jump from one point of the room to another. They can click on a seat and sit down if it’s a conference. For a tradeshow they can click from one booth to another or freely walk in 3D using arrow keys and/or the mouse. They navigate freely in the 3D space and visualize different booths. In a conference room, they can see multiple screens thanks to the 3D space : slides on one screen, a live twitter feed on another, a video started by the presenter on a 3rd screen, etc. All with VoIP and chat. The whole experience is simulating perfectly the reality, like a real conference.
Ok, I see. Now in a tradeshow, with booths, how can one build a virtual booth ?
Similar to what I said earlier: There are different templates for individual booths and read-made exhibit halls, where you just customize a booth with logos, setup links to pdf brochures, video links, contact links, etc. Another benefit of 3D is the capability of importing 3D objects. You can import 3D models built in CAD or architecture software, or from 3D animation. Models built with tools such as Catia or 3DS-Max or Google SketchUp. Participants can handle objects, rotate, move or enlarge them and while one manipulates an object, the others can watch or interact. In fact one of the applications of the platform is synchronous collaboration for design review both in product design and in construction. When you are pointing your laser beam on a specific area of a 3D object, other participants see what you are showing. Here’s an application for presenting a new product during launch or a technical training for maintenance. Dell, one of our customers, has used our platform for new product presentation to internal sales force and it’s obviously 10 or 20 times less expensive than organizing a real meeting.
How much does it cost and what is your business model ?
It is a SaaS platform, with either a monthly subscription or an event-based on demand purchasing. To give you an idea, monthly subscription for a conference room with a capacity of 100 people is $490, unlimited use. For an on-demand event, which lasts a few hours, with 100 people using AMAZON’s EC2 Cloud Computing servers, you pay just $150.
I organize an exhibition with vendors and sponsors, Can I make them pay ?
Absolutely, it is the choice of the organizer to decide about their own business model. You may proceed with the same economic model as real trade shows by charging exhibitors and sponsors and provide them with booths and banners or other ads.
In your opinion, what percentage of the whole tradeshows market is virtual today?
Still a very small part, but growing fast. This market is traditionally connected to hospitality and tourism (hotels, etc…). Event venues (hotel rooms, conference rooms, ….) see us as competitors, while Event Planners and Event Producers are shifting gradually from physical to virtual. The market is actually going through a transition via hybrid events. Those are real events with a simultaneous live broadcast online. For instance, one of our clients, the National Defense University in Washington D.C. runs their annual conference using our platform each year, in a hybrid mode with people in the 3D virtual room watching a live video stream of the real conference.
In your system, can I see who is in the same space as me?
Absolutely, not only you can see the list of participants as you see in traditional tools, but also you see their avatars moving, their actions, where they are looking at, what they are doing, etc. You can also click on their avatar and engage conversations or check their linkedin or facebook or Google+ profiles depending on the social media through which the user entered.
I wanted to thank you for allowing me to present Altadyn and 3D-VirtualEvents.com.
You are welcome, congratulation and good luck !
Thank you very much Jean-Michel !
Goodbye !
Goodbye !
Why Are US Corporations Now Interested In 3D Virtual Events ?
US Corporations started using traditional online meeting platforms (also considered as Virtual Events platforms, used for webcasting and online conferences) more than 10 years ago. The most popular traditional virtual meetings used are Cisco‘s Webex, Citrix Online’s GotoMeeting, Microsoft‘s Netmeeting and Adobe‘s Adobe Connect.
However, according to analyst firms such as Frost & Sullivan, who predicted this need already a few years ago, corporations have started looking for collaboration platforms which increase productivity, and enable sense of presence. Click on this figure to enlarge.
Why 3D virtual events?
Before the emergence of 3D Virtual Events, each time Corporations needed more sense of presence and more interaction and more humanized meetings, they would go for a face-to-face or in-person events, but now there is a new pardigm that they are discovering and enjoying before paying the cost of in-person events and wasting their employees time in traveling.
As a matter of fact, 3D immersive solutions are filling in the gap by offering an in-between solution, where you can save time and money by keeping it virtual, while increasing engagement and interactivity, thanks to 3D immersion, avatar based platforms.
We see a few reasons why Virtual Events improve the productivity of corporate gatherings:
- 3D Virtual spaces create a Sense of Presence, and a Feeling of the Space that you don’t have with passive, boring slideshow meetings offered by traditional webex-like platforms
- Avatars help visualizing other participants, and lead to more « Human » Interactions, more engaging, more networking among attendees
- Avatars animations (walking, sitting, laser beaming, hand raising,….) and 3D Virtual Spaces lead to stronger Visual Memory of the Meeting
- Games, serious games, and other fun content such as simple ice-breaking actions at the beginning a speech, makes the conference or the training or the kick-off, more engaging, more interactive and more fun
- Importing 3D objects improves communication and collaboration on 3D virtual objects and products particularly efficient for gatherings like small design review meetings for a new product or larger new product launch presentations, or even technical trainings for existing or new products.
In a typical virtual event, such as a virtual conference, a virtual classroom, a corporate training meeting, or a kick-off meeting, you have a much higher level of engagement and interactivity than with traditional platforms. Not only you can see the list of participants as you see in traditional tools, but also you see their avatars movements, walking, sitting, raising hands, their actions on objects, and where they are looking at !!! This last point is essential for an Instructor, a presenter or a teacher to check the level of attention of the audience. Nowadays with traditional platforms, the majority of participants go mute to check emails and they have even other conversations going on, either over the phone or with people in their office. It’s much harder to play these tricks in a 3D virtual event.
Similar notions apply to virtual tradeshows, inside virtual exhibit halls.: Participants can also click on other attendees avatar and engage one-to-one or one-to-many conversations or check their linkedin or facebook or Google+ profiles depending on the social media they used to enter the meeting.
And that’s not all. If the content is king, the context is queen. The choice and the design of the meeting room itself has a huge impact on the gathering. Architects and Interior Designers know what we are talking about: the feeling and the emotions that a space generates in us. Have you ever questioned why corporations have always spent so much time and money in building well designed and greatly architect-ed headquarters, Conference rooms and reception areas? Do you have the same feeling when you walk in an underground dark railway station hallway, compared to when walking in a bright glass bridge with a green landscape around your meeting room? That’s the kind of emotions that environments create in you.
The 3D immersive environment and its design by itself creates feelings in each attendee. Now add the fact that you see another avatar in front of you talking and/or chatting. Is it the same sense of communication compared to trying to visualize someone just by their name, in text, in the lower right corner of the screen?
This is why corporations are looking for more HUMAN Interaction, more ENGAGEMENT and for virtual events which are closer to the in-person events. So that the attendee “FEELS” like he/she is “THERE”, and interacts with the speaker, the presenter, the teacher, the exhibitors and with other attendees.
Register for one of our upcoming webinars and give it a try, and feel free to react…
We Are Hiring A Marketing Geek
We’re filling a position that we call “Marketing Geek”.
Top candidates for this role, including talented juniors, will need a double profile: GRAPHICS DESIGN+ WEB MARKETING, with high self motivation, entrepreneurial spirit, fast execution, and creativity.
Keywords for this position are: #web marketing #web design #social media marketing #video production #virtual events
3D-VirtualEvents.com and Events Clique Partner to Serve Event Planners
We are pleased to announce a partnership with Events Clique (EventsClique.com), an online event planning and space planning website and service, who transforms the way events are planned and accelerates the real estate leasing process.
Event planners can now find and plan their face to face or real event venues through EventsClique.com and use Altadyn’s 3D-VirtualEvents.com platform for planning and producing their virtual events. They will even be able to replicate virtually in 3D-VirtualEvents.com the venue that they have customized, based on a real venue, found and worked out in eventsclique.com. This partnership takes the hybrid events solution to a next step.
“This strategic alliance between Altadyn and Events Clique brings a total 3D virtual event solution to the market from the design and planning phases through the event execution phase,” says President of Events Clique, Kristin McClune.
With 3D-VirtualEvents.com now available across the world, corporate event and meeting planners who use eventsclique.com now have a cost-effective and time-saving option when it comes to planning and/or holding events – without participants traveling (they can now attend virtually from their desktop computer in their office) . This applies to sales conferences, to board meetings, corporate trainings and virtual classrooms, holiday parties, new hires on-boarding, trade shows, product launches, and more.
Visit www.eventsclique.com or connect with EventsClique.com on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/eventsclique) or Twitter (@EventsClique).
Discover our New Platform and Win an iPod Nano!
We have an exciting new platform to show you: 3D-VirtualEvents.com. Join us on January 18th, 2012 at 8:30AM PST (11:30 EST, 5:30PM CET) for a virtual conference and see it by yourself, while taking a chance to win an iPod nano.
Among new features, you’ll notice:
- Wizard-driven space creation enables immediately operational conference rooms and exhibition halls setup
- A new navigation model requiring only mouse clicks, making the platform even more accessible to all
- Social media integration enables anyone to sign in with Linkedin, facebook, or Google accounts and view others’ profiles similarly
- In-World video streaming provides a more attractive user experience
- Chat dialog is on a transparent overlay
- Live feeds, rss or tweets can be displayed on in-world screens
- Pre-loadable slides, hand-raise function, better audio quality, improved Mac support, registration module for events, automatic reminders and many more features included.
See you on January 18, at 8:30AM PST (11:30AM EST, 5:30PM CET)
3D-VirtualEvents.com Gamifies Virtual Conferences & Tradeshows Through Engaging 3D Avatar-Based Immersive Spaces
PRESS RELEASE
3D-VirtualEvents.com Gamifies Virtual Conferences & Tradeshows
Through Engaging 3D Avatar-Based Immersive Spaces
ALTADYN® Introduces Patent Pending Technology For 3D Virtual Events, The First Self Service, Instantly Setup Full 3D Immersive Platform For Virtual Events With No Download Required.
January 11th, 2012 – Irvine, California. – Altadyn announced our new platform today: 3D-VirtualEvents.com. Offered in SaaS mode on the cloud, it has been designed for corporations and event professionals who want to stay away from boring slideshow-driven webcasts, in favor of more engaging and entertaining ways to run virtual events like virtual conferences, virtual trainingVirtual classrooms, virtual tradeshows and other virtual meetings.
“Compared to our previous platform, 3D-VirtualEvents.com is much easier to setup, being instantly available by use of our new wizard. The updated user interface allows event attendees to take advantage of the rich and engaging aspect of a 3D avatar based platform without the learning curve which usually goes with it.” declared Darius Lahoutifard, Altadyn’s CEO. “Altadyn’s patent pending technology is based on a disruptive technology that makes high-end 3D immersive spaces for collaboration accessible to users with mainstream computers in enterprise environments. While similar technologies require heavy or proprietary software downloads and installations,3D-VirtualEvents.comruns in current browsers on typical office computers and only requires Java, the largely installed open source component.”
Here are some key elements of Altadyn’s technology included in a small java applet, which loads seamlessly as the user clicks on a hyperlink:
- A fully immersive 3D engine with physics capabilities
- Customized avatars able to walk, sit, talk, raise hands, manipulate objects, point objects or screens with laser pointers, and more
- Desktop sharing and remote control
- Synchronized 3D object manipulation: rotation, translation, scaling. Optimal for product design review, product training, product launch, games, and more
- Integrated Voice/IP
- Integrated instant messaging – moderated, private or public
- Integrated in-world audio and video streaming
- Open architecture enabling users to import 3D objects and 3D spaces from other external 3D formats
- Open API enabling developments in Java, javascript, HTML5
Main applications covered by the new 3D-VirtualEvents.com platform include not only virtual conferences, virtual tradeshows, virtual classrooms, and other corporate gatherings (kick-offs, trainings, on-boarding meetings, etc…) but also eLearning, serious games, collaborative sessions for product design review, product specific trainings, live 3D chats on websites, permanent 3D virtual worlds for communities or 3D spaces on websites for permanent show rooms and exhibition halls.
For a limited time, event professionals are offered a $100 credit for their first event, under the FREE TRIAL program available here: http://www.3d-virtualevents.com/. They will also be eligible to win an iPod by attending the initial product launch 3D conference demo on 1/17/2012. Registration is open to all here:
http://www.3d-virtualevents.com/launch-contest/
About Altadyn
Altadyn® is changing the way we meet, learn, teach, collaborate, socialize, market, sell, transact. The company is emerging as the leader in 3D Virtual Events, 3D websites and other live 3D synchronous collaboration such as web conferencing, virtual trade shows, virtual exhibitions, live meetings, virtual classrooms and more. Altadyn’s platforms are the only web 3D platforms which are immersive, interactive, and do not require any download or installation and work with any browser on any computer. Altadyn® is already delivering value to major customers including NDU / FCVW (National Defense University), US-Air Force, Saint-Gobain (NYSE Euronext: SGO), Old Dominion University, Saint Joseph University, Cubic (NYSE: CBC), Aptima, Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) , Crawford & Co and more. Altadyn operates globally with offices in Irvine, California, and Paris, France. For more information, visit http://www.altadyn.com/ or contact:
Altadyn Corp. / e-mail: dl (AT) altadyn.com
ALTADYN, is a registered trademark of ALTADYN Corp. 3D-VirtualEvents.com is a trademark of Altadyn Corp. All other registered trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Pre-Announcing 3D-VirtualEvents.com
3D-VirtualEvents.com is on the horizon. Focusing on Virtual Conferences and Virtual Tradeshows, this platform promises to stand out as one of the best virtual event solutions offered. The uses and applications are numerous, while still running on Altadyn’s patent-pending download-free and browser-based technology. Visit the coming-soon page here and register to be instantly informed when open.
