Filling the gap: Axel Springer hosts first XR Meetup in Berlin in three years
Tech giants are already investing billions of dollars to make the so-called “Real World Metaverse” a reality. These are technologies that enrich the user’s personal environment with interactive virtual objects so that the real and virtual worlds seem to merge. This augmented reality is made visible via so-called mixed reality glasses. The first mass market devices are expected from Apple, Google, and Meta in the next 1–2 years — no bigger than a pair of sunglasses.
That’s why we at Axel Springer are already working intensively on this topic, so that we will be ready when the mass market opens up and the demand for three-dimensional news content grows exponentially. Axel Springer has therefore set up an Immersive Media team as a research department to position the company as the leading news provider in the future three-dimensional space: Our news anchors, for example, would no longer have to be flat 2D videos, but could stand as a three-dimensional person in your own living room, and news would be presented in space using interactive models.
“The development from online to mixed reality is comparable to the paradigm shift from print to online: a quantum leap in the media sector, in which the medium, the end devices and, to some extent, the target groups are exchanged.”
Chris Krauss, Axel Springer / Immersive Media Team
The idea for an XR meetup was born out of the realization that the development in the eXtended Reality sector will be so powerful that hardly any company will be able to handle it alone. Especially since Corona, as in many other areas, left a gap in the Berlin XR community, where no major events had taken place for almost three years. We wanted to fill this gap and give Axel Springer a head start at the same time.
In the first week of May 2023, we hosted the first XR Creators Meetup in the Learning Lab of the new Axel Springer building in Berlin. Nearly 50 participants from the Berlin and Hamburg Extended Reality scene attended and used the evening to exchange ideas about immersive technologies after presentations from zaubar.com, realities.io, and us.
“We are on the verge of a major media revolution. And to manage it, we need everyone’s ideas. We can’t do it alone. For me, XR Creators is the start of a new community and our way into the future.”
André Günther, Axel Springer / Immersive Media Team
With the XR Creators Meetup, Axel Springer has kicked off the revival of the Berlin XR scene, offering it a platform and space for mutual exchange and networking to jointly advance the monumental task of reshaping the media market. The aim is not to present one’s own company in the most exciting way possible, but to stimulate thinking with creative impulses. With its research and networking activities, Axel Springer is positioning itself as a pioneer in the media and information industry in the emerging XR mass market. Our goal is to create a permanent meeting place for the XR community in Berlin — we will announce the next meetup again here on LinkedIn.
This article was co-created by Chris Krauß, Marcel Bankmann, and André Günther.
