The First XR Motion Conference

In 2025, I discovered a secret recipe that culminated into one of the proudest achievements of my career. The secret sauce looked something like this:

• 5 years growing the monthly XR Motion Meetup, online community and NYC events.
• 3 years networking with some of the best digital art talent in the industry via the XR Motion Podcast.
• 1 connection with NYU's Integrated Design & Media Program. Book their 14K square foot studio as a venue.
• 1 kick-ass team of friends & artists devoting time and expertise to growing the community they believe in.
• 1 ton of hard work sprinkled in.
• Countless favors from mentors, sponsors, friends and family.

Combine the above over the course of 7 months and you get an incredibly successful first XR Motion Conference in NYC.

There are way too many individual elements that made up the XR Motion Conference, certainly too many to list here. But the team and I knew that we wanted to stay true to a few key north stars.

• Provide as much value to attendees as possible. Presentations, hands on learning, networking, interacting with tech they might not have access to otherwise.
• Keep ticket prices as affordable as possible. Lean on sponsors for subsidy. Utilize volunteers and offer them non-cash incentives like meet and greets. Don't be greedy.
• Make sure there's a space for everyone. Diversity and representation in the programming. Different creative backgrounds, experience levels and industry niches.
• Build a conference we'd actually want to attend. Forget all the rest, would we even want to be here? Spoiler alert, we absolutely did.

The scope of accomplishing this was massive. Alongside my co-director Mikee Steinberg, we lead a small core team of 7 to build everything that went into the event from scratch. Programming, sponsorship, branding, visuals, food and beverage, swag, marketing and promotion, ticketing and budgeting - what felt like never-ending list of to-dos was only manageable with these amazing humans by my side.