I have just arrived in lovely SFO!

In the months towards building up a permanent Layar presence in the Bay Area, you will see one of us Layar founders and Management Team around more frequently.

If you would like to meet me this week, here is where you can find me:

Tuesday and Wednesday: Paypal X Innovate event
I will be giving a short presentation during the keynote on Tuesday morning starting at 10am, introduced by Osama Bedier.

In the afternoon at 3pm, I will be joining a panel hosted by Tim Chang on emerging mobile business models.
If you’re at the event and you’d like to talk to me on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning, please come and find me or ping me: claire@layar.com or @claireboo on twitter.

More info: Paypal X Innovate event, Moscone Event Center, San Francisco

Big Big Bang, a Layar Partner Network member in the Bay Area, created a few layers especially for this event

Thursday afternoon: Layar workshop
We are hosting a small and intimate workshop for Layar developers, to go in-depth on the commercial and conceptual aspects of the platform. We can host a maximum of 30 people at The Hub. There are only a few more seats left. More info and rsvp here. Time: 2pm-6pm, The Hub, San Francisco

Thursday morning & Friday morning: time for meetings
My agenda is already quite packed but I still have some room for a quick meetup. Please ping me if you want to meet:
claire@layar.com or @claireboo on twitter.
You can also contact Meghan Hughes, who runs our PR in SFO: “Meghan Hughes”

I will fly back home on Friday afternoon. But will be back soon!
Claire

If you are in Manchester the next couple of weeks, you certainly have to take a closer look at The Augmented Reality Monster Hunt. The Monster Hunt combines horrorfying virtual graphics, storytelling, cool prices and AR

“There are a multitude of Monsters hiding around Manchester, invisible for the naked eye, visible in Layar. Every monster offers brave souls the chance to win a monster prize. Monsters will change every week leading up to an annual event at The Printworks on Halloween weekend. Have fun finding and slaying the Monsters. Wrrrroagh!

One of the creatives behind Monsterhunt, Glyn Jackson, wrote an excellent blogpost about using Augmented Reality (and especially Layar) as a campaign tool. Read it on cfcoffee.co.uk.

AR Game: Monsterhunt
End date: 4th November 2010
Location: Manchester, UK
Required: iPhone or Android device
Website: Monsterhunt.co.uk
Developer: Gencia

Another great example of Layar being used by the art scene. Last week the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, USA, released the Warhol Layar.

The Warhol Layar enables you to view points of interest pivotal in Andy Warhol’s life and work. You’ll find locations in Pittsburgh and New York. The Warhol Layar also provides rare and premium content prepared by The Warhol’s education curators.

Layer: Warhol
Location: Pittsburgh & New York City
Required: iPhone or Android device
More info: warhol.org
Developer: Brunner Mobile

Mobile companies are the fastest growing technology companies of the Benelux, looking at the winners of the main prizes at Deloitte’s Fast50 awards.

During a gala dinner (yes - all guys in tuxedo and girls in cocktail dresses!) in the Evoluon in Eindhoven, the winners of the Fast50 were announced, as well as the “Rising Star” and the “Most Disruptive Innovator”.

The Fast50 (tech companies ranked based on their turnover growth over the past 5 years) was won by Service2Media, a company specialized in mobile applications and mobile marketing. Number 3 in that list AND winner of the “Sustainable Growth” award was CM Groep - they have been ranked in the Fast50 for 5 consecutive years. CM delivers SMS and mobile payment solutions.

We know both companies very well from our background in Mobile (Monday) and it was cool to see Mobile topping the growth charts.

We won the “Most Disruptive Innovator” award - including a 3 months incubation period in Silicon Valley. An amazingly cool prize, awarded by GIMV, which perfectly fits in our plans to open up an office in the Valley soon!

The award show was the closing of a thorough selection process ending with high quality pitches of 12 “Rising Stars”.

More pictures can be found here.

On Saturday October 9th, the physical space inside the MoMA building in New York will host a virtual exhibition, based on Augmented Reality technology. The show will not be visible to regular visitors of the MoMA, but those using the “Layar Augmented Reality browser” on their iPhone or Android smartphones, will see numerous additional works on each of the floors.

The experimental unofficial exhibition is part of the Conflux Festival, the annual New York festival dedicated to the psychogeography practice. With the exhibition, the organisers of the event aim to address a contemporary issue, caused by the rapid rise of Augmented Reality usage. What is the impact of AR on our public and private spaces? Is the distinction between the two fading, or are we approaching a situation with an increasing fragmentation of space and realities to be perceived individually?

The exhibition is organised by Sander Veenhof, augmented reality experimentalist from the Netherlands, and the New York based new media artist Mark Skwarek. Both artists share a common fascination for hybrid collaborations between virtual and physical entities.

Augmented reality artists worldwide were invited to showcase their work in the MoMA. Sander & Mark curated the exhibition. By the way, the MoMA is not involved in this yet. But that’s not a requirement anymore anno 2010, being independent and working in augmented reality.

Event: DIY Augmented Reality exhibition - MoMA, New York
Opening: 4PM October 9th 2010
Location: MoMA, NY - floors 1 to 6 + virtual floors 7 & 8 + garden
Required: iPhone or Android device
Developers:  Sander Veenhof & Mark Skwarek
More info about the festival: confluxfestival.org
About the exhibition: sndrv.nl/moma