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VR / AR Community

Treasurer and Event Organizer, BostonVR  (a 501c3 non-profit)

2015 – present     See http://bostonvr.org

  • BostonVR is a 5100+ member group of VR developers and fans, world's 5th largest.

  • I help plan and organize events: engage speakers and demo providers. 

  • I look after the legal and financial details of the organization.

  • Through fall of 2015 - Spring of 2017, I was the co-CEO of BostonVR with Jeff Bail. We built the organization from a very small club to what it is, now.

  • Co-organized more than a dozen Saturday "Hack Days" at Brookline Interactive Group, where VR and AR developers could come by and make things all day.  

Jeff Bail, Co-Organizer at BostonVR

Jeffrey and I have been co-organizing events with our Boston Virtual Reality group and his dedication and passion for VR have really helped us to become a success. He has a lot of experience as a VR consultant and I'd recommend him to anyone looking for help on VR projects.

Recent BostonVR Events I Organized in 2018:

Teaching and Mentoring 

Much of my contribution to the VR / AR tech community is in the form of teaching and mentoring.  For detail, see Teaching.

Executive Director, PublicVR, Boston, MA (a 501c3 non-profit)

2008 - 2014    See http://publicvr.org

  • Conducted research in educational VR and MXR for the public domain.  See http://publicvr.org/JacobsonPublications2018.htm

  • Raised funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the NFF Foundation, and private sources. 

  • Attracted and mentored 19 students in academic internships.  Every one walked away with a resume piece and all graduate students published their work.

  • Developed the Egyptian Oracle Project.  See Education.

  • Created the Living Forest. See Education.

  • Developed CaveUT.  See Medicine & Other 

  • PublicVR has since merged with BostonVR, doing business under that name.

Other Contributions

  • On an NSF Peer Review panel for Cyberlearning research grants (2015).  

  • Reviewed grant applications for NASA and NOAA. 

  • Co-Editor:  History and Heritage in Games and Virtual Worlds, Special Issue of Games and Culture, 6 (6), Sage Publications (2011).

  • Managed the "Full Immersion, Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality Installations," Media Grid Immersive Education Summit, Boston College, Boston, May, 2011

  • Local Arrangements Chair, Conference of Virtual Reality, Waltham, MA, March, 2010

  • Peer reviewed of articles for 

    • Journal of Immersive Education (2012)

    • International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments (2012)

    • European Conference on Games Based Learning (2012, 2011, 2010)

    • Journal of Presence (2011), 

    • IEEE Journal of Educational Technology (2009)

    • HCI Journal (2011)

    • Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Meeting (2010)

    • …and many more conferences and journals over the past ten years.

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