Chris Koomen, KLM
As a child I always was interested in new technologies and I was dreaming about becoming an airline pilot. I passed all exams and was ready to start flying when I was in an accident. I could never fly again. I became a ground engineer and started working at KLM in 2007 in the Engineering & Maintenance domain.
In my spare time I have always been experimenting with new technologies and back in 1996 I tried to build a flight simulator on glasses. Though it was really hard but my experiment succeeded and the glasses worked! This is where my love for Virtual Reality started. Unfortunately, there was no market for this technology yet which made it too hard to keep working on it.
In 2015 Google cardboard came out which relighted my fire for VR. I started experimenting again and developed an interactive VR evacuation training for KLM. This turned out to be a success! I’m no longer work as a ground engineer. The last 3 years I’ve joined the Digital Transformation team at KLM where I was the VR-expert and created a team “the VR team” who makes proof of concepts with a thin slice approach. I currently work as VR specialist/consult for AF/KLM to guide and implement many different fields of VR, such as cabin crew training, social media, marketing and ground operations.
Terry R. Schussler, Deutsche Telekom
Terry works within Deutsche Telekom’s 5G group driving spatial computing research and the creation of immersive products that leverage the value of 5G and edge compute services. He collaborates with vendors of XR devices and enabling technologies to build a future that delivers pervasive and personalized B2B and B2C immersive experiences. While innovating 200+ software products for over 50M users he has focused on making software smarter for users while leveraging technology to enable new forms of communication.
