What we’re about
AI & AR Meetup: last Wednesday of every month at SLICE on Union. Reach out to Chris Grayson if you would like to be a speaker or a sponsor.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Augmented Reality (AR) — Elon Musk chose Memphis to be the home of xAI's Colossus Supercomputer, currently the world's largest AI Supercluster. This has thrust the city to the forefront of the global Artificial Intelligence race, with NVIDIA and Supermicro both announcing a Memphis footprint.
Augmented Reality (via AR smart glasses) is the heads-up & hands-free user interface (UI) through which AI is already being applied in the enterprise, the military, healthcare, and industrial applications — and eventually coming to the consumer market.
AR is the UI for AI.
Meetup Organizer, Christopher Grayson believes Memphis must grab this opportunity, both in the medical vertical, and as applied AI-through-AR in the trades, in manufacturing, in other industrial workforce applications, to rapidly up-skill the Memphis workforce.
Let us leverage this moment!
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About the host: Christopher Grayson
Grayson has decades of experience in technology event planning, organizing, staging, and booking speaking talent.
As an event organizer, Grayson hosted Ray Kurzweil prior to his current role as Principal Artificial Intelligence Research Scientist at Google (together with Juan Enriquez, biotech venture capitalist and former Chair of Harvard's Life Sciences Department) as the TED license-holder of NYC based TEDx franchise, TEDxSiliconAlley. Among other notable speakers, also included Apple Creative Director Ken Segall.
As an early co-organizer of Augmented World Expo (AWE), Silicon Valley's largest AR trade show, Grayson has hosted luminaries such as Microsoft Fellow Jaron Lanier (who first coined the term "Virtual Reality" for his company VPL, back in the 80s); Cyborg Anthropologist Amber Case; and cyberpunk "hard-science" fiction writer & mathematician Vernor Vinge, credited with coining the futurist definition of "the Singularity" (for which the aforementioned Ray Kurzweil is today most affiliated).
On this platform, Grayson was co-organizer of the New York City Meetup group: ARNY (Augmented Reality New York, from 2009 to 2012).
Grayson's own speaking engagements have included: MIT Media Lab, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, SxSW, and a talk on wearable technology at New York Fashion Week, hosted by the Swiss Consulate.
Upcoming events (1)
See all- AI - Pitch RehearsalSlice (on Union), Memphis, TN
On Wednesday, June 25th we will hold a pitch rehearsal.
Companies participating, and founders presenting:
CJ Drone Systems - Connor Messina
BVO (Baron Von Opperbean) - Marvin Stockwell & Kathryn Hicks
VisaLaw . ai - Josh Waddell
Voicy Labs - Santhosh Kumar Reddy Jampana & Sravani Siddanthapu
ClarityAxis - Christopher Bulin
ParcelPackets - Brian Wentzloff
Numsage - Yashas Tiptur Ramesh
Merjek-AI - Fatih Şen
TaxGPT - Dr. Avishek BiswasConnor Messina who will be presenting CJ Drone Systems has been the founder's liaison for this pitch rehearsal, with assistance from JC Smiley, author of the Memphis Tech Scene newsletter (which everyone should be subscribed to).
This pitch rehearsal night is in preparation for a pitch day in August, organized by the AAIA Memphis Chapter. We have secured an in-kind donation of a Class-A venue. This August pitch event will also be streamed, and investors will be invited. Further details will be disclosed at the Meetup.
