MXR 2026 Keynote Speakers

Since May 2014, Kent Bye has published over 1700 Voices of VR Podcast interviews featuring the pioneering artists, storytellers, & technologists driving the resurgence of virtual & augmented reality. He's an oral historian, experiential journalist, and philosopher who is helping to define the patterns of immersive storytelling, experiential design, ethical frameworks, & the ultimate potential of XR.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/CaitlinKrause/ 

A globally recognized experience designer, author and keynote speaker, Caitlin Krause founded the interactive media studio and consultancy MindWise and built the digital wellbeing program about wellbeing and technology at Stanford University. She teaches at the University of Oregon. She has authored six celebrated books including Designing Wonder, Mindful by Design, and most recently, Digital Wellbeing. Her drive is to help individuals and teams navigate complexity and change in the future of thriving, prioritizing wellbeing, collaboration, and creativity. She advises organizations including TED, The U.S. Air Force, LinkedIn, Google, Meta, Oracle, Evernote, and the U.S. State Department.  Caitlin creates human-centered experiences mediated by technology, fusing creativity, meditation, storytelling, collaboration, and emotional intelligence for full life thriving.

Han is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Production, Management, and Technology in the College of Journalism & Communications at the University of Florida. She completed her PhD in Communication (Media Psychology) at Stanford University and her BS in Cognitive Science at Brown University. Han's research focuses on understanding social interactions in immersive virtual environments, including virtual and mixed realities. Specifically, she investigates how contextual factors -- physical, virtual, and social -- shape these interactions. Her work has been published in journals across disciplines, including the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, the Journal of Environmental Psychology, and Thinking Skills and Creativity. Her work has also been featured in media outlets including CNN, Stanford News, and VentureBeat.

Cortney Harding is a leading authority on the integration of Smart Glasses and Agentic AI into the global enterprise. As the founder of Friends with Holograms, she has spent over a decade re-architecting how the world’s most complex organizations—including Walmart, Amazon, Accenture, Verizon, and Lowe’s—scale human intelligence and operational performance.

Cortney is the author of The Spatial Race (2025) and co-author of Fast Future Blur (Wiley, 2024). She developed and leads the world’s first university-accredited curriculum for Smart Glasses at New Mexico State University, and has taught at CalTech, NYU, and Barnard. Through her regular columns for Forbes, she provides the strategic blueprint for the post-smartphone economy, advising executive boards and sovereign entities on navigating the $1.2T risk and opportunity of the spatial intelligence era. She is represented by several speaking agencies, including The Closer.