By Dexter Lilley, Index AR Solutions COO

South by Southwest (SXSW) is the country’s premier convergence of original music, independent films and emerging technologies, an annual gathering of some of the brightest and most creative minds in the world.

Imagine our surprise to find out augmented reality (AR) is still something of a mystery. We were expecting more people would know about augmented reality, particularly at SXSW.

What was really cool, though, were the comments from many of those people who stopped by our booth to see our augmented reality demonstrations. They told us that they had not seen AR practiced as effectively as what Index AR Solutions demonstrated.

Not a single visitor seemed unimpressed by our Index presentations. It shows we’re definitely on to something and the future is very bright.

We took our augmented reality applications on the road recently to SXSW and while we weren’t exactly sure what to expect but our expectations were exceeded.

We were invited down to Austin, Texas, to attend SXSW by Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), a global consulting firm that sponsored several venues to include a Tech Breakfast on the morning of March 13 and a daylong set of technology and social panel sessions on the morning of March 14. We were asked by Booz Allen Hamilton to set up a booth in each of these venues and provide our demonstration pieces to the attendees.

Another purpose of our attendance was to get the Index AR Solutions name further into the augmented reality technology space, especially for those companies seeking AR solutions.

Most augmented reality and virtual reality companies at SXSW have technologies centering around gaming or other consumer-driven products and experiences. What separates ours from the rest of the AR or VR crowd is that we are an engineering services company that uses AR to make workers more productive, improving top and bottom line for industry.

Our BAH hosts were amazing and treated us like part of their family. We’re looking forward to continuing to work with them in the future.

At the Tech Breakfast, members of our Index team demonstrated our AR capabilities at lightning speed. We estimate more than 1,000 people walked by our demonstration table in the first two hours.

We had about 20 to 30 seconds to pull people in and typically only a minute to explain to them what we do at Index. It’s like AR speed dating!