The largest conference dedicated on virtual and augmented reality in Canada, the sophomore year featured 100 speakers and 60 installations. The second year of the VRTO Conference & Expo in 2017 was staged at the Rogers Communications Centre on the Ryerson University campus in downtown Toronto June 24th-26th with the theme of "Giants" based on the quote by Sir Isaac Newton: "“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants.” Keynote speakers included Stanford neuroscientist Professor Walter Greenleaf, PhD, Graham Smith, David A. Smith, Dr. Sara Diamond - President of OCAD University, Moses Znaimer, Charlie Fink, Dr. Karan Singh and James McCrae - founders of JanusVR and additional live interviews with Steve Mann, and Tim Merel among others. Several panels, under the banner of "Super Sessions" featured leaders in the field of Virtual & Augmented Reality, health sciences, "Out-of-Home" entertainment. The show was also the launchpad for various products and initiatives including the Canadian Film Centre's Pulse on VR "living ecosystem" report on the Virtual Reality industry, the Webmoti camera that mitigates social anxiety for children with autism who wish to participate in the classroom, and the Somato Cherry haptic wireless virtual reality controller. Themed pavilions were co-curated between Malicki-Sanchez and specialists in their respective fields including Dr. Maria Karam, Ian Kelso that featured early Augmented Reality artists Zenka, Daniel Leighton, Alex Mayhew, Dan Goldman, among others.
VRTO 2018
VRTO 2018 shifted its lens to psychedelia, esoterica, philosophy and phenomenology and how they relate to experiential design, blockchain and Visual Effects featuring such speakers as Steve "Spaz" Williams, Philip Rosedale, and Brett Leonard, alongside 85 other leaders of the VR industry. In its third year, the event added an extra day of conferences, workshops and training. The exhibits featured numerous startup companies in the ideaboost incubator in partnership with the Canadian Film Centre.
VRTO 2019
The 2019 conference shifted focus onto a recalibration for the spatialized technologies industry as a whole and added various notable authors to the lineup, including bestselling author Blake Harris "The History of the Future," and Douglas Rushkoff "Team Human." The conference moved to a new location - the Toronto Media Arts Centre. Other notable speakers included Sarah Vicks from Intel Studios and Olivier Asselin from Ubisoft who spoke about volumetric video and VR locomotion, respectively.
VRTO 2020
With the social and global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic many conferences were forced to adapt or close down. The VRTO conference moved online for its 5th anniversary, forming a multiplatform, multimodal experience founder Malicki-Sanchez termed "The Flotilla," that had a 30-day run spanning June 6th to July 6th. It used a video-streaming conference app, the Mozilla Hubs web VR platform running custom code on the Amazon Web Services cloud, the Discord\platform, and hosted a microsummit on accessibility.. The conference also featured contributions from JanusVR and Rochester Institute of Technology. Podcaster Kent Bye wrote a phenomenological journal of his experience and stated that "VRToronto is doing a lot of pioneering work in making their conference more accessible.". The show was co-produced by Stephanie Greenall.
