As the visionary Co-Founder and Creative Director behind PatchXR, Melodie is pioneering the fusion of music, art, and virtual reality in the metaverse. Under her leadership, PatchXR has introduced PatchWorld, a VR creative platform launched in December 2020, which reimagines digital expression and collaboration, to empower a new generation of creators to craft immersive experiences.. The Swiss start-up and their platform has been recognized internationally, winning accolades like the Aurea award in 2024 for Creativity, an Auggie award in 2023 for the startup to watch, and being listed by Fast Company among the top 10 most innovative VR/AR companies of 2023, alongside industry giants like Unity, Meta, and Google. Patchworld is available on most VR platform, and soon on PC and Mac.

Canadian-born Dwayne Grech is the co-founder and CEO of Hello xLAB KK, an award-winning XR design company based in Osaka. They are developing an immersive display platform called  MRSV.SPACE  (pronounced Immersive Space) for B2B businesses while creating spatial experiences for clients like the Osaka World Expo.
Dwayne is an active member of the Kansai startup ecosystem through his contributions as a government-appointed Osaka Promoter and co-founder of the Startup Guild Japan. He collaborates with local and foreign governments, universities, and NPOs, fostering the region’s design and innovation culture while building essential bridges.

SimulumiS is a real-time rendered lifelike 3D world, a real copy of Earth, where users scan their neighborhoods, collect items, and are transported to distant locales to explore or have their avatars do the exploring for them while idle, using only their phones or virtual reality headsets. (Think: Google Street View, but everywhere – we don’t need roads – populated by players like in Pokemon Go.)
Farid is a media entrepreneur previously working in movie studios, television services, and broadcast networks, across creative production and IP acquisition to publishing and distribution of finished content worth more than $3B in aggregate. He also led strategy and business development for several new video streaming services both within large
corporations and at an external disruptor which successfully exited for $340M. Before moving to Kyoto for his present AR/VR startup, Farid consulted for several United Nations organizations in Geneva and worked at the World Economic Forum in Davos where he managed the media and entertainment industry community.

DANGEN Entertainment is an Osaka-based publisher of indie games where Dan heads up operations as one of the founding members. He has lived in Japan for 16 years and worked in game publishing for a decade. He values cohesive expressions of a game’s theme across all of the disciplines that make up its art. His favorite game is Bloodborne.