First global conference to be hosted entirely via VR

VR Education (AIM: VRE; Euronext Growth: 6VR), a leading virtual reality (‘VR’) technology company focused on the education and enterprise training space, is pleased to announce that it will host, via its ENGAGE platform, the 2020 HTC Vive Ecosystem Conference (‘HTC 2020 VEC’), due to be held on 19 March 2020.  This conference has historically been held by HTC Corporation (‘HTC’) in Shenzhen in China, however, due to the Coronavirus and the subsequent shutdown and travel restrictions imposed across the country, the event in its physical format has been cancelled.

HTC approached VRE to virtually host HTC 2020 VEC, thereby allowing the free event to run as planned, albeit virtually. Working closely with HTC, the Group has moved quickly to facilitate the event. VR Education believes will be the first conference ever to be transferred into virtual reality, enabling a global audience without travel. The conference will also be attended by the teams from other events which are either cancelled, postponed or taking on new digital formats such as GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications), GDC (Game Developers Conference), ESL (English as a Second Language) and GTC (GPU Technology Conference).

The HTC 2020 VEC speakers will be located in China, Taiwan, France, the UK and the US and will communicate their various presentations as avatars in virtual reality via the ENGAGE platform.  The panel includes several members of HTC senior management including the CEO, Yves Maitre, and HTC’s China President, Alvin Graylin.  In addition, external speakers include Tom Furness, a pioneer of VR; Peter Diamandis, founder and Chairman of The X PRIZE Foundation; and Hugo Swart, QUALCOMM’s VP and General Manager of XR.

David Whelan, CEO of VR Education, said: “We have a close working relationship with HTC and so when they asked if we could assist in hosting HTC 2020 VEC via ENGAGE, we were delighted to help out.  Coronavirus continues to impact us all and we feel that by hosting this conference virtually we can mitigate some of the disruption that it has and continues to cause businesses globally.

Whilst there is no monetary value to this agreement, we believe that it marks the first time an official physical industry event is fully replaced by VR.  It also provides us with an excellent opportunity to showcase the exciting capabilities of our ENGAGE platform to a truly global technology-led audience.  We hope that this might, in turn, lead to further commercial opportunities for the Group going forward.”

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Notes to Editors

VR Education, together with its wholly owned subsidiary, is an early stage VR software and technology group based in Waterford, Ireland, dedicated to transforming the delivery methods of education and corporate training by utilising VR technologies to deliver fully immersive virtual learning experiences.  The Group's core focus is the development and commercialisation of its online virtual social learning and presentation platform called ENGAGE, which provides a platform for creating, sharing and delivering proprietary and third-party VR content for educational and corporate training purposes.

In addition to the ongoing development of the ENGAGE platform, the Group has also built two downloadable showcase VR experiences, being the award-winning Apollo 11 VR experience and the Titanic VR experience.

On 12 March 2018, VR Education listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange and on the Enterprise Securities Market, a market regulated by Euronext Dublin.  For further information, please visit www.vreducationholdings.com.