Changes

Visionary is the Virtual Reality technology learning program at UPRM which aims to introduce students to VR/AR/MR and other immersive media technology and enable them to develop their own projects and startups.  It was founded a year ago by Alex after he incubated the idea at Idea Platform (IP). With the help of IP, Alex pitched Visionary at Facebook reperesentativesrepresentatives, which in turn got him in contact with Oculus. Oculus provided Visionary with 2 Oculus Rift VR headsets and $5,000 to use to buy the hardware needed to run them. Visionary started strong, but soon the year 2017 happened. After a series of strikes and hurricanes, Visionary is starting up again.

Alex's goal is for Visionary to become a self-sufficient tribe of Idea Platform so that even when he leaves UPRM, Visionary may continue to run. To do this, the Fellow has put together a motivated team of enablers and is working alongside other established tribes of IP so that Visionary is able to lift off. In order to do this , a base curriculum will be established as well as a VR license or certificate which will allow the student participating in the program to use the computers and headsets at their own time. To obtain the certificate the participant must demostrate demonstrate adequate capability to work with virtual reality software and hardware. During the first half of the semester, the participant will be enabled to use the software and hardware through workshops lead by the Visionary team. For the second part of the semester, the participants will be empowered to define their own project, create a team, and implement it. They would present it to the IP and external community as if it were a pitch, where their projects could be considered as the first step towards starting a startup. Visionary is meant to be a fun way to learn a new technology, not a class, so along the semester , there will be various activities that will keep it interesting, such as challenges, hackathons, guest speakers, game nights and much more. 

Visionary is important to Mayaguez and Puerto Rico because it is not afraid to work with and empower others with brand new technologies. Visionary hosted the first ever VR Hackathon in Puerto Rico causing a huge wave that was felt across the island. People that had never coded or touched a VR headset were able to create a VR experiece experience in less than 12 hours. VR/AR/MR are very versatile tools that have an overwhelming amount of applications. To take advantage of the technology and ride the wave, one must be Visionary!