Michael Kintner is the CEO/Founder of 360Heros and a recent Guinness Book of World Records inductee for the first fully spherical HD 360 video filmed on the summit of Mount Everest using the 360Heros 360 video gear!

Michael is a self-professed computer nerd with an affinity for aerial and 360° photography and videography and has been in the tech business for over 25 years. Michael is a freelance videographer for NBC/WGRZ TV in Buffalo, New York, since 2001 owns and operates a computer consulting firm CNerd Inc, owns an Aerial Photography business AmazingAerialPhotos, and his latest company since 2011, 360Heros™, Inc., which revolves around developing easy to use, portable, and lightweight 360° video gear that uses GoPro® Hero3+ cameras for land, sea and air productions.

Michael currently holds degrees in Computing Graphics Technology (Alfred State), Dual Masters in Engineering, Information System Technology and Information Technology Management (Colorado Technical University).

Much of his education and experience has come directly from hands-on in the fields of robotics, drones, underwater robotics, CNC machining, 3D printing, videography, photography, flying, and professor at Colorado Technical University teaching others how to use this exciting technology.

Michael is committed to all aspects of his business – research and design, manufacturing, production, software development, mobile app development, training, support, and 360° video services – and he is having a great time turning his hobbies into his latest innovations.

Michael Kintner was born in Scio, New York and currently resides in Olean, New York, USA

Willy Kaemena is a retired mechanical engineer who worked over 30 years in many countries of the world.

His private passion are panoramas and he did first panoramas already 1965 with black and white photos which he glued together.
Fueled by the development of QTVR he bought his first digital camera in 1997 and the first digital photos were immediately put together and an interactive QTVR was created.

The next level was the “miracle” of full spheric panoramas, introduced with the development of Quicktime 5 in 2000.
It took him 3 years to unveil this miracle and to produce his first sphericals of doubtful quality using a tiny Olympus Fisheye strapped on an Olympus 2.1 Mpix point and shoot digital cam.

With the appearance of stitching software with a GUI and the availability of affordable digital SRLs and 8mm fisheye lenses, back in 2004, he could finally reached an output quality which still can be used today. In the last 10 years of his professional career he used interactive panoramas extensively on his job in order to transmit a real impression on the progress of his oversea projects back to the head office of his company.

He was one of the early photographer of 360cities, the largest panorama website of the world, where he published already more than 1500 panoramas, shot in many countries of the world.

He is well known by his special passion, which is traveling by train and documenting the interiors of famous trains as 360 panoramas and virtual tours. He is also the father of the Flying Willy which he will demonstrates on the field.

Currently he acts as secretary of the IVRPA

Evan Rapoport is a Product Manager for Google Maps Street View and community photography products such as Photo Sphere, Views, and Panoramio. He loves pushing the limits of what smart phone cameras can do, and creating products that empower people to share their stories through pictures and maps.

Before joining Google in 2011, he lived in Hawaii for eight years where he worked in high tech. His previous projects include storytelling platforms for outdoor adventurers, K-12 educational tools for oceanography and environmental stewardship, and brain-computer interfaces for severely disabled people.

He has authored or co-authored several peer-reviewed journal articles and two book chapters on functional brain imaging. His previous research at the University of Virginia and Carnegie Mellon included topics in human visual perception, often using virtual reality headsets or large immersive displays to better understand how people perceive and interact with the world around them.

Evan also loves hiking, stand-up paddling, and the ocean.

Evan Rapoport was born in Suffern, New York and currently live in Los Altos, California.

As you can imagine, Evan works at Google

Michael’s photography experience includes magazine editorial photography, commercial construction photography, portraits, landscapes, fine art and gigapixel photography.

As an expert in shooting gigapixel panoramas using GigaPan technology, Michael captures hundreds of thousands of images and combines them into a single, high-resolution image to explore and share.

During his career at GigaPan, Michael has conducted seminars and workshops, trained top photographers, and developed tutorial videos and webinars.

To this day, Michael still carries his camera everywhere, prepared to capture the next great shot.

• Shooting panoramas since 2005
• Senior Designer Manager of the Yahoo! Creative Solutions team, 7 years.
• Served on the International Association of Panoramic Photographers IAPP board.
• IVRPA Officer
• Active member of the Gigapan Systems Advisory board
• BETA-tester for: Nodal Ninja, Promote-Systems, and Bushman-panoramic.
• Founder & host of ongoing webcast: The Panographers – www.panogs.com
• Partnered with Joergen Geerds, in the creation of xRez Studio’s (& team): Yosemite Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, 2008.
• Publications:Featured on page 468 of the Christian Bloch’s HDRI handbook 2.0.
• Publications:Panographer (along with Canon “Explorer of Light” Clint Clemens) for upcoming (Dec2015) Tachen coffee-table book of Murals of Tibet – Gigapixel Panoramas of an Ancient Culture.
• Public Installations: (Interior sliding conference room walls mount/gigapixel print, Hotel MAYA, Long Beach, CA,
• Public Installations:(exterior)Massive Interpretive “Panorama” signs throughout the Mount St Helen’s National Monument, WA 2009
• *Public Exhibitions: Seattle Symphony Orchestra played to my panoramic projections for the 3 hour orchestration of : “An American Symphony”, Benayora Hall, Seattle WA

Education: BFA, Rhode Island School of Design and Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood.

Funny fact: Hollywood actor Charlie Sheen purchased one of his prints at an art opening in Venice Beach, CA.