Dr. Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro is the senior events producer at Decentraland Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees the 3D browser-based platform that has hosted recent buzzy events like Metaverse Fashion Week. She's based in London.
How she got her start: Casimiro's foray into the tech industry began in 2009, when she was working in the digital art, video installation, and physical computing field. "At that point, I was very involved in digital fashion with physical sensors and overall immersive installations," she remembers. "Slowly, I transitioned into a producer and manager role, and that happened naturally while I started leading teams, independent projects, and consulting."
Meanwhile, she was studying to earn her master's degree in art and technology—focused on extended reality (XR) solutions for museums and art galleries—followed by her Ph.D. in open source technologies for Heritage.
"This journey between hands-on and academia was very proactive and engaging, taking me to several countries to live and work," she says. "During the last 10 years, I was able to exercise my skills as a plural professional, being an artist, project manager, professor in a private university teaching digital design, and eventually digital producer in VR and AR projects."
She adds, "My current role converges my research in crypto and open source solutions for immersive experiences, matching my professional and academic practices from the past."
What innovation means to her: Casimiro believes that innovation is at the heart of being an artist—and that everyone, regardless of their field, has the potential to be creative.
"Being innovative doesn’t have to mean being into complex technologies. At its core, it means challenging the status quo and questioning pre-existing concepts," she says. "Thinking outside the box is key. I encourage people to allow themselves to explore intangible thoughts, hypotheses, and theories, and take note of those. To stay innovative, you’ll have to take risks—but as long as you stay truthful to your inner fire and work hard, you’ll get there!" 
At the inaugural Metaverse Fashion Week, Dolce & Gabbana presented an actual “catwalk” with cat-faced avatar models walking down a figure-eight-shaped runway inside a stadium-like space with bleachers.Screenshot: Courtesy of Decentraland
Career highlights: Casimiro cites the recent Metaverse Fashion Week as a highlight because of "how innovative and disruptive it is. I loved being able to highlight new aspects of such a traditional industry and make fashion accessible to people globally," she says.
But an older project called The Look Again App—which she helped develop in 2017 for the Historic Boston Association during the Illuminus Festival—holds a special place in her heart. The app used augmented reality to take guests on a time-travel adventure.
"In short, the app allowed users to view a landmark building called the Old Corner Bookstore during five different eras, changing the physical facade with a digital layer," she explains. "This project showcased the potential of XR to shape our collective experiences, including the way we build memory and exhibit history. It was a joy and an honor to be the creative director and producer of the application."
As for her biggest career accomplishment? Earning her Ph.D. "It allowed me to develop thought-provoking theories on digital memory, the future of heritage, and the collective process," Casimiro says. "Another major milestone for me has been working on a decentralized project, which allows me to bring my thesis to life while impacting others. Today, I feel empowered to change the world with my mind and my hands, and the freedom to build this new world is a priceless achievement."
Vision for the future: "In the long term, technologies that expand spatial experiences, like augmented and mixed reality, will be the most enjoyable to play with during an event—and the more the metaverse evolves, the more it will become screenless," Casimiro predicts. "For the future of events, we will gradually see virtual worlds coming to our physical spaces, and vice versa, up to a point where events will be completely hybrid, inhabited by playful activities and interactive elements."
She adds, "I think the current tech landscape is showing new possibilities to make global events through open-source tools. This gives power to communities to participate in this process, enables users all over the world to join, and makes events more affordable and accessible to all, while generating an entirely new economy of creators working with big brands, artists, and labels. More than ever I feel events will be about people and community identity. Blockchain is a technology that is bringing ownership and transparency to this industry, especially for music and art events."
Back to the full list: 12 Event Tech Experts Pushing the Industry Forward
