Hi. I’m James Ashley. I work out of Atlanta, Georgia.
I am a VR/MR/XR architect specializing in Apple Vision Pro, Magic Leap, HoloLens, Meta Quest, and Kinect. I come out of the agency world and previously worked at Razorfish Emerging Experiences, where I developed custom installations for companies like AT&T, Delta, Dr. Scholl’s, Audi and Microsoft.
I spent several years in the Philosophy Phd program at Emory University where I studied phenomenology, the philosophy of consciousness, and the history of philosophy. In my tech career I have tried to bring together tech and philosophy to see how the insights of one can better illuminate the long shadows of the other.
In 2012 I wrote the book Beginning Kinect Programming with Jarrett Webb for Apress. It was the first book published about Kinect development and sits on the bookshelves of most creators working in emerging technologies today.
In 2017 Dennis Vroegop and I did the App Development for HoloLens course on LinkedIn Learning.
In 2018 I worked on machine learning and skeleton tracking for the 3D camera company Orbbec.
Between 2019 and 2020 I led the tech team at VIM AEC where we received a $500,000 grant from Magic Leap to develop an architectural visualization tool, which we released on the Magic Leap store in April 2020.
After that I worked for a biolab research start-up in Seattle developing AI enhanced lab tools that used the HoloLens 2 to provide instruction and QA for laboratory procedures.
From 2022-2024 I was a tech manager and dev lead with Walmart, where my team developed a cutting-edge planogram tool for the soon to be released Apple Vision Pro which got high praise from Tim Cook.
I then spent several years developing AVP apps at CVS Healthcare and Fidelity addressing the future of home health care and the future of personal investment.
I was a speaker and a panelist in the VisionOS Workshop at AWE 2024. I also did a VisionOS video short course for XR Bootcamp.
In 2025 I was a mentor/speaker at the MIT Hackathon.
Earlier this year I did a Kotlin video short course for XR Bootcamp.