Bob Cooney is the executive director of LEXRA, the Location-based Entertainment XR Association, a trade association uniting the operators, creators, suppliers and investors behind location-based XR entertainment worldwide. He founded The VR Collective to connect the industry’s community and has tracked its growth since 2015.

Cooney has worked in location-based entertainment since 1991, when he founded and led Laser Storm, a laser-tag company that reached the Inc. 500 and went public. He helped bring Virtuality’s early VR centers to venues across the U.S. and joined Global VR’s founding executive team behind the VR Vortek arcade game. He later served as VP of marketing and business development at Ecast and as COO of NTN Buzztime. He wrote Real Money from Virtual Reality and founded the VR Arcade and Attraction Summit, now in its eighth year.

Cooney consults on strategy for VR operators and manufacturers across the industry.