Marco Rota
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When the Experience Disappears

Context

The best experiences don't feel like experiences. They feel like reality.

At Microsoft I understood that showing what HoloLens 2 could do in a conference room was never going to be enough. You had to put it somewhere that already meant something — a real venue, a real moment, a real crowd — and let the technology disappear into it.

For the Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit closing party at Comerica Park I partnered with Bully! Entertainment to build Face the Pitch. Guests stepped up to the plate in a Major League stadium and faced a volumetric captured pitcher throwing 100mph fastballs in mixed reality. No controller. No tutorial. No instructions.

Nearly every single person swung.

That's the proof of concept nobody can put in a slide deck. When the experience is designed correctly the technology vanishes and the behavior follows naturally. Lines stretched to the outfield for four hours. Not because we told people to get in line — because they couldn't not.

Case film

Experience created in partnership with Bully!.

What I did

  • Partnered with Bully! Entertainment to design and deliver Face the Pitch — a live HoloLens 2 experience at Comerica Park that put volumetric capture and mixed reality inside a real baseball moment, not a demo room.
  • Removed friction by design: no controllers, tutorials, or instructions — so the technology could recede and the impulse to swing could surface.
  • Anchored the activation in Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit context: credibility, energy, and a crowd that would stress-test whether the experience actually pulled people in.

Outcomes

  • Nearly every guest stepped up and swung — behavioral proof that the MR layer had become invisible enough to feel natural.
  • Lines ran for hours without a scripted queue; demand came from the experience itself, not from funneling or signage.

How it worked

The principle was simple to say and hard to execute: if people are thinking about the headset, you've already failed. Bully! and Microsoft built toward disappearance — stadium, story, and capture aligned so the only thing left to do was play. The case film above is the teaser for that activation.