WEARABLE.AI INTERVIEW - May 2 - I've known Redg since his days at Skout.com, so I was thrilled to hear that he'd gone on to start Wearable World. It made perfect sense to invite Redg to be our very first interview on Wearable.ai. - Mark Brooks
What's your background?
I helped launch Skout and turn it into one of the most popular dating app at that time. I was also VP of Innovation at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs for several years, where I worked with start-ups and large corporations to help them understand where mobile was going.
I understand you've got an incubator, a conference and a great content on your media. Tell us how they fit together.
Glazed Conference is the flagship event for us. We bring in all of the different players together to make entrepreneurs and corporate executives successful in the wearables space. We launched media company, Wearable World News, to provide a really good content to understand where the initiative was going. We also have Wearable Wednesdays, which is a local meet up on Wednesdays in different cities around the world.
You're at the center of the nexus, but geographically where would you say the nexus is?
Toronto and Vancouver have a lot of great start-ups. Of course Japan has been the leader in microelectronics for years. France and Finland has a ton of brilliant hardware/software engineers. However, all roads still lead back to the Valley where all of the investments come from.
Where's the hottest area now?
Applications that work on smart watches. We're still too early to do anything on the glass. There is also a unique opportunity in the fashion area. I would focus on smart clothing. The other need in the industry are services such as payment and security identity services.
Where do you see the biggest challenges and hurdles at this stage?
The speed of the market. We have all of the expectation without the unified path to market in the wearable tech space. We'll have 40 smart watches soon and of those 40 smart watches, they'll each have different things.
And how is your group helping?
We write about it, we make that a focal point at the conferences. We're looking at greater standards across the web.
What can we expect from Glazed conference in June?
Bigger and better. Our last conference in October attracted over a hundred press people of major publications, all major VC's that are investing in this space and all the major corporate dev teams. We're expecting over 2,000 people this year.
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