25 Things I Learned At Glazed Conference This Week

WAI - Oct 24 - Here are the top things I learned at Wearable World's Glazed Conference in London this week.

1. Pebble isn't worried about Apple iWatch. Pebble will occupy the low-end. In Sams Club for $95
2. Successful wearable entrepreneurs are empathetic and oriented towards serving humanity.
3. The best wearables truly extend basic human capability.
4. Google as a company is not emotionally empathetic which is why they've had a problem with Glass.
5. Jobs didn't want apps on the phone and didn't like mobile video. He wasn't right about everything.
6. Wearables – is it merely a transition industry towards embedables/sub-cutanous computers?
7. Apple will spend 100x more than all the other wearable companies combined in their first year
8. Shenzhen is an awesome area for prototyping and manufacturing!
9. In Shenzhen many products are started with $25k capital and then they start their pre-selling phase 6 to 12 months before their crowdfunding and manufacture. Go to Shenzhen early.
10. Using the phone while wearing a Skully helmet is ok.  Its been shown that using the phone while riding actually activates the brain more so riders are more aware of their surroundings.
11. The best wearable tech will be invisible wearable tech. Unseen.
12. Intel is building the Edison platform to help smaller wearables innovators. Right now its good for lite IoT and larger wearables. Intel is developing more SoCs for smaller products.
13. You should realise and consider the emotional value of wearables! i.e. women hearing the heartbeat of their baby using Bellabeat.
14. See this “make it wearable” Intel program!
15. The fashion industry stands at $3.7 trillion USD a year and is growing 5% a year! Wearables need to be fashionable.
16. Most people don't know that Nest makes their money from selling power data to power companies.
17. We need to relieve people from information overload, not add to it. Information nausea! We need to save people time.
18. Swiss watch manufacturers are safe. Noone is occupying the digital high end space.  Digital watches will suffer from rapid obsolescense. They're not something that will be handed down in family.
19. To design a great wearable consider 'would you go on a date with that wearable?'
20. Wearables are 'living services' and need to have some of the qualities of good relationships.
21. It's so important to stick prototypes onto people and observe how they use them.
22. The Minority Report computer interface will never happen. Although its inventor might disagree (see TED video from 7 mins). Tom Cruise got tired holding arms up operating it. It's exhausting. Same with Leap Motion.
23. Because of information overload we've become a different kind of human. We're becoming more uninteresting and uninterested. We're hooked on the dopamine response to new information. There's an atrophy of the mind-body connection. We're in trouble. There's a loss of deep focus and creative thought.
24. We've been dematerializing for the last few years. Losing CD's for mp3's, downloading things, consolidating devices. And yet here we are introducing more devices in the form of a multitude of wearables. The trend is reversing.
25. The London College of Fashion has prototyping and manufacturing rooms waiting for more creators.