This event and my post were sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association.
I had the awesome opportunity to host an event here in Salt Lake City last week with Techlicious, Traveling Mom and the Consumer Technology Association. The event location was sponsored by the Hilton Salt Lake City Center. This hotel was gorgeous! A couple of quick things I wanted to mention about the technology inside this Hilton. First, there are outlets in most of the furniture in the lobby, which is genius. Everyone is always concerned about battery life on their devices, especially when traveling! I love that the Hilton put enough thought into the needs of it’s guests! They also have a large monitor right in the lobby with flights out of Salt Lake Airport, so you can check and see if your flight is delayed or on time before you even get there! Another little touch that I thought was incredibly smart! They also have keyless entry, which means you can check in from your phone and then use your phone as your key at your room! You would never have to stop at the front desk again!
Now, lets get to what you REALLY want to talk about though, and that is the tech featured by the CTA. You may know them from a little expo they put on every year with hundreds of thousands of their closest friends every January in Las Vegas… called CES. First they talked about the 5 hot trends in tech right now (2016). I definitely agree with them here!
- 4k Ultra HD ecosystems (TV, streaming devices, etc)
- Wearables (this continues to gain momentum every year I go to CES)
- Smart Home (I saw a LOT of this last year, and expect to see much more this year)
- Drones (I DEFINITELY saw a TON of these at CES last year, it was like someone threw up drones all over the showroom!)
- Virtual Reality (I expect to see a lot of this coming up AND a lot of augmented reality, which I think will catch on sooner than full VR)
Taking these trends into consideration, they brought several items to showcase to the guests of the event. The biggest hit of the event was the bag by Knomo (the name stands for Knowledge and Mobility). The bag called the Elektronista has compartments for ALL of your tech gadgets, and even comes with a portable charger.
I am not exaggerating when I say the folks in attendance were swooning over this cute and super functional bag! This would be the perfect travel companion, as you have all your important technology right at your fingertips, but you can still use it for a night on the town! Less luggage = happy traveler.
Also along the lines of wearables they featured the Misfit Ray. Unfortunately this just missed my wearable round up! A couple of things I liked about the Ray is first there are several wearing options. I really hate wearing things on my wrists, and this is a great option. You can purchase the necklace attachment so you can wear it as a cute necklace or you can purchase different bands to wear it on your wrist.
The Misfit Ray uses replaceable batteries that last about 6 months, which is excellent for a wearable that can track your sleep. It’s also a great tracker for when you are traveling, since you wouldn’t need to take a separate charger, and you wouldn’t be concerned that it runs out of batteries right in the middle of Disneyland, and all those steps you have taken are WASTED! It has a silent alarm feature, and can notify you of text messages. The only main downside is that it does not have a display, so you can’t know what your current steps are or what the text message says unless you pull out your phone.
We also featured a good stocking stuffer, some wireless headphones. This is a great option to get folks in your life especially with the trend towards removing headphone jacks from phones. We featured some really great wireless headphones from JVC. Sound quality is really great, and they are comfortable in the ear. Plus they come in lots of fun colors! Headphones are one of the most important things to bring with you on a trip, so you don’t disturb other passengers (even if those passengers are your kids!)
Moving on to the smart home side of things… we were able to check out the Philips Hue Lightbulbs, which are able to be controlled via an app on your phone, and can also have different lighting schemes based on the time of day. For example, when it’s morning you want nice bright blue tinted light to help you wake up and go about your day. In the evening it helps your body calm down and start getting ready for sleep if you use a warmer light. You can have your lights do this automatically! You can use these to set up a lighting scheme for when you are out of town (or even just manually turn your lights on from your phone when you are out of town at random times so it LOOKS like you are home)
We also featured a couple products from Honeywell and Alarm.com. One was a smart thermostat (which I already talked about), but we also featured a leak detector! For someone who had a geyser at my house this last spring once the pipes thawed out, I can tell you that this would have been a much better way to find out!
The last category we featured was photography. There are some great options for printing photos on the go now with the HP Sprocket and the instax mini 8 from Fujifilm.
These mini pictures are a great way to decorate your laptop (one of my favorite past times), your locker, or your dorm room! We share so many photos on social media, sometimes it’s nice to be able to have something physical to hand to a friend. You can make your vacation super memorable by attaching a photo you took to a postcard and send that to a friend!
Our event featured some really great technology, and the CTA entertained us by showing us the top 5 wants for Christmas in 1996
- Desktop Computer
- 27″ TV or bigger (I don’t even think the TV I use in my garage is that small!)
- An “Internet Appliance” (kinda supperrrrr first gen smartphones before they were actually phones)
- Camcorder
- VCR
Oh my have times changed!
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