As I sit here in my UBC student residence suite, the sun has set behind a beautiful clouded ocean horizon. All is black now except for all the lights from street lamps, the campus clock, and lighted rooms from other buildings nearby. Tomorrow I pack up my belongings, get in the car and say goodbye to this gorgeous vista. After not seeing the ocean for so many years, I am finding the prospect of leaving Vancouver to be bitter-sweet. On the one hand, I will not miss the nightly adventure that was getting “home” via the city transit and/or sky train system. I won’t miss the asphalt jungle. Nor will I miss the crazy rush-hour traffic. No, I will miss the ocean the most, followed quickly by the cooler summer temperatures, the morning fog over the ocean as I approached the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre, and the evening sunsets over the water.
I finally drove past the Olympic Torch, just a half block up from the Centre. I didn’t realize it was so close or I would have walked over to view it.
What brought me to Vancouver after 20 years of being away? I finally got to attend, rather, take part in my first ever major international trade show! I was one of the people to man an exhibit on the exhibition floor of Siggraph Vancouver 2014, the 41st Siggraph Convention. I had never heard of this convention before, although I’d heard of other trade shows that I’d have loved to attend in years past, but couldn’t. The days were exhausting. Being on my feet introducing countless attendees, other exhibitors, the media, and potential competitors what we were doing with Wear Geared Inc and Epson’s Moverio Smartglasses had both it’s fun moments, repetitive moments, dry/sore throat moments, and long hours! As much as I don’t like my photo being taken, I’m pretty sure I ended up on more than one digital camera, camcorder, and gopro being carried about by various people, reporters and graphical tech enthusiasts.
The feedback received from those I, the CEO/President of the new startup, and our assistant interacted with, will prove invaluable moving forward with bringing interactive augmented reality experiences to museums, theme parks, zoos, aquariums, and more. It was fun repeatedly poking our poor virtual dinosaur to make him roar at every guest that came by the booth. It was fun to see how many coffee-bean-sized asteroids guests could shoot out of the vortex. We met other AR developers, visited with a Google employee from the Google Glass division, learned about ways others are taking Epson’s Moverio Smartglasses into industrial applications, the investigative crime scene, physical exercise and more.
I didn’t get a chance to wander the booths much, but I was encouraged by Weargeared to go visit one booth that could conceivably be of immense interest as we further develop the Weargeared solution.
As with all my clients to date, Weargeared is not the cat’s meow to answer all this tech’s financial household needs, but Weargeared.com is proving to be one company that has the potential to change things up in the future of exhibited content whether it’s at a museum, an aquarium, a zoo, or some other venue such as the German concentration camps.
The prospects of what could develop with this venture are amazing. At this point I am being contracted via my own company, FACT Computer Services, to meet the technical needs of the startup. But who knows where this could go in the future.
I am tired. Exhausted is probably the better word for it. But after a nice dinner to cap off the week, and coming back to my suite to see such a gorgeous sunset on the water tonight, I am already starting to unwind and relax. It was an exhausting, but exciting week. Praying now for God’s wisdom and leading moving forward.
You can read the official press release here: http://news.epson.com/news/wear-geared-inc-developing-museum-glasses-on-epson-moverio-smart-glasses