Perspectives from #CES2016 & The 2016 Awards Press Luncheon

Every early January, those in the tech industry head to Las Vegas to embark on a week long journey (well for a few of us its a week) to attend events, conferences, exhibits, meetings, parties, and more at CES. Late last year the CEA rebranded as CTA, the Consumer Technology Association and are the producers of CES or the Consumer Electronics Show.
Our week kicked off with the AT&T Developers Summit, an event that is great for those developing applications in the IoT (more specifically connected home, smart cities, digital health, and even sustainable solutions). Application developers are not only there to learn about technology trends, get access to training, and hear from a wealth of AT&T partners/sponsors in the mobile/IoT market, but they can also compete in the Hackathon. Congratulations to @KineticCare for winning the 2016 Hackathon,  providing a solution to track elders through #IoT #wearables to increase health & responsiveness (urgent care) using M2X, Harmon APIs, Qualcomm (using @ArrowGlobal DragonBoard 410c on @Qualcomm snapdragon).

As part of the AT&T Developer conference, we were invited to an analyst dinner. The Compass Intelligence team were able to sit and have dinner with John Donovan and Mobeen Khan of AT&T, where we discussed the future of technology, our predictions, and how AT&T was playing a role in each of those predictions. Interesting conversation, great dinner, and awesome company!
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A few on my team were also able to attend a number of press conferences, meetings, and technology events including Pepcom Digital Experience and ShowStoppers 2016. These last two events mentioned occurred days before the show floor opened at CES, and were big venues for vendors to showcase their products. The overall theme at these events included products focused on the connected home, connected health, wearables/fitness, wireless/broadband equipment, consumer personal gadgets, and a whole host of IoT-based products for work, life, and play. If you rewind a few years back, it is amazing to see so many “connected” products and the use of sensors, analytics, the use of our smartphones to control so many “things,” and automation to enhance our daily lives. One of the strangest areas where “connected” hit the market at CES was around hair growth or regrowth, don’t ask but that one made me laugh and I hope it works!  In addition, an area where sensor technology presents a winning use case, is the area of child safety. There was a cool product by Thorley Industries (4mom) that essentially provided self-installing car seats, since we all know we do not properly put them into our cars correctly. Another personal product that I am wanting to get for my home is by SureCall, EZ 4G Cell Phone Signal Booster. This device is cool because you do not have to mount the antennas to your roof and of course I am all about PLUG and PLAY.
Here is a great website that sums up other cool gadgets announced and displayed at CES2016 – http://graphics.wsj.com/image-grid/ces-2016-top-gadgets/

Between all the meetings, events, press launches, and social gatherings, Compass Intelligence also held its annual awards program and press luncheon, sponsored by Dell, ORBCOMM, Sierra Wireless, HYLA Mobile, and Cradlepoint. We were honored to have ORBCOMM’s Christian Allred provide the keynote, and also were joined by Biju Nair of HYLA Mobile and Jeff Hagins of SmartThings where they delivered interactive fireside chats (sans fireside). Below are links to our press release, pictures, and more. Videos will be posted soon as well. I hope you enjoyed CES as much as we did! Until next year, let’s bring all of these connected products into an organized and accessible, and easily managed way.

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2016 Event Photos – To view the pictures from our 2016 Compass Intelligence Awards at International CES, click here.
2016 RECIPIENTS – To view the list of 2016 Winners of the Compass Intelligence Awards, click here.