Kinduct’s CES Reflections

Last week, a group of Kinduct staff traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), one of the world’s largest showcases of technological innovation. These are the CES reflections and observations from Kinduct’s Innovation Manager, Kevin Forbes.

First and foremost (and this might be glaringly obvious to some), CES is huge. Spread across 11 venues, the show attracted close to 200,000 people. Judging by the networking and conversations happening in the boarding line for my flight from Toronto to Las Vegas, I would estimate that almost everyone on the plane was attending, which was the first indication to me of the magnitude of the event.

I had previously been to Vegas a handful of times, so I was well aware of the size of the Strip and how hotels that appear to be side-by-side could, in reality, be a 15-20 minute walk. Therefore it was no surprise that I averaged 14 kms of walking each day, including 17 kms on the first day!

Even with all this walking around, most of our time was spent at the “Tech West” (Sands/Venetian) and “Tech North” (Aria) spaces. In fact, we never made it to “Tech East,” which is primarily set in the Las Vegas Convention Centre, and home to some of the larger tech giants and most of the media attention. Unfortunately, that meant I missed out on seeing the pizza-making robot and Samsung’s massive 292-inch television.

With that said, a few interesting items stuck out from what I did see, including an AR-enhanced boxing trainer called BotBoxer, and DNANudge, a smart band that scans the barcodes of food packaging, compares that information to your DNA profile, and then provides nutritional recommendations based on its findings. It was also great to see integration partners InBody (who have a new consumer product available) as well as FirstBeat, who were able to directly answer a question that came up back at the office in Halifax around how the Quick Recovery Test is calculated.

Elsewhere, Keurig was demonstrating their new DrinkWorks product which creates cocktails out of pods. As one of the people at the booth said: “Keurig in the morning! Keurig at night!” Another trend I noticed was technologies focused on accessibility, from smart hearing aids to fall prevention devices.

However, much of our time was spent sitting down with key partners who were also attending the show. From grabbing coffee with Gatorade to having breakfast with Hawkin Dynamics, as well as participating in the Sports Innovation Lab’s Leadership Board meetings, CES provided the setting and inspiration to talk about the future and how we can work together for success.

In a word, CES was overwhelming, but in the most positive way possible. And no big deal, but I’m pretty sure I’m the new WWE Champion!

For more of Kevin’s thoughts on the tech and innovation, follow him on Twitter. And be sure to check out more content from our blog here!