This year there were some big categories with a lot of different vendors, as well as some outliers. The main hall was filled with car companies. Seems odd, but considering all the electronics that go into automobiles now, it makes more sense. And the auto makers showed us the future in the form of self-driving cars.
Another huge category was 3D printing. There were many booths with different takes on this new tech. I even had my head scanned and printed by MCor, a company that is one of the more affordable makers. Few companies actually know what people will do with a 3D printer, but they believe that soon they'll be as common as microwaves.
Wearable tech was another hot topic. From fitness trackers, to health scanners and even a "Fitbit" for dogs, there were many applications. One idea I really liked was the wearable tracker for your child. It solves the "OMG, where's my kid?" either when they are down the block, at school, or that horrible moment when you lose them in the grocery store. I checked out one from Trax. The cool thing was how if you held your phone up and looked through your camera (via their app), you could scan around and it would point you to your child via augmented reality.
A really big thing was from Fuhu, the makers of Nabi. They had a new take on the "card table", where basically the entire table is an interactive touch screen tablet. The Monopoly game pictured is actually a touch screen. They have a lot of other cool products, a "GoPro" for kids that easy to use, kid-friendly traditionally sized tablets and more.
And you never know who you are going to run into at these things and I was delighted to meet the Property Brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott. I'm a big fan of their show and it was fun to goof around with them at the Scripps/HGTV booth. Not sure how "techy" they are, but they were every bit as nice as they seem.
The thing that most clearly showed my future was in the Panasonic booth where I got a haircut. They went a little shorter than usual, and now I know what I'll look like in the not-so-distant future when I'm completely bald.
