March 13–16 saw Australia’s biggest annual pharmacy conference, APP, held on Queensland’s Gold Coast.
The more time I spend with Glass, the more convinced I become that it will have a transformative impact on the way healthcare is delivered. So, I was super excited to take it along to introduce it to the other 4000 delegates, none of whom had previously had the opportunity to see Glass in real life.
My husband Stuart was fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to join me as an Explorer when we were in New York earlier this year, but has left much of the ‘exploring’ to date to me. We knew the interest at the conference was going to be intense, so he packed his Glass too. While I was keen to hear the delegates’ views, I was also really interested to see how this concentrated exposure to Glass would impact on him.
We walked in the door on Thursday morning as the crowd of delegates was building, and straight away the interest commenced. I’d been ‘pre-marketing’ on Twitter that I was bringing Glass, and as expected there, were a few tech aficionados lying in wait, desperate for a go!
I was a speaker myself on the first morning, but unfortunately as I had to let people know that,with the need for the topic to be submitted and approved by September last year to meet the Continuing Professional Development credit approval process, sadly it was not going to be about Glass. I did promise that if we got through the material with enough time to spare I would give the audience a quick Glass 101, which we were able to do – including taking a pic of them from the stage while illustrating the voice command functionality!
With my speaking duties wrapped up, I was able to settle in and enjoy listening to others present, with Glass providing a great way of snapping pics of the speakers and alerting me to the hot Twitter posts as I tweeted my way through the sessions.
Glass definitely made for much slower progress through the trade display than at prior conferences, as everyone wanted to stop and talk about it, and were thrilled to find that we were also happy for them to try it out.
Glass generated a huge amount of interest, to the point that I was asked to record a video interview with Pharmacy News to update the broader industry in addition to the conference delegates in attendance.
The response was overwhelmingly positive with pharmacists able to quickly see the healthcare applications and broader industry-based attendees also readily able to identify uses in their own fields of expertise.
I love the photo below because it encapsulates the response people had to their first Glass experience!
(And yes, four days of concentrated Glass wearing and an untold number of demonstrations saw Stuart join me as a fully engaged Explorer too!)
Very cool ideas on Medically wearable tech apps with Glass.
Thanks John