Coffee & Craic
Technology
Hey all,
Hope you’re having a lovely week.
We’ve had a great start to ours, with a trip to London to visit The Wearable Tech Show 2016. It was myself, Sam and Lee who got the opportunity to go down. So it was a very early rise and a late finish, but all totally worth it!
It was so interesting being immersed in the world of wearable tech for a day. There was so many intriguing and mind blowing products that were being exhibited.
From awesome next-level glasses with built in cameras that do all the things a go-pro can and can’t. To fabrics that measure your heart rate, your activity level, your calories burned and everything else you can imagine.
It was really insane to see, it was like a vision into what our future will look like. We heard some amazing talks on the future of sharing cities and how it will impact us for the better and some of the problems we may face. How everything will eventually become so interconnected through the internet of things, that our fridge will probably know we’re thirsty for a drink before we even do. It was all very Fifth Element, I’d temporarily dyed my hair orange too, so I was really channeling my inner LeeLoo.
There was virtual reality chat rooms with VTime, another awesome display of VR gaming from our friends at Draw & Code, too. I’ve had a go of their VR are before, it’s AMAZING. Definitely something you’ll have to get used to though, I swear it gave me vertigo at some points. Now I’m a total ‘no phones at the table’ bore, because sometimes I hate how distant humans connecting with one another is becoming. However, it was so interesting to see how differently we will be communicating in the future and how many different areas of our lives this will affect.
Wearable tech and VR is something that may affect the regular consumer like you and I, a little later in life. However, there are areas such as medicine, gas and water and other industries that it will reach first, who it will be nothing but a blessing to.
For someone who’s not overly techy, it gave me a really educational insight into the future of wearable tech and how much of a huge impact it’s going to have on our lives.
We met so many lovely people with so many wonderful inventions. Here’s a few snaps from our day…
If you have any snaps of your time at The Wearable Tech Show, tweet me them @JUXDITMel
See ya!
In light of International Women’s Day, I wanted to do a Tech blog, focused around the importance of STEM skills in women and young girls.
After seeing many inspirational posts and our time at the Women In Business Awards, I’ve been thinking a lot more about STEM. For those of you who don’t know, it’s not what you may think, you know, the main body or stalk of a plant or shrub, typically rising above ground but occasionally subterranean.
It stands for:
S - Science
T - Technology
E - Engineering
M - Mathematics
After collecting Annie’s award, I was asked to do an interview on her behalf. After being asked a few initial questions, I was asked why I thought events like this are important. Apart from obviously women’s growing role in the business world, I said it shows how important STEM skills are, so that we can continue to even out the balance of the sexes in the workplace.
When I started on about STEM, I saw the guy’s expression shift from politely jovial to moderately confused. I think he thought I was extremely passionate about young girls getting into the art of pruning plants. So that was hilarious to watch.
HOWEVER, it shows that not a lot of people understand what it is and the importance of it. Statistically, women make up just 12% of the STEM workforce. There’s a really interesting document here, by Wise Campaign which documents this and some of the statistics are shocking.
As a girl who is SHOCKING at maths and has never had no real interest in it, it’s amazing to see all sorts of stuff for young girls ‘disrupting the pink aisle’. This is part of the reason why Cassie & I started this blog. We found a never ending amount of blogs that were dedicated to making you look like a Kardashian, but a severe lack in good blogs, aimed at a female audience about technology and the like.
In our roles at JUXDIT, we’re constantly keeping up to date with what’s going on in the world of Technology, but it’s SO tiresome coming across more and more blogs that are jargon with a side order of jargon. GIVE US A BREAK. WE’RE TRYING. IT DOESN’T COME NATURALLY.
Anyway, small rant aside, here are some crowdfunded STEM related products that I WISH we would have had as young girls, instead of an endless amount of Tiny Tears and Baby Borns. I don’t even like babies as a grown adult, never mind a child. The boys aisle in Toy’r’Us was always so much better. I digress.
Here goes:
Goldie Blox
SamLABS
Build & Imagine
https://www.buildandimagine.com/
Here’s hoping we’ll move onwards and upwards with more amazing products like these!
See ya!
Love,
Mel
Happy Monday everyone!
So after spending Friday afternoon putting up some of my posts on here and managing to post tiny ‘Craic’s on every effing page, it’s only affirmed my belief that I’m crap at technology.
BUT I won’t let it stop me, I will thrust myself forth into the technological era.
One thing that will definitely help matters, is a team trip to The Wearable Tech Show 2016. We’re super excited and have had our tickets booked for over a year! Plus a trip to London is always fun.
There’s some really amazing speakers and some great exhibitors, so we’re excited to explore and meet some new people and their products. Naturally, I’ve searched through the exhibitor list to see who has and hasn’t crowdfunded and here’s one I can’t wait to catch up with:
Chipolo, an amazing little tracking device, that god knows I definitely need. These guys are from Slovenia, which we’re seeing quite a few cool crowdfunded products come from!
Then, there’s our local Liverpool lot, Draw & Code. These guys are pretty awesome, and if you’re going, I’d highly recommend you go and pay them a visit!
These guys - Hoolio, simply because as you know I’m a bit of a health and fitness lover, so fitness related tech is definitely something I can get on board with!
I could go on and on and on, but I won’t, because I can’t wait to tell you all about it after we’ve been. I will be sure to take plenty of photos and hopefully get less lost than when Cassie and I went together. I managed to turn a walk that should have taken us 10 minutes, into over an hour. All because I had my Google Maps set to car instead of walk. Like I said, tech is not my forte.
Hopefully I’ll be a changed woman after the Wearable Tech Show. May the force be with me!
Hey guys and dolls.
This part of our blog is going to be all things terrifically technological, incase you couldn’t already guess by the title.
We’re not going to lie, part of the reason that we started this blog, was that we were getting lost in a sea of tech blogs that were just too detailed and were going over our heads. Not because we didn’t understand it all, just because we don’t really care about what size processor it has or the intricate coding that’s gone into it, we just want to know how why we need it in our lives. Which is a bit selfish, but hey ho.
So, whether it’s a software, hardware or a new invention entirely, we’ll be reviewing them all through the eyes of two twenty odd year olds, who don’t have a lot of time on their hands to be faffing about with reprogramming their lives to fit their new gadget in.
Also, we’re not afraid to admit that we can just about manage the storage on our iphones sometimes. It won’t all be about the latest crowdfunded gadget, we’re also big on backing all the girls in tech. We’re somewhat underrepresented, so we’re massive fans of anything and everything that promotes STEM skills in young and old alike, especially females.
We’ll have guest bloggers and lots of wonderful other stuff for you guys to cast your eyes over. If you’re interested in doing a piece or you just want to say hello, please do! We love ‘the chats’ as Cassie would say.
Mel & Cass
xo