Tech in Motion: Silicon Valley was so excited to be able to hold our event with Pebble at the beautiful SP2 Bar and Restaurant in San Pedro Square, San Jose.
SP2 recently opened and has been a great hit in the Silicon Valley, offering quality food and drink.
Pebble is a customization smart watch that puts critical apps and notifications on your wrist, giving you immediate access to what's most important. You are able to see who is calling, and you can get the most important emails and texts without ever having to pull out your phone. Pebble had the most successful crowd sourcing start through Kickstarter, gaining $10,266,844 with 68,928 backers.
We started off our night with Omar Younis, Pebble's Lead Designer, who has been designing user experiences for over a decade. Omar taught himself web design at the age of 14 and was introduced to designing UI for phones while working at Sprint in Kansas City. From the core UI of ancient smartphones, to the Nook Color eReader from B&N, Omar has designed for a wide-range of mobile platforms and devices - most recently helping to define the next wave of mobile computing at Pebble.
Omar’s Presentation focused on what's important. He described it as “The Urgent” vs. “The Noise”. The Noise, he explained, are all of the notifications our phone produces, such as unimportant text messages, gaming updates, and other random pings that halted your day. The Urgent were those important text messages and important emails. These are the notifications you want to receive.
Thomas Sarlandie grew up in France with a passion for computers and the Internet. In Europe, Thomas co-founded and was CTO of Backelite, a French leading mobile development agency. Thomas moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2012 and a few months later joined Pebble as Developer Evangelist to define the future of wearable computing!
Thomas’s presentation included the specs of the Pebble Smartwatch. He explained what makes the watch tick. Thomas stressed the importance of battery life, designable apps through SDK, and why the Pebble’s watch face isn’t in color.
Our final presenter for the night, Myriam Joire was born wearing combat boots and holding a keyboard, and moments later she picked up a soldering iron. She's been stomping, typing and hacking ever since. After spending years being a code-monkey in the video game industry, she joined Engadget as Senior Mobile Editor. She recently joined Pebble as the Product Evangelist.
Myriam took us through the history and future of wearable devices, showing the first mobile phone, the first wrist watch, and what is to come with flexible screens and batteries. Myriam explained Pebble’s place within this line up and how they are working to improve Pebble in the future.
It was wonderful to be able to hear from such an interesting an innovative company! If you would like to find out information about our future events, please join us here