Wow, it’s already been a year*?
When I walked out of the Glass Bascecamp in San Francisco a year ago with Glass on my face, I had no inkling how much my life would change. Over the past year, a ton of interesting things have happened due to being a Glass owner. From XE 6 to XE 19.1 across multiple models, it has been a very amusing road. While mostly of my experiences with Glass are positive, there were a few negative ones (which seems to be a common trend among explorers). Perhaps the most interesting part of being an Explorer is watching how Glass has changed in public perception throughout the past year.
The biggest highlight of this past year would (obviously?) be my wedding to my lovely wife Jules. As part of the wedding, I managed to convince both her and our Rabbi to wear Glass during our vows and exchanging of rings. This, combined with quick jump cuts of my travel to and from the wedding, allowed me to create a very neat video. This video ended up being part of a Google/Stanford research project (which also meant I got to be interviewed about Glass).
That wasn’t the only time I had the privilege of speaking about Glass. Thanks to meeting the (infamous) Dave Martinez back at the TreyHawk Walk (who I captured winning a pair of Glass), I spoke to a group about my experiences with Glass at the Eventbrite HQ in San Francisco. In addition to speaking at Eventbrite, I was invited to speak to a local community college class in San Jose.
Speaking in public wasn’t the only type of evangelism that I ended up doing for Glass. I’m a daily wearer of Glass, so I was often stopped in public (in all sorts of places) and asked about Glass. When I attended conferences with Glass, our booth was often mobbed with curious people. I really enjoy talking about Glass with others, so it has been a pleasant experience so far. Luckily, I haven’t experienced too many negative reactions surrounding Glass but it does directly relate to how I think Google missed the mark with the Explorer Program [mainly because of its length].
Simply put, they have ridden the hype cycle too long. Glass has been incredibly hard for people to check out in person, which means they end up being easily swayed by the media’s view of Glass which isn’t exactly positive. Combined with a massive NSA spying scandal and several very public incidents involved various Glass users, Google had to endure a pretty bad rash of bad press. Since we are the public face of Glass, we often bear the brunt of the backlash in person. For many, we are the first time they see Glass, so it can be a person by person grassroots effort to change people’s minds.
Add the fact there isn’t a public launch date, the closed alpha/beta is now open for anyone in the US/UK, and the announcement/ release of Android Wear, you have plenty of Explorers wondering what the future of Glass will be. I still firmly believe there are great uses for a device that has changed the interaction paradigm with the internet. I can’t wait (still) to see what the future brings.
(Big shoutout to Lisa Donchak [above] who has been an awesome resource during my journey so far. She has answered plenty of my questions over the year and even helped sway me to get Glass in the first place!)
*yes, it’s been a 53 weeks since I picked them up.
