"Glazed Conference - The Dawn of the Wearable Economy (London 2014)"
One of the silent issues that will be thrust upon the Wearable World is the cost and depth of data needs. This is the one thing that could literally strangle the ecosystem. Akamai today is the backbone of the Web. Will they be able to, and are they willing to step up to the challenge? John Dillon their head of EMEA marketing will help us understand and prepare to subvert the impending data apocalypse.
"If you look at the evolution of the Web, when it first started out and I am actually unfortunately old enough to remember the World-Wide-Web, which was as people started to increase the page load by putting images onto their websites, pages were taking a while to load and it was very frustrating. And that’s kind of why Akamai came into existence. So that’s the first problem the company set about solving. And then the next major disruption was online video. People started to watch video online and the Web was never designed for watching videos. So another transformation had to happen to actually make it possible for the likes of the BBC to distribute catch-up TV services and on-demand video services. So that was the next evolution of the Web. And now when you think about wearables, I think we are only scratching the surface and are really understanding how these devices and how the applications that are running on these devices are going to inter-operate and interact. It’s a different kind of traffic."
John Dillon, EMEA Marketing, Akamai
John Dillon is responsible for all aspects of marketing strategy and execution for Akamai in EMEA. Previously he held the position of Vice President of Marketing for Alcatel Lucent’s Software and Services business. During this time, he was also executive owner of the company's digital strategy and led their innovation program. Dillon joined Alcatel-Lucent via the acquisition of Velocix, a specialist provider of digital content delivery solutions, where he served as Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to this, Dillon held a number of senior marketing roles at leading tech firs including SurfControl, webMethods, Volantis, Extricity, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. In 2009, Dillon was listed in Streaming Media Magazine's top 10 most influential, innovative and important people in the European online video industry. You can follow John on Twitter at @johnedillon
"One of the biggest reasons why people should care about it is the coming data apocalypse. If the Apple watch will go scale on the network, you will see millions and millions of these devices out there working in conjunction with the phone, so all of sudden you will get a double network load. If wearable startups start connecting directly to the network, you have got twenty, thirty, forty, fifty million smartwatches connected to the network, things will get really serious, really fast. It’s a compounding problem."
Redg Snodgrass, Co-Founder and CEO, Wearable World
Redg Snodgrass is a hybrid entrepreneur / corporate executive who understands how big companies can partner with and strategically leverage innovative startups. He has been a lean mean branding positioning junky, beating competitors with larger resources and deeper experience most of his career. Unlike most corporate mavericks he's maintained the respect of his colleagues, and works to raise the bar so that everyone shares in the victory, and gets equal praise.
He was on the founding team of SKOUT. Helping to create the first social mobile application for iPhone that was both profitable, and viral. He left as the company accomplished hitting its 2.5 million user mark and goal of sustainable profitability.
He then headed Innovation for Alcatel-Lucent / BellLabs creating the first ever Open API Service across multiple global carriers. Working with Tier one carriers like SFR, French Telecom, ATT, VzW, Sprint and Tmobile.
He eventually went to head the Alcatel-Lucent / BellLabs Open Innovation Unit helping over 400 startups connect with top carriers globally generating actual real world deployments benefiting both and generating tens of millions in revenue. This allowed him to connect with and develop relationships many of the top C-level telecom executives in nearly every continent around the world. He went on to found The Taploid a lauded innovative startup leveraging Facebook's Open Graph.
Currently Redg and Team are the Principle's at Wearable World, Inc. An incubator focused on Wearable Technologies based out of the Silicon Valley. He also sits on the board of several startups managing their Go To Market strategies. You can follow Redg on Twitter at @redgsnodgrass.