Technology & Gadget Expo 2016, Melbourne MEC 26 June 2016
"Australia’s first consumer Technology & Gadget Expo" - they boasted - " will be showcasing the best and most innovative new products on the market today and what's to come"... so quite why did the organisers shepherd us towards an electric toothbrush stand on entry? Now just to be clear, this wasn't some kind of new-fangled high-tech infrared dental cleaning device, it's a brand of toothbrush that has been around for at least 10 years. Perhaps the organisers were trying to manage expectations.
Of course I should have already known: it was barely 11am and people were streaming away from the venue (opening time 10am) clutching their Telstra branded goodie bags. The organisers seemed to have underestimated the amount of people willing to accept an advanced purchase shafting by Ticketek (their various fees added almost $5 to the $25 ticket price) which resulted in a very long queue to buy face value tickets outside the venue, followed by another very long queue to get into the venue.
The exhibition area itself was disappointingly small, sandwiched between a bridal exhibition on one side and a careers fair on the other. I guess I had expected the entire hall. Broadly speaking this show seemed to be about VR and drones, with some other bizarre stuff thrown in. The VR consisted of a few exhibitors with HTC Vive setups - not particularly exciting. As for giving it a go, forget it! The queues were ridiculous (these queues snaked around and congested the venue). Telstra had a nice but dim idea of allowing people to book a slot by text, consequently every single slot (except oddly 4.45pm) was taken for the entire day. You can only speculate how many no-shows they had: I'd bet my bottom dollar no one that booked at 11am was still in the expo more than a couple of hours later - there simply wasn't enough to do.
To left they had a demonstration area with a Banjo electric skateboard which was being demoed (presumably) by a member of the public. Unfortunately the area wasn't wide enough for the turning circle of the board (or at least the turning circle this particular punter required) so he had to keep getting off at the corners to manually heave the board round to point in the correct direction. It was a depressingly lame spectacle and witnessing it extinguished any desire for a Banjo Board.
To the right there was a caged drone area, again too small, but thanks to some extremely skilled piloting this was a good watch. For me at least this was the only redeeming feature of the expo. Nearby drone stands abounded, the sheer amount and variety was incredible. It's clear that swooping magpies will soon be the least of our aerial concerns.
In between there was a weird collection of other stuff including disturbing methods of electronically tagging and tracking your kids. For some reason this invasive tech is always aimed at children, presumably because any adult application would be considered unacceptable not to say illegal.
I was out the exit in about 25 minutes, it would have been sooner but the VR queues impeded my escape. If this exhibition is going to return next year they are going to have to do a lot better.
