A San Leandran's Adventures: Engadget Expand

Disclaimer:  I work for AOL, which owns Patch and Engadget

Saturday was Engadget Expand. As an AOLer I received tickets to the event. Expand is a CES-esque trade show that features inventors, experts and tech founders. The show is two days in tech-geek heaven.

The first day began with a keynote address given by Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler. Out of all the scheduled appearances this was, by far, the one I was most looking forward to. I am a huge fan of Kickstarter and have even blogged about it previously.

What struck me about Strickler was not his charisma, personality or the impressive stats behind the success of Kickstarter, but his answer to a question in the Q&A session afterwards. He was asked how the company came about and his answer was a uniquely human one. He talked about struggling to raise intial funds, creating a tech product with no technical knowledge and not giving up when all his peers were not supportive. His candor is hard to find...most tech founders are generally lionized as gods, and tend to act so—case in point: Larry Ellison.

After the keynote, there was time to check out the different groups tabling their products. The two gadgets that I enjoyed the most were the Z board and the Ziphius Aqua Drone. I was lucky enough to ride the Z board and instantly fell in love with it. The board is light, ergonomically sound and intuitive. It has a skateboard-ish shape and is electric powered. It tops out at 17MPH which--trust me--is more than fast enough. The asking pricing for it was reasonable (roughly $600) considering how advanced it is.

The Ziphius was a ton of fun too. The people demo’ing the drone had a kiddie pool set up so you could test it on water. The movement of the drone was fluid. The camera attached to the nose of the drone takes pictures over and underwater.

Toyota had a few cars on display. I was able to score some free swag: a bag and water bottle for filling out some survey. Totally worth it. Gave my mom the bag and kept the water bottle.

There was a conversation titled, Bringing 3D Printers to the Mainstream. I thought this talk was extremely informative. I didn’t completely agree with a few of the panelist in that 3D printers were going to take over the world soon. But, I did think the discussion of philosophical questions that arise because of the invention of 3D printers were entertaining. One such question was whether people even wanted to be makers…everyone who uses a #D printer by default is a  creator—does everyone want to be that?

I don't. I’m lazy enough to know that I’d much rather have someone make something for em than to do it myself.

I ended up leaving shortly after this talk. However I will say that, from what I experienced, Endgadget made a great first foray into tech trade show business—and I can’t wait to see how this show expands next year.