We recently had a company-wide summit outside of Atlanta, GA. You've probably seen pictures on social media of the fun stuff — imagine a boat filled with tech bloggers, an open bar and an Xbox — but a good portion of our days were spent in meetings trying to figure stuff out. Many of us have been to similar company retreats.
Of course, we couldn't just drop everything else going on. Android stuff doesn't stop happening just because people are busy doing other things. The skeleton crew at home did a wonderful job, and were lifesavers for the most part. But if you're a slave to your inbox like I am, you know that you can never really get away.
Normally, I sit at a desk all day long and let the email flow and ding and flash tabs and otherwise let me know that a beast needs fed. When I'm not working, I just don't care and never check anything (something everyone needs to try). But that wasn't going to happen while AC was in Atlantis, and we actually had to pay attention to what was happening in front of us during the workday or run the risk of being left behind.
Enter my Huawei Watch and Android Wear.
About 15 minutes into our first presentation, I realized how easy it is to triage email from my wrist. Kevin Michaluk, Mobile Nations' commander-in-chief, master of all things BlackBerry and quite the master of the whiteboard, was telling us about a bunch of mostly exciting new things and if I'm there with my face in a laptop or even a phone, I'm going to miss a good bit of it. And be that guy in the front row who wasn't paying attention — never a good position to put yourself in during any company meeting where all the people who decide if you get a paycheck are in attendance. But I could take a look at my wrist when it buzzed at me, and swipe away what's not important or pull out my phone for what was. It worked.
I'm still not all-in with wrist computing, and will never understand some people's passion for that tiny screen (don't even come at me with a keyboard or web browser unless you want to see how hard I can laugh), but my Huawei Watch actually helped and made things better for a few days in Atlanta. I'll be sure to wear it the next time I need to be distracted by email while still paying attention.
