I have written a few times about wearables, because I am genuinely interested in where this stuff is going when it stops being a novelty and starts proving itself in real life.
I had another one of those moments this week at the Service Desk Institute Spark 26 conference.
I opened my keynote talking about the incredible support experience I had when my ŌURA ring failed. What good looked like, what did not, and why these products matter more once they become part of everyday life rather than just another piece of tech.
What nobody in the room knew was that another wearable was helping me through that exact moment.
The one nobody could see
I was using my Even Realities G1 glasses to guide me through the talk.
It was probably the fourth time I had used them when speaking. But it was the first time I had gone in with no fallback at all. No notes. No screen to rely on. No backup plan. Just full trust in the glasses and full focus on the room.
That was the real test.
Thirty minutes on stage. Over five hundred people in the room. Delegates from twenty-eight countries. The sort of setting where you need to stay present, move naturally, work the room, and actually deliver — rather than just recite.
The G1 stood up to it.
How it actually works
For anyone who hasn't seen the G1, the bit that does the work is the teleprompt feature. You load in your script or prompt cards, and they sit discreetly in your eyeline while you speak. They do not float in the centre of your view. They are not a notification you have to dismiss. They are positioned where your gaze falls if you happen to look at them, and stay invisible the rest of the time.
It means you can stay on track without staring down at notes or breaking the connection with the room. If you go off-script, the prompt stays where it was. When you come back, you pick up. No clicker. No glance at a comfort monitor. No reading. Just thinking out loud, with a safety net.
The other thing worth naming is what they look like. They are glasses. Just glasses. People who I had not specifically told assumed they were prescription. The teleprompt was invisible to the audience. Which matters, because the goal of a keynote is presence. Anything that announces itself as tech on stage breaks that presence.
What this is actually a proof point for
I have been writing about the post-smartphone era — the idea that the centre of personal computing is shifting from the device in your pocket to the wearables, sensors, and ambient AI around you. This was a small but real proof point.
For a long time, wearables have been demos. Things you wear to make a point. The G1 wearing me through a thirty-minute keynote was not a demo. It was infrastructure. The wearable was doing real work, in a high-stakes setting, with no opportunity to fail gracefully. And it just… worked.
That is when these technologies get interesting. Not when they try too hard to impress you. When they quietly remove friction in a moment that actually matters.
It is also when the conversation about them changes. While they are demos, they are something IT teams can dismiss as not for the enterprise. The moment a senior practitioner walks on stage, delivers a keynote in front of five hundred people using a pair of glasses, and nobody knows — that conversation is over. They are for the enterprise. The question now is who is paying attention, and who is going to be caught flat-footed when the BYOD policy needs to handle someone's face.
The doubled-up punchline
I spoke about one wearable support experience — the ŌURA ring failure that became a case study in AI-assisted service. Another wearable quietly helped me deliver the talk.
That is not a flashy story. It is the quiet kind of story. Two pieces of personal technology, both invisible to the audience, both doing real work, both reframing what their respective categories are actually capable of. One in a customer service flow. One on a stage.
I may have just convinced myself it is time to see what the G2 can do.