I recently attended SXSW and left inspired and ready to “hack” more ideas. Hack is a term that was big down there, and it refers to taking inspiration from other types of media and bringing it into your own. I learned more about nascent and future tech trends and that WEIRD things really do happen in Austin. What caught my attention was what’s happening outside of our vertical. The health and wellness industry presented a lot of what we already know and currently practice at The Bloc. I found “Wearables” as a trend in its infancy and the future of technology to be interesting. Right now, “Wearables” is more activity-based, but we have the opportunity to make the technology work harder for us by truly providing meaningful health care value through its connectivity to electronic medical records.

See my latest article, “The forewearable future,” http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/222148/the-forewearable-future.html#reply . I also learned about contextual systems and am thinking a lot about its application in our space. And I’m exploring how to “hack culture” with social change in third-world countries. I see a huge opportunity for the health and wellness space to see and do things differently, to not only “hack culture” but to “hack life,” as health is at the foundation of everything.