Style March 21, 2014

New York Winter StreetWear – Estelle Kiora & I

During my time in New York for Social Media Week (SMW); SMW Reporter/Top 10 blogger in Singapore – Estelle Kiora and I bundled up to fight the cold in our winter streetwear. Estelle who came from Singapore, where the sun is mostly shining, was in for a surprise! I was impressed with how well she managed to wear her style in below zero weather. All thanks to strategic layering. Those timberlands, love’em!

Some of my favourite winter layering essentials that are the key building blocks of a fashionable, yet warm outfit, would be an infinity scarf, leg warmers and layering tops.

Ever since infinity scarves hit stores, I’ve been a huge fan of the warmth and protection it provides. What’s an infinity scarf? A neck warmer resembling a scarf, but forming a loop with no ends.

An infinity scarf is a perfect addition for Winter StreetWear.

If you’ve been following my Instagram posts this winter, you’ll notice I have a comforting need to always rock my leg warmers. They’re perfect if you’re wearing leggings with boots that are looser at the top. Trapping the cold so it doesn’t get to your feet. The plus, it can look fashionable if it’s your style to start with. You can also make your own leg warmers at home with some old sweaters. Just cut the sleeves at your desired length and bunch them up!

I love layering my tops! Some people like to say there’s a right and a wrong way to doing this. I’ll save that for another post, but I say have fun with it! Let your imagination go wild and style your outfits the way you want to. Wear a dress, put a cardigan on top and for extra warmth top it off with a bright hood.

Events February 28, 2014

Wearable Tech in Fashion

Wearable technology has come a long way. There was that brief time in history when some people either didn’t understand bluetooth ear pieces or just simply hated them. I reckon mostly because they thought they were being talked too, but in reality the person was talking into their ear piece. Now technology has evolved into being a part of us.

Now we’ve been seeing technology hit the runways! DVF (Diane von Furstenberg) used the Google glasses to capture the DVF creative process from a different perspective, which was accomplished by having the people involved with the entire process of making the show happen, by wearing Google glasses.

DVF created a short film to show her Fashion Show through the model, stylist and designers eyes via Google glass:

Then there’s the new dress that changes colour depending on a woman’s mood. The Bubelle Dress is made up of two layers, the inner layer contains biometric sensors that pick up a person’s emotions and projects them in colours onto the second layer, the outer textile.

Following the trend that only continues to grow, Social Media Week in New York had Tech In Motion host a Wearable Tech Fashion Show.

To mention a few of the contributors of the show:

Atlas Wearables (Austin): Presenting fitness tracker
Augmate (NYC): Presenting Google Glass and Vuzix m100
BrickSimple (Philly): Presenting Google Glass
Continuum Fashion (NYC): Presenting 3D printed shoes
Everpurse (Chicago): Presenting chargeable clutches
Sensoree (San Fran): Presenting mood clothing

If you missed the Fashion Show you can watch it below via livestream:

The health and fitness market brought out many products that look great when worn. Bands that measure how much you’ve run, check your heart beat or measure your health in various categories.

What will be the next best thing when Fashion and Technology collide? 3D printed clothes, clothes that change based on weather automatically? With imagination and determination, anything is possible.

Check out this infographic for more info about current day wearable tech:

Marketing February 25, 2014

Facebook+Whatsapp sitting in a tree…

Have you heard? Facebook and Whatsapp are getting married

When I first heard about this I wasn’t surprised. I was attending Social Media Week in New York as the SMW Reporter and had been in a seminar with BuzzFeed’s CEO & Founder Jonah Peretti. He was being interviewed by Toby Daniels Founder & Executive Director of Social Media Week.

When Toby asked Jonah about the future of sharing, that was when my ears perked up. Jonah went on to explain that he was starting to notice that their very popular BuzzFeed articles and quizzes were being dark shared and that people were starting to share less on Facebook and more across messaging platforms. Now, when he said this I got excited. It’s so very true. I have numerous amounts of Whatsapp chat groups and know that almost each group has a few shares a day with me. As a matter of fact, I’ve received BuzzFeed quizzes from friends in groups on Whatsapp too. There’s a steady shift between people wanting to share with articles, images etc with the masses to personalized and grouped sharing. Maybe Google was onto something with their Google+ selective group sharing capabilities.

It was all coming together in my head. When Jonah mentioned dark sharing. Many people in the audience at Social Media Week were boggled by the term. Had no idea what it meant. Thank you Toby! He jumped on it and asked Jonah to explain it further.

Dark sharing is a referral source that you see but has no exact source of where that traffic came from. So people who share via Whatsapp, BBM or other messaging services – their shares are not shown to BuzzFeeds analytics team. Right now BuzzFeed see’s that 20% of traffic is dark.

Marketers, advertisers and social media people of the world are thinking the acquisition will bring ads, change the platform, increase the cost of using the service, but no one has thought about behind the scenes benefits for Facebook. It’s the information of sharing that really matters to digital companies right now. That is where the future is.

Did Jonah know something before everyone else? Does he have a crystal ball that showed him the future Facebook acquisition? Or was it possibly an intelligent guess?

Let me know what you think with your comments below.

Events February 15, 2014

Social Media Week: SMW Reporter Competition

I’ve been following social media week ever since I attended my first Social Media Week (SMW) event in Toronto at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Yorkville. If you attend the seminars that can benefit you or the company you work for, than you really leave the event with great ideas and with a fresh outlook of what social media can do for you and where it’s going right now.

If you think about it, it’s a brilliant idea! Everyday there’s something new coming out. There’s so much social noise and no one to set the rules and help you understand it all. People new to social media are either looking the other way or just stunned, like a deer caught in the headlights. SMW brings it altogether in informative seminars, interactive workshops and live feeds.

Roughly 2 weeks ago SMW posted on their site and tweeted an opportunity for Social Media fanatics of the world for a chance to win a week-long adventure. They wanted to see how much you can do with only a few seconds of video on Vine, Instagram or YouTube. Three winners would have a chance to be a #SMWReporter in New York City! Even better, since Nokia is sponsoring SMW NYC, we’ll be bringing you the news with the awesome Nokia 1020. 41MP *drool*

Competing against the whole world I didn’t think I had a chance, but I did it because I enjoyed the challenge. After all, Vine, Instagram and YouTube are supposed to be fun. And that’s it. I had a lot of fun coming up with the story and compiling it together for one submission.

My take was that Social Media is EVERYWHERE. I found it everywhere I went. In the few days that I had, I tweeted different Vines of where I was finding SMW and on the last day put them together to tell the whole story on YouTube. Here’s the story:

UPDATE: I won the competition and I can’t wait to attend SMW NYC!
Check out Nicky Yates post about the SMW Reporter winners: here.

Follow the hashtag #SMWReporter on Twitter, Vine & Instagram to keep up with our live updates from the event. Those of you who are attending, see you there!

Follow up video of SMW 2014:

smw

An infinity scarf is a perfect addition for Winter StreetWear.

If you missed the Fashion Show you can watch it below via livestream:

Have you heard? Facebook and Whatsapp are getting married