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RECENT PRESENTATIONS

Honored to be giving a guest lecture today at the MIT Media Lab titled "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations: The Birth of the True Smart Home" including smart home trends/standards/experiences, the story of Matter, and lessons learned for applying to spatial computing, metaverse applications, and extended reality domains.

ABSTRACT: This lecture covers smart home innovation in three parts:

  1. The latest trends in the smart home industry and how the pandemic has changed people's relationships with their homes.

  2. The story of how Matter came to be and how it is now poised to make significant progress towards a more seamless and integrated device onboarding experience for users.

  3. How Matter is opening the doors of innovation to a bright future of smart connected devices and meaningful experiences that will impact people's homes and lives over the next decade.

Finally, this lecture concludes with lessons learned from smart home industry standardization efforts that are applicable to many diverse innovation and problem solving domains including mixed reality, spatial computing, and metaverse domains.

Full video replay: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations: The Birth of the True Smart Home

05 JANUARY 2023

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW

Bringing Calm to Our Connected World

PRESENTATIONS/MARK BENSON

Honored to speak on behalf of Samsung at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Bringing Calm to Our Connected World and Samsung's philosophy of prioritizing more seamless connected experiences that are driving innovation behind the latest products.

ABSTRACT: This ethos of consumer-first innovation is the center of what we do at SmartThings. With the SmartThings platform, we don’t want users to feel like they need to change their behaviors to enjoy smart home experiences that make them feel safe, make life a little easier and also add a little fun.

Our goal is for SmartThings to be so in tune with user behaviors that it is capable of independently running your home, your connections with family or whatever else you need. This is why we get so excited when we introduce things like SmartThings Station, or we uplevel our collaboration with the Matter standard, as together, they are a roadmap of our mission to make SmartThings the core enabler of our vision for a better-connected world that is truly centered around the user.

25 OCTOBER 2022

WALL STREET JOURNAL TECHLIVE

The Future of the Smart Home

PRESENTATIONS/MARK BENSON

Honored to deliver a presentation at an invite-only Wall Street Journal Techlive event for an audience of hollywood stars and high tech executives on the future of the smart some in Laguna Beach, CA.

ABSTRACT: The smart home industry is in the midst of an inflection point. The pandemic has made people reimagine their homes beyond just a static space to live. This effect has given rise to the need for better interoperability and ease of use for smart home devices, and experiences that they enable. In addition to the consumer trends, the industry is also coming together around a smart home connectivity standard called Matter, which aims to simplify the setup, onboarding, and use of smart home devices in a way that is easier to understand and use. In order for the industry to come together in this way, it requires companies to come together on this common standard, while still leaving lots of room for innovation and differentiation when it comes to advanced product features and services such as pet care, elder care, and energy.

12 OCTOBER 2022

SAMSUNG DEVELOPER CONFERENCE

Samsung Developer Conference Keynote

PRESENTATIONS/MARK BENSON

Honored to deliver part of the keynote presentation for the Samsung Developer Conference about the SmartThings vision for enabling smarter lifestyles, supporting industry standards like Matter and HCA, and enabling partnerships that deliver rich and immersive experiences that matter to users.

Abstract: Samsung shares more about its commitment to creating simplified, game-changing customer experiences, including the company’s updated vision for SmartThings as it evolves from a connectivity platform to an enabler of smarter lifestyles. From deeper integration with Bixby to seamless connectivity with Matter-compatible devices, SmartThings is creating a richer, more open world that empowers all users to streamline their connections and their daily lives.

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Honored to deliver a keynote presentation for the Edge Impulse Imagine event at the Museum of Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on how the pandemic has changed people's relationships with their homes, emerging expectations of smart home experiences, and the critical importance of empathy-centered design thinking.

Abstract: The pandemic has forever changed the world and how we think about our lives, our work, and our relationships with people and our surroundings. Our homes have been reimagined, perhaps as they were originally intended, as places of rest, relaxation, and safety – and more recently, as places of work and exercise. As a result, people want their homes to be better. To work for them and be customized to their needs.

But in order to meet these evolving user needs, smart home brands and ecosystems must innovate in new ways, collaborate together, and be obsessed with delivering valuable experiences for users.

This presentation explains how the pandemic has permanently altered the complexion and trajectory of the smart home industry, the central role that radical empathy plays when innovating new product concepts at the edge, and how to overcome internal and external barriers to change in order to make a lasting difference in the lives of users.

Full presentation here: Empathy at the Edge: Innovating for the Next Generation of Smart Home Living