Episode 1: How to build hardware that doesn’t suck

Brady Forrest of Highway1 courtesy of SXSW Hardware House - Michael O’Donnell - @photo
Brady Forrest of Highway1 courtesy of SXSW Hardware House – Michael O’Donnell – @photo

Welcome to the inaugural Internet of Things Podcast with Stacey Higginbotham. It’s super exciting to be able to share the show with all of you, after these past few weeks of Gigaom closing its doors and us wondering about the fate of the show. This week my co-host Kevin Tofel and I have missed three weeks but didn’t miss a beat when it comes to reviewing the Staples Connect Home hub version 2, discussing the Apple Watch and Kevin’s earlier article on smart watches and their issues in general. In other news, look for more Kevin coverage at his new home on ZDnet.

After Kevin and I chat, I interviewed Brady Forrest, who is in charge of PCH’s Highway1 incubator on how to build hardware that won’t make consumers question why they bought it in the first place. Forrest, who has mentored startups such as Ringly and the company behind the Drop kitchen scale, has helped build companies whose products don’t suck. That’s why I asked him to join me for a chat. Listen in for some good advice and to hear me learn exactly how hard it is to develop hardware for the myriad platforms out there. I gained a new appreciation for the challenges companies are going through and learned something new. Listen up, and maybe if I get enough downloads, next week I’ll manage to get an intro and some music pulled together. Here’s hoping! In the meantime, listen below.

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Hosts: Stacey Higginbotham and Kevin Tofel
Guests: Brady Forrest, vice president at PCH’s Highway1 incubator

  • What you need to know about the new(ish) Staples home hub
  • Will Kevin buy an Apple Watch? Which version?
  • I cannot say this enough. Hardware is hard.
  • The many ways a product can fail

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Welcome to the new Internet of Things Podcast

As a print journalist I write to organize my thoughts about the world, my experience with gadgets, and my expectations about the future. So I always shied away from podcasting. But in that same job I ask a lot of questions of people who are way smarter than I am so I can try to put my thoughts together, and realized that my efforts to understand the way that connected devices, a multiplicity of data streams and new business models around the internet of things are similar to theirs. The questions I ask people in my interviews are the ones they would ask, and those people deserved unfiltered answers, especially since I can’t write up every interview I do in full.

Thus, I fell into podcasting and fell in love with a medium that lets me wander around talking to people smarter than learning about a topic I find fascinating. And if I also get to play with fun devices and connect with a good friend once a week to talk about how those devices are changing the lives of consumers, then that’s great too. So, the Internet of Things Podcast is a new podcast that will feel very familiar, with Kevin Tofel still coming on as my co-host, a weely format, and my continuing quest to understand the technologies, use cases and business effects of the internet of things. We are even looking into using a podcast editing service if you guys keep enjoying what we’re doing so that we can spend more time focusing on the content of our podcasts more than the technical side. We just want the best for you guys. Keep listening and we’ll keep making them.