I wore Glass a lot during my vacation time in Oregon, Washington, and Nevada these past two weeks, and i quickly discovered that Glass was another conduit for random stranger interaction.  There were quite a few people who recognized what it was and were very “fanboy” regarding the device, and there were others who may not have recognized it but were curious enough about it that they would come up to me and ask me what it was all about.  Wearing Glass made me more approachable – and while the resultant interaction had much more to do with me and Glass than the strangers i was interacting with, it was still pretty neat to see their reactions to seeing it and trying it on.

As a result, i’ve decided to start creating a blog series that document the more interesting of these Random Glass Encounters, something that hopefully over time will evolve and refine itself as a means of sharing great stories about strangers and about humanity.  The interaction I had with a street worker on Fremont Street is what inspired this idea, so it feels appropriate to start with him.

These two guys were working Fremont Street in Las Vegas, walking up to passersby to convince people to go into the Plaza Casino.  The guy in frame was about to hand me the pamphlet and probably give his marketing schpeal, but as soon as he saw that i was wearing Glass, all thoughts of his job went out of his head and he immediately asked very enthusiastically, “Is that Google Glass??”

One of the Glass Explorers forum topics that i see on our little elitist discussion forum is the question “What do you do if someone wants to try it on?”  I haven’t read through that because i’m sure that opinions are pretty polarized.  I know that people are probably fairly wary of someone running off with a device that they sunk $1500 into, there’s also potential issue of privacy for all of the data on the device, etc.

For me, one of the reasons i got the device in the first place was to share it.  The likelihood that someone is going to run off with the device feels pretty low probability, and the reward of giving someone the unique experience of wearing it far outweighs that low risk.  In fact, i’ve found that in some cases i have to take a fairly aggressive approach regarding sharing the device – most of the people who approached me asked questions about it, but didn’t ask if they could try it on, probably because they’re afraid to ask or assume that i would say no, so I’m the one that has had to say, “do you want to try it?” and help them put it on.  Almost everyone has had that “opening up Christmas presents” look on their face when given that opportunity.

I remember very clearly that when I asked this guy if he wanted to try it, his eyes got wide and he asked, “are you sure?” and i said of course, no big deal, and helped him put it on.

He was immediately enamored with the device – it was clear that he was pretty fanboy about it and knew about it generally (he knew that it was in limited beta, he knew i had to pay $1500 to get it), but he didn’t know a lot about the specifics of what it actually did and how it worked.  So i walked him through the basic functionality of taking pictures and video as well as the other features of the device.  I discovered fairly early that Glass can pick up my voice commands even if someone else is wearing it, so I did an “okay glass, take a picture” while he was wearing it to get another of what people have been terming “selfies,” and the reaction on face when he realized that i was giving it voice commands to take a picture was priceless.  I did the “okay glass, record a video,” and ended up taking a 13 second video while he had it on:

The other guy knew about the device too and asked a couple of questions but was otherwise pretty sideline about the whole thing.  After another minute or so of talking, mainly speculating about what the price of the device was going to be when it went public, they both walked off.  He never did hand me a pamphlet or even tell me which casino he was promoting – i had to look at the picture afterwards to figure it out.

I wish i had gotten his contact information so i could have forwarded the pics with him wearing it.  I’m sure he’s told his friends about it, likely posted something on facebook or google plus about it, and knowing that Glass created that sort of personal story for him makes me pretty happy.

So the response i’ve given most often to answer the inevitable “what do you think about Glass?” question, is “it’s interesting.”  Google Glass is interesting.

My appointment for Glass was for 11:00, but Jenni had a yoga class that she wanted to go to one block away that she needed to register for at 10:15.  I arrived at the appointment at about 10:30 to see if it was an issue for me to get there early.  There were people outside the office milling about, one had Glass on her head, but the others didn’t.  I walked up to them and got assigned to a guy named Pat who was wearing a very non-descript gray shirt (that everyone else i think was wearing also) who introduced himself and took me to the Glass area after giving me a guest pass.  Before he got me through the paces of picking out my Glass and set up, he walked me over to a very quaint food/drink set up – small plates of snacks, as well as tea, water, soda, and beer options.  The whole thing was strangely ceremonial but in a common way.  Nothing negative, but it had a tinge of “not quite rightness” to it that i couldn’t quite place.  It wasn’t terribly important, so i let it pass.

All of the Glass units were set up in a display – five different possible colors.  I had picked out a color online, but i had the opportunity to change my mind, which i did – online i picked up one that was more grey, but when i put that on my head, i didn’t like how that color went with my hair color at all.  The other options were white, light blue, black, and orange (the official brand names of those colors are different, like “sky” and “charcoal”, but i forget the names of the other two).  I didn’t like the orange or the grey, i liked the other three well enough, but i decided that the black looked the most subtle – as subtle as a cyborg-looking tech thing on my face could possibly be.  After picking that out, he sat me down at a table and we started going through the unopening and the set up of Glass.  The unboxing was interesting too, another one of those ceremonial things.  He passed the box to me but otherwise didn’t touch it which made me realize that  i forgot that there are people that make a big deal out of an initial unboxing of a product.

So i unboxed it.  I was very into the branding and the overall packaging.  it fits my minimalist sort of aesthetic, something i’m fine with despite the fact that that’s pretty trendy.  The box contained Glass, the charging cable which is a nice high quality flat-cord style USB to miniUSB cable, a small documentation pamphlet that was a duplicate of the FAQ that i read online, and an extra set of nose pads. Towards the end of the appointment, he also went over the accessories bag which contained a sunglasses attachment (that looked pretty good when i put it on), a clear “i’m pretending i’m wearing glasses” attachment (that looked really ugly when i put that on), and a strange microfiber carrying bag that contained a hardshell case on the bottom that you stick Glass in for extra protection.

He ran me through the basic Glass functionality, and i asked some very detail-oriented function questions. I think he was impressed with the level of detail of the questions that i was asking, but i could be fooling myself. Doing the set up i also talked about how i think i’m going to potentially use it – in the context of the marching band, and in the context of other potential creative musical/visual installation performance pieces of some sort way down the line. because of some of the ideas i had, he pointed me to the developers site figuring i could have an interest in making my own apps and/or thingys using the Glass API (which i am, but i do not have time for until mid-to-late 2014 at the earliest). I noticed that he was very precise and careful about the kind of vocabulary he used when talking about Glass – consistent language when it came to the color definitions, consistent language when it came to the user experience wording, and talking about “use cases” for Glass, a term i haven’t heard ever since i left my corporate job. I asked him flat out about it and confirmed that everyone who was a part of the Glass team was trained in how they were supposed to talk about it, making sure that they used a consistent language.

There were a few questions that he couldn’t answer because he was basically the equivalent of a first-level support person – kind of like what i was at Symantec. Some of the questions i asked him were things like, “how does the video do with white balance and brightness change if you move in and out of different lighting conditions?”, “once this gets released to the public, what does having the explorer version of this product do for me if anything?”

Overall the appointment took an hour and a half. It was pretty low frills, but very casual and friendly. I got connected with the Glass Explorers community page which i haven’t gone and explored fully yet, but will probably spend regular time looking through to see how people are using it.  I gathered all of my stuff, he took me out of the building, and i waited for Jenni to get out of her yoga class.