Chapter 20
In This Chapter
Join the Glass online community
Network with Glass groups
Develop a great app for Glass
Attend or host Glass events
You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
— A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
When you purchase Glass and start wearing it in public, you’re going to get a lot of attention. Like it or not, Glass is an automatic conversation starter, and you’re an ambassador for the device.
If you need to connect with other Glass users because you have a problem or issue and want to see how other users have handled it, or because you have a desire to connect with other Glass users, plenty of online and offline opportunities are available.
The Glass Community is a private website you can access at https://www.glass-community.com. You need to sign in with your Google username and password.
A hashtag is a word or a phrase that’s preceded by a hash symbol (#) and identifies a post based on a specific topic. Hashtags are neat and convenient ways for people who want to find out more about a topic to search for it on social networking websites. If you search for #throughglass on Twitter, for example, you’ll see posts by people who have sent text and/or photo tweets from Glass.
Google has established several hashtags you can add to your posts to make it easier for people to find your posts and start to follow you:
The Google+ social networking website has a few communities where you can find current and past messages posted by other users so you can get feedback, find solutions, and meet other Glass users:
If you frequent the LinkedIn professional networking website, you can join a couple of Glass groups so you can interact with other Glass users around the world. Here are two that you may be interested in:
Glass is a built-in conversation starter. People will ask you about the device and what it can do. They may be curious, or they may be afraid that you’re going to do something nefarious with your Glass.
Be gracious. Answer all questions as completely as you can. You may want to find the answers on your Glass while you’re talking to that person — but be sure to tell that person you’re going to look for answers on Glass before you do it.
When you get together with family members, friends, or colleagues who are interested in technology, be sure to bring Glass with you and answer questions. You can even share your Glass if you feel comfortable doing that. Maybe people will be inspired to buy a Glass themselves … and perhaps even buy this book!
If you enjoy tinkering with new technologies and want to see what they can do, Glass is a great platform for you. You get to work on something exciting and new, and you may also get to develop the next big thing (and earn some extra income).
To find out more about “hacking” your Glass by using the Glass Development Kit and other development tools, see Chapter 14.
Google has set up Base Camps in several cities around the United States, including San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. If you reserved your Glass on the Glass website (www.google.com/glass), you can pick up the device at one of these Base Camps and also do the following cool stuff:
Google+ communities announce in-person events about Glass in various communities around the world, so visit these communities often to get the most recent information.
The Meetup website (www.meetup.com) is a great place to visit for the latest events, not only about Glass, but also about wearable devices in general. On Meetup, you can search for groups and/or events, and you can change the search radius from your current location, such as within 100 miles of San Francisco.
If you can’t find an event, start one of your own! You can create events and/or post messages asking whether people would be interested in the following places:
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