Last Wednesday and Thursday, New York City hosted CE Week, a premier technology event for large, mid-size and start-up companies to introduce their hottest innovations to the press. Rather than being consumer driven, CE Week connects companies to those who will invest in their products; buyers, trade affiliates, bloggers, and social influencers. Just having completed its tenth year, it certainly isn’t as big as CES, the ground stopping January trade show in Las Vegas, but it allows the lull of product zest to be broken, leading tech enthusiasts to look forward to Q3 and Q4 hardware and software.

But even this smaller tech show draws in the big fish. Industry leaders like IBM, Sony, Samsung, Kodak and Lenovo designed and executed exhibits. The less marketable companies and start-ups (which hopefully will not be one-hit wonders) also mechanized their own spaces. Such included Orion Labs, which created a wearable headpiece

that allows you to orally respond to people that contact you while your phone is still in your pocket. Another was Odyssey Toys. Think Tom Hanks in the movie “Big” – but twenty-eight years later, and with a strategic expertise in kid drones and other flying machines. This enterprise is the future of how you will entertain your children, or for the time being how you will entertain other children as the babysitter.

Beyond the press event that practically drives CE Week, there is a more wholesome reason for CE Week’s value. While I was at the event, I noticed the general enthusiasm by all parties, whether vendor, trader, buyer, or journalist to learn more about the people who were as passionate about the things they made a living creating, writing, and thinking about. Although vendors clearly wanted to make their products stand out, they also appreciated the opportunity to get to know other tech innovators, whether those innovators were competitors or not made no difference. The Altman Building and the Metropolitan Pavilion were two spaces where technology had a chance to develop because innovators could meet and converse, hopefully leading to collaboration.

And we see conversing all the time. Just this past week in California, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit was held, bringing collaborators together to share how to bring ingenuity to the business world. Our President spoke of entrepreneurship as “a positive path for young people, seeking the chance to make something of themselves” and “Where we don’t just look at the way things have always been but rather we say, ‘how could things be?’”

One of the companies that left a lasting impression on me was an energy efficient company, Uncharted Play. Their aim is to make two worlds collide: the everyday consumer focused on accomplishing necessary yet monotonous tasks (i.e. completing homework assignments, taking your baby out for some fresh air and staying healthy and fit) and the engineering world, faced with generating productive work by harnessing energy. Some of their products include energy infused soccer balls and jump ropes that can turn into lamps. Other products can turn other forms of kinetic energy into chargeable energy, like a stroller phone charger or desk charger.

Their work goes beyond agility equipment and motion. This is a company founded on the drive to bring goodness to the world and tries to settle issues like lack of education, physical fitness, and energy on a global level. In overcoming these problems, they have partnered with ChildFund, Music for Relief, and Goals and Dreams Foundation. To see all of this and more, take a gander at some of their snazzy social.

To learn more about the innovation in the CE space, click here.