I wanted to hear the speakers at Techarena 2026. Volunteering got me closer than any ticket would have.
I applied hoping to catch a few talks between shifts and meet people in Stockholm's tech scene. Instead I landed on Main Stage crew, three meters from the Swedish Prime Minister, setting microphones for an ESA astronaut. The other volunteers turned out to be researchers, students, and founders curious enough to give up two days of their weekend. I had longer conversations there than at any networking event I've been to.
Between shifts I queued 40 minutes at the Meta booth and tried the Meta Ray-Ban Display and the Neural Band. The EMG wristband worked better than I expected. What's missing is eye tracking, so the display sits in front of your eye whether you're looking at it or not. I wrote up the longer take on fammad.com. Link in comments.
What I'm taking from those two days: the input layer for wearables is closer to solved than I expected. Attention, which is what gaze estimation is trying to solve, is still wide open. This summer I'm building a DIY eye tracker with IR LEDs and a webcam as my own way of learning that sensing pipeline from the bottom up.
If you're working on wearable computing or eye tracking in Sweden or the EU, I'd like to know.
