Where do you go to stay smart in the kids interactive industry? What conferences keep you on top of your craft, while also helping you grow your network? What events are vital to attend to learn the latest trends? There are so many conferences these days which ones are right for you? Look no further, here’s a compiled conference list to get you started! It covers areas of the children’s interactive media business like toys, eBooks, video games, children’s television, apps, play, research, consumer products, and more. The list below covers most of the big US and international shows in 2015, and just a few important smaller events.

You can download a PDF copy of this list here. Let us know what you think. Which events do you attend? What speakers draw you to an event? If there’s an event that’s not on this list, and you think it’s important, please let us know in the comments below.

NOTE: Items highlighted in red indicate specifics about an event that have yet to be announced as of 11/10/2014.

The following is an article I wrote that appears in the November 2014 issue of Children’s Technology Review.

If we look at the amount of time a child has to enjoy being a child, it works out to something like 6, 753 days, or 157, 680 hours. Every hour of childhood is important, as is every second. Who knew, but milliseconds seem to matter as well. Engaging a child successfully in an interactive experience can boil down to what happens within a fraction of a second.

While working in the children’s interactive industry for many years, there’s one question I’m asked more than any other: “What is the single most important thing needed to successfully engage a child in an interactive experience?” In today’s world that means successful engagement through tablets and apps, of which there are many things to consider. Engaging characters, compelling stories, a strong game mechanic, lots of user testing, a willingness to change something for the better when developing, an understanding of child development and child related research. But that’s not where I start. These are all “must have” components of a successful interactive experience. So what’s the one item that will make or break your app? Responsivity.

It’s usually at this point the person asking the question says “Huh? What do you mean? Responsivity?” Even if the app includes all the must have items mentioned above, if the app does not respond immediately to a child’s request, usually in the form of a tap on a screen, your product is dead. It won’t be used. End of story. The time you have to successfully respond to a child’s request can be measured in milliseconds.

Let me share a recent article to help crystallize just how little time you have. I’ll reference a technology advance outside of the children’s industry. There have been some amazing discoveries in the virtual reality space in the last year. You know, those crazy headsets that cover your eyes and ears to deliver an otherworldly experience, be it on Oculus Rift or Morpheus.

The vision of this technology might one day deliver a mind blowing, life changing, “real” experience. Part of recent successes in this industry boil down to this:

a.) If a user makes a request through the technology (input),
b.) and the display in front of the person updates as quickly as possible (output),
c.) the more believable and enjoyable the experience.

However, with a slow update, the user will feel nauseous. Literally. This performance, or latency, can actually be measured. A response time longer than 30 milliseconds will make someone sick.

For years the virtual reality industry has been unable to break a performance speed below 60 milliseconds, and in the process of trying, has made a lot of virtual reality testers sick. The breakthrough is this industry will be when they bring the performance issue down to about 15 milliseconds, which some say is now within reach.

In reaching that goal, virtual reality designers have had to look at everything that causes latency: Computer processing speed, software, cables, accelerometers, display screens, … everything. (See background info in Wired for more)

Let’s put that in context to an interactive experience for a child. What are the ingredients that make up the response time of an app? Just like the discoveries found with the virtual reality example above, the same components are equally important here. Interactive responsivity can be simmered down to what hardware and software combinations you use.

Lets start with the hardware. We’re talking about tablets. Are all tablet technologies created equal? If you look at the responsivity of just the hardware component of a tablet surface alone, though the differences are small, it appears the response time of a tap is hardly equal across all devices. Have a look at how long a single tap takes to register through the hardware of a tablet:

(Note: A shorter response time is better. Source)

Okay, no big deal, right? We’re talking just a fraction of a second, and we’re not even measuring hardware latency from devices specifically targeted to children in toy stores, which by the way use cheaper (AKA slower) chips and tablet surface components.

Now we need to add in latency that is introduced from software. What software tools are being used to create apps for children? Most app-based software tools fall into one of two categories; native apps and non-native apps.

Native apps tend to be written with programming code that is “compiled.” Compiled code is translated into something a computer can understand at a machine level. Languages like C and C++ are compiled languages that tend to execute quickly.

Non-native apps may be created with a “wrapper”, something that can bundle together other kinds of “runtime” code, like JavaScript, HTML, and HTML5. Runtime code is not compiled. Runtime code reads like English, which is great for writing code quickly by humans, but not necessarily the best form to be understood quickly by computers. When this kind of code is executed at runtime, a tablet needs to interpret it, one line at a time, into something it can understand. Translating this runtime code on the fly is time consuming for any computing device, including tablets, and creates latency with a response back to the user.

When a tap or a swipe is sent to a native or non-native app, we’re still talking about a fraction of a second for this instruction to execute. However, just to put this in perspective, generally speaking, runtime code can take up to ten times longer to execute than compiled code depending on the processor being used. This can mean the difference between 2 and 20 milliseconds for a small number of lines of code to execute before the user receives a response. (Source 1, 2)

By now you may be doing some math in your head. Keep in mind, we’re still talking best possible scenario here. On top of all this hardware and software latency there’s the need to load assets (graphics, sound, video) in and out of memory. How memory management is handled can also add a lot of latency to an experience, more so for apps that download its content at runtime from the web as opposed to apps that bundle all of its content within the app locally. This is often where the difference between an experienced developer and an inexperienced developer pays off. Creating lean yet appealing art, animation, and audio is an art form, one that often adds to the benefit of “perceived” performance, and ultimately the end user’s experience. A talented developer also will know how to “mask” some of this latency, in a way that makes both the tablet’s processor, and the end user, very happy from a performance perspective.

So, do slow performing apps make kids sick? Maybe not literally like the virtual reality example cited earlier, but, many theorize that it can influence how engaged a child is in the experience. An app that is responsive can mean the difference between successfully engaging a child or making them not want to interact with an app at all. It can also influence your rating in CTR, which measures responsivity of every activity.

If you design products for children, immediacy is vital. Sluggishness can make you feel sick, and contribute to the death of an app.

The following is a cover story I wrote for the Summer 2014 issue of iKids Magazine.

Note, dollar amounts mentioned in this article represent US or Canadian dollars, depending on the country being discussed.

In this developer’s eye view of the North American children’s tech startup landscape, 360KID founder Scott Traylor finds flourishing life—and dollars—in some pretty exotic places beyond New York and San Francisco. You may never look at Pittsburgh the same way again.

As a Boston-based developer of children’s games, I’m well aware of life outside the confines of San Francisco and New York. Of course, many kidtech startup businesses can be found in these two cities, with Toca Boca, Duck Duck Moose, Fingerprint, Curious Hat, Wanderful, Launchpad Toys and ToyTalk all dotting the Bay Area. And Tinybop, Hopscotch, Ruckus, Speekaboos, Hallabalu and MarcoPolo—to name a few—having set up shop in the Big Apple.

In terms of venture investments, in the last five years in San Francisco and New York City alone, venture organizations closed more than 3, 300 business deals in Silicon Valley to the tune of $31.5 billion. New York saw more than 1, 200 deals close with more than $8 billion invested. However, only the tiniest sliver of these investments went to fund kidtech business. Less than two-tenths of one percent, or $52 million, has been invested in kid-based technology companies in San Francisco in the last five years. An even smaller amount, just under $34 million, was invested in New York City during the same period. The capital is there, no doubt, but it’s not necessarily flowing in the direction of kid-centric businesses.

A closer look at thriving startup communities specifically in Boulder, Colorado, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Kelowna, Canada, have offered refreshing insight into what it takes for a kids tech business to grow and succeed. Business success in the kids space isn’t simply an entrepreneurial stew made up of creativity, talent and perseverance. It’s about access to capital, and it also has a lot to do with where you start your business geographically.

While the following new companies run the gamut from products to service-based in the areas of apps, eBooks, programmable robots and related interactive media, common threads across these three cities in which they are housed include a willing investment community, a local ecosystem that supports new business, entrepreneurial events that encourage business leaders to exchange ideas, and local universities where intellectual curiosity and talent can be shared with entrepreneurs.

BOULDER, COLORADO

The startup and venture capital scene in Boulder has grown significantly over the last two decades. In the last month, Boulder actually exceeded New York kidtech investing, reaching a total of nearly $41 million in the last five years. Overall, Boulder is a thriving startup Mecca across many technology sectors, and the kidtech offerings based there are heavily focused on software, robotics and electronics kits, with honorable mentions including:

• Modular Robotics, a company that sells magnetic cube-like electronic parts that can easily be snapped together and programmed to build robots controlled by a mobile device or tablet. Modular Robotics is also a Carnegie Mellon business spinoff. (Photo above is of a Modular Robotics product.)

• Orbotix markets a popular programmable electronic ball called Sphero, and the company’s new product rollout called Ollie, Both Sphero and Ollie can also be controlled through a mobile phone or tablet and have a growing developer community that makes apps that interact with, and control, these robots.

• Artificial intelligence drives the Ubooly mobile phone or tablet friend that can talk to you, as well as listen to what you say. Ubooly comes complete with an accompanying cuddly plush cover, as well as a growing list of stories, interactive activities and games.

• ATOMS, by startup Seamless Toy Company, are one of the latest electronic construction kits that work with Lego, as well as many other construction toys. ATOMS can be controlled by a mobile device and vice-versa The founder of Seamless Toy Company holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon and MIT.

While there are a number of venture capital firms that have helped grow Boulder businesses, two investment groups in particular are behind some of these companies. Incubator group Techstars, which has a significant presence in Boulder, as well as many other cities in the US, and venture investment company the Foundry Group were both founded by Brad Feld. He is particularly interested in growing the digital startup scene in Boulder. Feld believes in an entrepreneurial ecosystem, a vision he’s dubbed as the “Boulder Thesis, ” which suggests that an environment needs a mix of old and new entrepreneurs, inclusive of all kinds of business experience and ability. The ecosystem thrives on meetups, hackathons, conferences, professional get-togethers and business pitch events.

KELOWNA, CANADA

Located roughly 240 miles east of Vancouver and 310 miles northeast of Seattle, Canada’s Kelowna is similar in size to Boulder and has the beginnings of the same entrepreneurial ingredients. A number of seasoned local entrepreneurs have turned their interests toward investing in local technology startups, many of which revolve around videogames, animation, social media and virtual worlds. In terms of local kidtech, the success story of Club Penguin, which was acquired by Disney in 2007, plays an important role in Kelowna. As with other large investment locations, an established leader in the area will often result in the appearance of many small startups with a similar interest over time. High-profile former employees include the likes of Club Penguin’s co-founders, who have moved on to start some of these new companies:

• Hyper Hippo is one such Kelowna startup founded by Club Penguin co-founder Lance Priebe. While Hyper Hippo is a game development company, it also recently launched a new immersive virtual world for kids called Mech Mice. (Photo above is of a Hyper Hippo online game.)

• Lane Merrifield is another co-founder of Club Penguin. He recently left Disney to start a new business called Fresh Grade, which develops classroom management and assessment products that teachers and parents can use to access up-to-the-minute information about their students through a mobile device.

• Just Be Friends is a local-social education platform that connects parents, kids, neighbors and schools to help strengthen local communities. Founded by Janice Taylor, who has appeared on Oprah, the startup initially launched in San Francisco but eventually moved to Kelowna.

• A great strength of Club Penguin is its child-safe chat-filtering technology. The former chat technology specialists for the company started a new online chat-filtering business called Two Hat Security, also known in the industry as PottyMouth, to offer other global kid-focused businesses safe online chat technologies.

Accelerate Okanagan is one local organization that is advancing much of the startup activity in the region. Now in its third year, Accelerate is an incubator for fledgling businesses, and its only requirement is that companies pay a $200 per month assistance fee and monthly rent for office space. Once paid, a host of resources become available, including mentorship, legal advice, business advice, access to talent, and cross-collaboration with other Accelerate Okanagan businesses. The incubator also receives government funding. Currently, roughly 50% of the revenue needed to support incubator initiatives comes from government money, but it’s anticipated that this percentage will drop year over year. In the last two years, Accelerate Okanagan has raised more than $8 million from local businesses and entrepreneurs to advance startups, as well as help fund local area meetings and get-togethers. Unlike other incubators, Accelerate Okanagan does not ask for any equity, which is a rare opportunity—and one that is helping about eight kid-focused businesses right now. Accelerate Okanagan is also watching the growing community of startup successes in Boulder, and has similar plans to expand its own model throughout British Columbia, much in the same way that Techstars has throughout the US.

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

Believe it. The Pittsburgh community is playing its part in the startup scene—and it’s brilliant. Pittsburgh also happens to be home to renowned children’s television favorite, Mister Rogers, which is a great place to start the city’s story.

Every two years, a local event called FredForward honors the work and memory of Fred Rogers and brings together some of the greatest minds in children’s media, child development, kid-focused policy initiatives and kid media moguls.

In 2007, Gregg Behr, the executive director of The Grable Foundation, presented the idea for the Kids+Creativity Network, bringing together the region’s educators with technologists, gamers, and roboticists to re-imagining Pittsburgh as Kidsburgh. Since then, the notion has gained attention and support from local businesses, community leaders and foundations that include the Benedum, Hillman, McCune, Pittsburgh, and MacArthur foundations. The network has grown to nearly 2, 000 strong—and kidtech and largely edtech-focused startups are starting to bloom.

While on a somewhat smaller venture investment scale than Boulder and Kelowna, though it has three times the population of both cities, Pittsburgh’s startups, nonprofits and schools can collectively receive grants and services from such intermediaries and accelerators as the Sprout Fund, the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, Innovation Works, and the Thrill Mill. The Sprout Fund, for instance, offers grants that range from $1, 000 to $15, 000 six times a year that help carry out the idea that will advance the interests of digital, maker, and STEAM learning.

Just one of many examples of this kind of grant/community collaboration in action, a for-profit startup called Zulama, working with the local educational non-profit Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU) developed a program for 9th and 10th graders called the Game Design Boot Camp. Together they defined an unbelievable opportunity for high school students to explore game design. Working with game design experts, students learned how to develop their own original games and received high school credit for completing the program. AIU was the primary grant holder who promoted the opportunity to 42 different school districts. Zulama provided expertise, talent, content and curriculum to students. The grant offered scholarships for 20 students, though more than 75 teens applied.

For its part, Carnegie Mellon University encourages entrepreneurship through CMU faculty and students, making it easier for them to spinoff their own tech businesses. The university implemented a technology transfer program called “Five percent, and go in peace” that allows faculty and student spinoffs to use intellectual property owned by the school for a 5% stake in the startup’s future success. Looking around the Pittsburgh area, it’s an incredibly successful program that spawned a record 36 new companies in 2013 alone. Here are some notable newcomers to Kidsburgh:

• BirdBrain Technologies sells electronics kits where kids combine arts & crafts materials to create their own programmable robots. BirdBrain is also a Carnegie Mellon spinoff. At press time, BirdBrain just launched a Kickstarter campaign for its new electronics kit, the Hummingbird Duo, and has exceeded it’s goal with 16 days left. (Photo above is of a BirdBrain crafting and robotics kit.)

• Digital Dream Labs mixes programming and video game controls. Digital Dream Labs developed physical puzzle pieces that are placed strategically on a holding tray. Each puzzle piece contains instructions that are sent wirelessly to a tablet or mobile device to control a videogame. All three Digital Dream Labs founders are Carnegie Mellon graduates.

• Zulama is an online community for teens that helps teach design, programming and art creation for videogames. Zulama also develops many high-interest online courses in subjects teens are passionate and have great interest in.

• GenevaMars develops story-based, character-driven learning apps that are fun and educational for kids. Its team is made up of artists, producers and educators from Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh and the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

GOING NATIVE

Any city that has a strong entrepreneurial environment will often host startup events throughout the year, offering insights and wisdom on how to fund your business. During one recent startup event in Silicon Valley called The Perfect Pitch: Connecting with Investors, about 120 entrepreneurs attended looking for a leg up on how to grow their businesses to the next level.

“If you are from outside the area I recommend that you ‘go native, '” says Bill Reichert, the Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, a venture funding company co-founded by industry giant and evangelist Guy Kawasaki. “One of the great things about Silicon Valley is if you come here we will embrace you, we will love you, and we will smile, but if you are a visitor, we will not fund you. If you’re serious about wanting to plug in to Silicon Valley, that’s what I mean by saying ‘go native.'”

There is an element of truth to going native, at least in terms of securing seed funding or joining an incubator to get a kidtech idea off the ground. Going native is not an absolute, but it does appear to make a difference in getting started. Can an outsider succeed in one of these regions? Maybe, but digging down into who gets funded and who doesn’t, going native appears to be a very attractive component for investors. Investors like the idea of being connected, which can be a hard thing to do from afar.

NOTEWORTHY MENTIONS

There are a few businesses that don’t fall cleanly under the category of kidtech, or do not hail from one of the above mentioned cities, but they are kid-related businesses worth noting.

• Washington, DC-based Zoobean launched in 2012 and is a parent-driven online recommendation service that curates apps and books for children. The company also recently made a big splash on the reality startup show Shark Tank. Zoobean landed $250, OOO from one of the show’s investors, Mark Cuban, bringing its current fundraising tally to $1.2 million.

• Nix Hydra is a teen girl gaming company based in Los Angeles that has attracted a lot of attention with its first app release called Egg Baby which has been downloaded nine million times. The company just landed $5 million from the Foundry Group.

• Another recently funded and very interesting startup is a company called Pley, founded in 2012. What’s Pley’s million dollar idea? (Or their $6.7 million venture backed idea?) Renting Lego kits. Yup. Think Netflix, but with Lego.

• Fitwits is a non-tech kids company in Pittsburgh. Their specialty is selling card-based games that encourage kids through play to make healthy eating choices.

• Another business with an active, high-profile Kickstarter campaign is from LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow fame. His L.A.-based eBook business, RR Kids, was looking to raise more than $1 million to expand its subscription-based children’s eBook offerings. At press time, RR Kids had exceeded its goal more than three times over.

• And a noteworthy group of companies; First, you’re probably familiar with the much talked about girl-empowerment toy company GoldieBlox. They had a massive hit through Kickstarter, raising almost $289, 000. GoldieBlox also won a national startup competition for a 30 second spot on the Superbowl. Well, there must be something going on just outside of San Francisco area where GoldieBlox is located. Two other local girl-powered, construction-based toy companies also launched around the same time, and also landed seed funding through Kickstarter. Roominate landed almost $86, 000 and Build & Imagine captured $30, 000.

LESSONS LEARNED

So what is it that’s needed for a kidtech business to grow and succeed? Tenacity, focus, business endurance in the face of incredible odds, leadership skills, creativity, a passion for kids. The answer includes all of that, but so much more.

While any kid business can succeed in any location on the planet, Boulder, Kelowna, and Pittsburgh, as well as the bigger funding locations like San Francisco and New York City, all of these areas provide invaluable support structures, which are a main ingredient needed for kidtech businesses to succeed. Venture funding, angel investment, foundation grants, friends and family fundraising, and even local and federal government supports (including tax incentives) are some very important ingredients as well. Access to other entrepreneurs that have an understanding of your industry’s needs, who can share experiences and toss about new ideas. Access to local colleges and universities, where not only talent and innovation can spur from, but also new business spinoffs as well. Ultimately, the invaluable support of an understanding community, both business and non-business alike, may be the most vital ingredient. Toss all of these items together in a large bowl, sprinkle with a wish, a prayer, some blood, sweat and tears, then serve. If the combination does not show early signs of success, start over, mix together again, but this time add a larger scoop of community.

[The following is an article I wrote that appeared on the Fred Rogers Center blog, March 18, 2014.]

It’s been quite a week in the children’s media world. While preparing for the week ahead last Sunday, I noticed an article on Huffington Post that was spreading virally through my friends on Facebook. The article was a call to ban all hand-held devices from children under the age of 12. Backing up the claim, the author cited a long list of research on why kids should not engage with screen media at all.

Unfortunately, she misread much of the research by making that cardinal error in research of confusing correlation with cause. For example, several studies have looked at ADHD and media use with children, and some have found a link between the two. But that doesn’t mean media causes ADHD. Maybe instead children who have been diagnosed with ADHD have a greater interest in media consumption, or there might be some third unknown factor that is the real root of the problem. This mistake is an all too often occurrence, especially with many sensational headline seeking journalists.

On top of this, she offered not a single mention of anything positive about screen media.

Shortly after the article was posted, two great responses to this piece were published. The first was by David Kleeman, Glenda Revelle and Jessica Taylor Piotrowski entitled 10 Reasons Why We Need Research Literacy, Not Scare Columns and the second was by Melinda Wenner Moyer of Slate called Hands Off My Kid’s iPad: A Huffington Post Blogger’s Shaky Case for Banning Hand-held Devices for Children. Both articles go through the original claims, piece by piece, and demonstrate what is wrong with the original argument.

While all of this was going on, a noteworthy voice from the children’s media research world, Dimitri Christakis, serendipitously published an opinion called Interactive Media Use at Younger Than the Age of 2 Years – Time to Rethink the American Academy of Pediatrics Guideline? You may be unfamiliar with Christakis’ work, but you probably know its impact. Years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a warning to parents that they should not allow their children under age 2 to engage in screen media use at all, and they should limit the screen time of children under age 3. Christakis’ earlier work helped shape this recommendation. In the meantime, parents who do let their children use their smartphone or tablet have been beating themselves up, feeling like terrible, horrible, no good, very bad parents.

Well, Christakis is now suggesting that there may very well be important differences between linear media use (also known as television) and interactive media (like apps that are used on smartphones and tablets.) While more research is still needed, his statement is a giant first step to recognizing that maybe, just maybe, smartphones and tablets can be a benefit to early learning in some circumstances.

With that said, parents reading this, please know that while not all screens are created equal, the same is true for interactive content. Not all apps for kids that claim they are helpful are good for your child. However, a smaller number of carefully and thoughtfully developed products, often ones that are guided by research and testing, can be of benefit to young children.

So how do you tell the difference? Here’s a few commonsense recommendations to help guide you:

[The following is an article I wrote for the Feb. 27, 2014 issue of KidScreen.]

I’m not a betting guy. But if you asked me to wager that this year’s crop of tech toys would be compelling, playful and desirable, I probably would have bet against you.

Historically, tech and play have not co-existed so well together in the toy world. In the past, numerous tech toy misses resulted in large financial losses as the emphasis was often placed incorrectly on technology at the expense of play. This includes a large cohort of apps created by toy companies over the last two years. But this year was different. At this month’s New York Toy Fair, apps had greater play appeal, any accompanying physical element was better integrated into the play experience, the tech was not forced and focus was appropriately placed on fun.

Common elements of the most successful tech toys often included the use of a digital camera, numerous sensors and in some cases even effective use of augmented reality. Gone are the days of the “watch me” toy, which are animatronic, robotic toys that are just no fun to watch. Also gone are products that relied on confusing second screens. Tech play for tech’s sake has been replaced with the motto “fun first, tech second.”

With that in mind, the following three newcomers have the potential to be serious trailblazers in the year ahead:

WikiBear by Commonwealth Toy (Video link)

This was the talk of the show. One simple way to describe WikiBear is by the nickname it earned at the show, Siri Bear. Imagine a child talking to WikiBear, asking it endless questions. “How far away is the moon?” “Who is the current president of the US?” “Where is the nearest library?” Ask WikiBear a question, any question, and it will provide an answer by scouring the web for a response. Narration from the bear has a friendly conversational tone, not a cold and clinical response. WikiBear relies on speech recognition technologies (a major challenge with children’s voices) and requires a live wireless web connection. It also uses a lot of back-end language and conversation smarts. WikiBear will be available in the fall and a suggested retail price has yet to be confirmed. However, Commonwealth believes it will be somewhere between $59.95 and $69.95. At this price, adults could even use WikiBear as an inexpensive therapist.

Ozobot by Evollve (Video link)

Ozobot is a small roving robot, about the size of a lime. It has a built-in optical reader on its base that not only follows a drawn line path on paper, or on a tablet, but it can also interpret different colored patterns. One set of colored dots can make Ozobot spin, another make it go faster, or slower, or flash its lights. In a sense, there is a tiny bit of programming fun the user can create by drawing each path with different colored dots. Six free single player and multiplayer game apps will be available at launch, which will be in August for a cost of $59.95.

Spy Gear Video Glasses (Video link)

Can’t see past the $1, 500 Google Glass price tag? Spin Master has released its own version called Spy Gear Video Glasses for just under $30. The device will let kids secretly capture up to 20 minutes of video or up to 2, 000 photos. These specs look a lot less geeky than Google Glass, and they are already available in stores.

Other noteworthy tech toys that were the topic of conversation at the show were a number of game-based learning apps by a Silicon Valley startup called Tangible Play. So too were block-like, robotic construction kits called MOSS by Molecular Robotics, whose creations can be controlled through an app. Fun, playful and inexpensive digital dice by eDiceToys caught my eye, as did a compelling fashion designer creativity kit and app called My Virtual Fashion Show by Crayola.

Now that the toy industry is starting to get the upper hand on digital play, you won’t have to wait until next year’s Toy Fair to see advances with tech toys or apps. Unlike Toy Fair in years past, advances with digital play will start to appear more frequently. I predict you will start to see new, innovative, tech toy products and apps announced again as early as next month.

[Scott Traylor is the founder and CEO of Boston-based 360KID, a digital development company specializing in creating interactive products for children as a service.]