Although our talk2myShirt coverage is very seldom mentioning so called ‘plastic electronics’ this field is highly interesting to wearable electronic as it focuses to move electronic functions from hard surface substrate to flexible, thin-film carrier mediums.

Thin and flexible electronic is next to other applications highly interesting for the integration into clothing as it can be laminated to conventional textiles and connected via conductive yarn traces to form a more complex electronic functionality.

To keep up with the latest development in the plastic electronic area I suggest to add to your knowledge library +Plastic Electronics a magazine with online presents covering cutting edge plastic electronic developments and market analysis.

You can even find a section for Smart Fabrics which highlights plastic electronics developments specifically suitable for wearable electronic applications.

What’s more, the current issue 2.6 of the +Plastic Electronics Magazine focuses on Smart Fabrics. A comprehensive article covers the smart textile developments at Textronics and Adidas. The Plugged-In section covers the different areas of commercialization highlighting the latest trends and developments, as well as discussing how the market will change in the coming years.

A magazine full of wearable electronic infos – our favorite topic. Visitors to the Smart Fabrics conference in Miami, Florida on 14-16 April will get a complimentary copy of this magazine. You have the choice, visit Smart Fabrics conference or click over to get a subscription to +Plastic Electronics.

A reminder for the upcoming Smart Fabrics conference which will take place between April 14 – 16 in Miami, Florida.

This years event promises to be even more interesting than the previous conferences. A long list of interesting speaker covering the research, development, design and business aspects of wearable electronics will ensure a diverse spectrum of knowledge sharing and insights into wearable electronics presents and future perspectives.

Over two days three parallel sessions will provide attendants the choices to cherry-pick the personally most interesting sessions to listen and to participate in discussion.

The first day (Apr. 14) is reserved for an in-depth seminar by Janet Hansen about Wearable Electronics for Illuminated Costumes and Clothing.

IntertechPira could manage to get Alison Lewis, owner and editor of iHeartSwitch.com and author of Switch Craft a wearable electronic craft book containing 20 inspirational eTextile DIY projects on the speaker list.

Click over to Smart Fabrics for the complete agenda with speaker names and topics that will be covered in these highly charged days around wearable electronics.

Over the past few years highly interesting events around wearable electronic emerged or established themselves as a yearly focus point for the wearable electronic community/business.

One of the very first wearable electronic events is the Smart Fabrics Conference which first took place in 2005 in Barcelona, Spain. Since that day, Smart Fabrics became THE highlight in the wearable electronic calendar attracting top experts as conference speaker.

This years Smart Fabrics which is going into its 6th year, takes place between April 14 – 16 in Miami, Florida. The speaker list represents the who-is-who in wearable electronic, too long to post here but you can check it out on the Smart Fabrics Website.

The interesting aspect on the Smart Fabrics is the selection of topics which are covered in plenary sessions in the morning and breakout session in the afternoon. The topics include views on the business perspectives, manufacturing and product development, regulatory requirements as well as IP landscape and technology developments.

Two pre conference seminars will be held on April 14th. Janet Hansen will talk  about Wearable Electronics for Illuminated Costumes and Clothing and Leah Buechley will share her observations and experiences about the eTextile Do It Yourself movement.

As the time for the Smart Fabrics conference come closer I will post more details. For now, check out the full program on the Smart Textiles site and mark your calendar for this high profile event.

In case you wonder – yes, talk2myShirt will be there, prepared for 3 days of no sleep but networking, chatting and blogging.

The clock started ticking again for the preparations to the 6th Annual Smart Fabrics 2010 conference which will take place from April 14 – 16 in Miami, Florida.

Organized by IntertechPira, the Smart Fabrics conference is one of the most important events in the wearable electronic calendar as it combines research, innovation, business and industry. No other event around wearable electronic can attract more than 150 key player from 24 countries to share views, know-how and experiences under the same roof.

This conference will be of particular interest for people involved in (soft)electronics, textiles, medical, sporting equipment, fashion, and wireless communication as well as military/space agencies and the investment community.

Interested to take an active role in the Smart Fabrics 2010 conference? IntertechPira is now accepting submissions for presentations.

The conference focus is on business issues facing the industry, including market size and growth, case studies, technological advances and hurdles, applications by industry, and design innovations.

Abstracts must be received by November 18, 2009 and may be submitted by fax: +1 207 781 2150 or email: Barbara.rojas@pira-international.com

You can also suggest topic ideas for preconference seminars which are classroom style workshops intended for 20-30 participants. They are designed to provide ample time for in-depth discussion, questions and answers, and student-instructor interaction.

talk2myShirt will keep you updated on a regular basis about the conference preparation until the Smart Fabrics starts in April 2010.

Our next prototype introduction for the ‘Smart Textile Salon‘, a jointed European workshop organized by the European projects SysTex and Proetex comes from Riccardo Marchesi, Managing Director of InnTex, an Italian based textiles and textiles machinery company which is exploring the new area of Smart Textiles.

Riccardo will present the Pressure activated, Electroluminescent (EL) fabrics he is working on. The specialty of his eTextiles is the use of industrial knitting machines. During the knitting process EL yarns and stainless steel wires are incorporated into the fabric knitting. This process allows the production of larger quantities at relatively low cost.

The knitting machine inserts automatically the EL yarn along the wrap direction. Two side pockets at the edges of the fabric contains the pressure sensitive part where very thin stainless steel or copper wires are added during the knitting process. The two layers of conductive material are separated by a layer of polyester yarn creating a three dimensional knitted fabric.

A possible, sensible use for such fabric could be the production of escape route lightning systems. A floor covered with this smart fabrics could, in emergency cases or as guiding system in larger buildings, sense where people walk and in with direction to light up the part people will have to go next.

The annually held Smart Fabrics conference organized by IntertechPira is one of the biggest events in the wearable electronic business calendar.

This years Smart Fabrics was help in Rome, Italy, the center of the world of fashion.

The 2009 edition has seen an expansion in terms of information diversity as well as in the choices visitors got offered on specific seminars which where run in parallel covering the academia, industry developments and consumer applications represented by top brands.

The event was very well organized with a program rich on topics, attracting a great mix of international visitors and presenters demonstrating the world wide interest into wearable technology developments.

Nevertheless there is room for improvement for future events: some attendancees, especially from the business sector who followed Smart Fabrics since it’s first edition in 2005, left the event with mixed feelings. Seeing new, technological advancements on one hand but not seeing yet the ‘break through’ business success on the other hand is for some brands a point of attention if not concern.

Many Smart Fabrics attendancees told me the atmosphere right now is like everyone is waiting for the ‘killer application’, the application that brings success and huge volumes overnight.

Now I am not claiming to have the answer how the ‘killer application’ will look, I do have opinions on how such application could look like and my view is to offer solutions to consumer which captivate, excite in order to be accepted broadly. Wearable technologies play a vital part in such solution but they are not the solution, the ‘killer-app’ in itself.

Having said this, I think there are still a lot of opportunities to be discovered and explored in the field of wearable technologies and let’s plan how the Smart Fabrics 2010 which is already under construction and set for April in Miami can once again play a key role in bringing together the best and most knowledgeable, the most innovative and creative companies and individuals together to work out what the ‘killer-app’ of wearable electronic will be.

At times, nano-whatever seems to solve all problems the world is suffering from. Nano has the sound of a ‘magic spell’ on it.

No wonder that ‘nanofication’ of textiles was one of the first areas nano technology found early commercial applications. One of the most prominent nano-textile applications is the impregnation (coating) of fibers and textiles to make them, thanks to nano technology, wrinkle free or water repellent or stain resistant, dirt repellent – just to name a few.

Using nano technology to ‘electrify’ textiles to make ‘smart textiles’ is a fiercely field of research.

According an article in the latest issue of MIT‘s Technology Review Magazine professor Nicholas Kotov at the University of Michigan developed a new and it seems very promising ‘nanofication’ technique of coating textiles with carbon nano-tubes transforming them to electronic sensors that look and feel like ordinary cotton.

Carbon nanotubes are highly conductive and if molecules such as antibodies are anchored to their surface, they can also serve as very sensitive chemical detectors by changing the nanutobe’s electrical resistance.

Existing ‘nanofication’ processes either degrade the sensitivity of treated textiles or require a very complex and time consuming process. Professor Nicholas Kotov developed a simplified method to apply carbon nanotubes on complex three-dimensional surfaces such as a cotton thread by dipping yarn or textiles into the magical ‘nanofication’ liquid.

‘This method results in a sleek, powerful, and much more wearable alternative to complex intelligent textiles that incorporate heavy, bulky optical fibers or corrosion prone metal wires.’

I am not an expert in nano technologies but judging on the description of this process and looking to the fast adoption speed of nano technologies for textiles, Professor Kotov’s  development could be become abailable soon which in turn could bring big advanvements  to the interactive fashion industry.

Check out the full story at Technology Review.

The 5th Smart Fabrics conference is just around the corner, taking place between March 10-12 at the Holiday Inn Rome West Hotel in Rome, Italy.

IntertechPira established with the annual Smart Fabrics conference a strong basis for the wearable electronic community back in 2005 which is expending every year since then.

One can observe a core group of individuals, organizations and companies participating every year forming the basis and core value of this event.

The advantage of having a strong foundation provided by this regular participants creates a stable environment to which new members can look up and grow in this field.

The value of participation is manifold: refreshing relations and information exchange with the established community and getting ‘exposed’ to new and fresh ideas from first time contributors and visitors to this event.

The rich mix of diverse participants and various topics covered will create a vibrant atmosphere which can lead to new insights, possibly new cooperation’s and partnerships.

If you haven’t registered yet, it’s time now to put the Smart Fabrics conference into your agenda and sign up.

IntertechPira released the final program details for its 5th Smart Fabrics conference which takes center stage from March 10-12 at the Holiday Inn Rome West Hotel in Rome, Italy.

The fifth edition of the Smart Fabrics conference is packed full with high profile speakers and presentations. To serve the growing number of available information and interests, this years conference will feature parallel sessions focusing on topics of Business Perspective chaired by Stacey Burr from Textronics, Visionary Applications chaired by Martijn Krans from Philips and the Technology and Innovation session chaired by Danilo de Rosi Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Pisa.

The conference is held on March 11 and 12 with a plenary session in the morning and the above listed parallel sessions in the afternoon. It will be a tough decision to be made for visitors which of those topics to visit as all of them have experts from the top wearable electronic companies and institutes lines up.

A special highlight is the preceding half-day workshop on March 10 lead by Maksim Skorobogatiy from the University of Montreal and Kathy Schicker (we have posted about her ‘weaving with light‘) from Central Saint Martins College, London will get an insight in the findings of the collaboration between these two institutions on photonic textiles.

You still can claim an early bird 10% discount when booking before Jan 30. Check out IntertechPira’s Smart Fabrics conference site or download the full program details.

IntertechPira announced the dates for its 5th Smart Fabrics conference taking place at the Holiday Inn Rome West hotel in Rome on 10 -12 March 2009.

Positioned as a flagship conference in the wearable electronic industry, Smart Fabrics conference visitors can expect again highly interesting presentations from the biggest players in the industry, including Philips Research, Philips Lumalive, Puma, Textronics Inc, European Commission and many more.

“We are putting together three parallel streams of presentations, which will cover a wide range of topics across various markets within the smart fabrics sector,” said Conference Producer, Sofia Aldatz.

The different streams include areas like bio-monitoring systems, revolutionizing wearable electronics and recent developments in the active wear field.

The annually held Smart Fabrics conference became a well-established two day event in the industry expanding its focus in next year’s 5th edition by analyzing the wearable electronic business and on design and science aspects of the smart textiles.

Leading experts of the industry will deliver fundamental presentations appealing to all players throughout the supply chain.

To keep up with the latest technical developments and designs, finding out lucrative opportunities ahead and learning from experiences of pioneering companies, Smart Fabrics 2009 is a wearable electronic event not to be missed!