Totem Tuesday #100: Celebrating Our Global Festival Community

• We've just passed 41,000 users out there, and sentiment is at an all-time high. You've seen it yourself in those 100 comments above. 
  
  
• We have dozens of budding partnerships with prominent event organizers and global brands.
  
  
• We're reducing many of our international shipping rates by as much as 60%... (the UK is already adjusted, BTW! FINALLY 🥳)
  
  
• EDC Orlando next week is shaping up to be Totem's Super Bowl, with the highest adoption and the best product performance to date.
  
  
• In this timeframe, we're also hoping to accomplish a music festival with FULL Totem adoption, and kick off our incredible Crowd Light Shows on a massive scale.

We're still quite a ways away from bringing another flagship product to market, with much more work to do on the current Totem Compass experience, app, accessories lineup, and event integrations ahead of us.

That said, we'd be lying if we said we weren't constantly dreaming of new features only made possible through new hardware.

We get suggestions for hardware improvements nearly every day, and trust me, we read and consider every single one of them. 

Here's a list of features that we're considering for future products... in order of how crazy they are, but none of them are impossible 😉 

Let us know if any of these resonate with you:

• Works across the world: With the help of the Totem Compass App and clever use of cloud-based location data sharing, your Totems could be capable of truly limitless range.
  
  It’s one of our MOST requested features ever... and let’s just say a version of this might be coming a lot sooner than Gen 2 👀
  
  
• Cashless payments: Aside from capturing life’s best moments, what’s the one thing still keeping people tied to their phones at events? Payments!
  
  While many festivals program cashless entry and purchases through wristbands, we want to bring that same convenience into your Totem Compass. Fewer reasons to use your phone, and more reasons to stay fully present in the moment!
  
  
• Haptic feedback (Vibration): While removing this from Gen 1 was an intentional choice, there's no denying its usefulness—especially at festivals with flashing lights everywhere.
  
  As our technology advances, we will be able to add haptics and still retain our full battery life. In fact, we'll be able to have even BETTER battery life 😎
  
  
• Wearable on wrist: Another very popular suggestion! Because we made the Totem so lightweight and easy to wear as a necklace, its form factor is a bit too thick for most people to enjoy wearing on the wrist.
  
  We've since made some rad discoveries that will lead to eventually decreasing the size of the Gen 2 product, allowing for SO much more variety in how you style it.
  
  
• Heart rate alerts/skin to skin contact: This ALMOST made it into the original Totem design. We’re constantly finding ways to reduce phone dependence and make Totems even more useful in emergency situations. Heart rate monitoring or other vitals (via wristband or small neck sensor) is high on our future roadmap, both for wellness and safety.
  
  
• Literally powered by music: Yes, seriously. This might be our favorite idea of all. Believe it or not, it is possible to power small devices using acoustic energy harvesting (AEH) technology.
  
  Read that article to learn more. Imagine your Totem charging from the music around you—a product literally powered by the vibe 🪩💫
  
  It’s futuristic, sustainable, and feels so very Totem!

One of the most fascinating data points we gather from the Totem Compass' anonymous crowd density and positioning logs?

The percentage of time that Totem users spend within "collected distance" of their Bonded peers. It's around 90 PERCENT!

That’s really interesting, because it means that even with a device that gives you the freedom to go anywhere, most people still choose to stay close to their group.

There are a few possible reasons for this.

The obvious one: the Totem Compass was designed to help you keep your closest people close. So, if the device is doing its job, it makes sense that groups stay together.

Looking a little deeper, there could also be ingrained social behavior at play here. Even though the Totem Compass gives you the ability to freely explore, many users still don’t—perhaps because they’re not used to that level of freedom 🤯

There’s also an element of trust. Some users may feel hesitant to fully trust new technology to find loved ones—especially in massive, unpredictable environments.

As we continue improving the Totem Compass, we expect confidence to grow exponentially. We hope this 90% figure will slowly start to drop as people feel empowered to explore 🥳

Over time, we’ll be watching this trend closely. Will people become more adventurous the longer they use Totems? Will certain types of events encourage more independence than others?

Mind if I vent for a second?

The current landscape of technology profits from distraction, at the cost of our quality of life.

Our devices aren’t built for presence. They’re built to profit from addiction.

Every year, parents grow more worried about how much time their kids spend online, on social media, and glued to screens. And year after year, kids lose a little more of what it means to just be kids.

Totem is uniquely positioned to help the world solve this pervasive problem. 

We’ve already seen it happen through the stories you tell us. We've heard stories from customers about how the Totem Compass helped them stay present, stay connected, and actually enjoy their real lives again. Stories like that mean everything to us.

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Part of our mission to reduce phone dependence through smart wearable devices is our plan to become one of the leading advocates for phone-free events, and within the next two years, we want to co-create the first 100% phone-free music festival.

There are already some forward-thinking artists that have run events like this, and with the help of Totem tech, we can make these spaces safer, more immersive and more beautiful than ever before.

When you don’t have to worry about losing your friends (or your phone), you’re free to actually live in the moment—effortlessly and without stress.

So here’s our open invitation: If you're a company that is interested in jumping into the kitchen and cooking with us on this, please email partnerships@totemlabs.com right away.

Talk soon 😎

How to enter:

• Reply to this email and tell us what YOU want to see from Totem over the next 100 weeks.
  
  
• Product improvements, new features, wild tech ideas, event integrations, meetup concepts—anything goes.
  
  
• Write as much as you’d like. We’ll read every single response and give your ideas real consideration. (We may even reach out to chat—we love talking with the Totem Tribe.)
  
  

Deadline: 11:59pm ET on Monday, November 3rd!

And to remind you of the rewards...

Every single response will receive a code for 50% OFF ALL Totem Accessories.

TEN LUCKY WINNERS, picked randomly, will also receive their very own Crystal Clear Totem 🥰 💝

Can't wait to hear from each and every one of you—best of luck!

 "Excellence is not a one day, one week, or one year ideal. It is a constant. There will be days where you don’t feel on top of your game, but the commitment must remain constant. Look around. Any individual or organization achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to be Phil Mickelson at the PGA championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights, no cameras, no glitz or glam. Uncompromising."