Robin Raskin and Warren Buckleitner.

Warren Buckleitner and Robin Raskin give you a few minutes to meet each other and get comfortable in your kiddie shoes. We’ll give you the pop quiz and stats on current lingo, culture and trends. We’ll put some of the hottest sellers of the holidays to the test.  Disney Infinity, Activision Skylanders, WowWee’s latest, Kurio’s newest, and some not-to-be-missed dueling demos.

As the former CEO of Toys“R”Us and the current CEO of LeapFrog, John Barbour has seen it all, from awards to recalls, from market disasters to blockbuster hits. He’ll share his dos and don’ts for serving and surviving in the kids’ industry.

Mary Couzin, the creator of the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, knows that being an inventor has its challenges. With the help of  the most influential inventors in the business including an AR company, software game developers and a big toy-company, she’ll be leading the Digital Inventor’s Workshop, helping us wind our way through the complexities of everything from financing to packaging, store presence to patents.

Tom Dusenberry, former CEO of Hasbro, and our favorite investor/mentor, has a keen eye for the future. He’ll bring five new products from across the kids’ spectrum to the stage. Dusenberry’s unique analysis of the kids’ marketplace will start you thinking about your next move, the maker revolution and entrepreneurial/experiential learning. Panelists will discuss 3D printing, robotics, tweens and teens, app toys and even new playground experiences. 

We call kids constructivist constructors. They learn best by tinkering, creating and exploring. Makers embrace some of the most exciting products of the season: robotics, action toys, construction sets, and creative tool kits. The opportunities to blend traditional kids play with the maker mentality are astounding. Meet some of the top maker experts in the world.  Extra benefit?  The maker spirit is going to create a reinvigorated retail marketplace and a more fruitful workplace. Find out how.

Gadgets from smart glasses to smart watches are making an impact on the kids’ industry at CES this year. There are now about fifty tablets just made for kids, with smart glasses, smart watches, and other devices on the way. Combine these hardware devices with multi-touch, collaborative hangouts, augmented reality and you’ve got a new, more portable, normal. See it first at CES. 

For American parents with young children living at home, tablet ownership has risen from 26 percent in April 2012 to 50 percent in May 2013, according to Pew Research Center’s 2013 Tablet Ownership report. Join executives behind the market-leading Kurio brand as they share how they’ve served the needs of this rapidly growing segment in the U.S. and abroad, announce a new partnership that will take kids’ tablets to the next level, and discuss what the future looks like for kids’ tablets.

David Pogue is one of the keenest observers of technology. His observations take many forms: a tech column for the New York Times, Scientific American, the host of “NOVA ScienceNow” and other science shows on PBS, and he’s been a correspondent for “CBS Sunday Morning” since 2002. Author of the famous “Missing Manuals,” composer of some of the cleverest ditties about technology ever sung, and an all round polymath, Pogue’s fourth visit to Kids@Play/Mommytech gives us another piece of the Pogue-ian puzzle.

Hunting down a best-of-breed app is not a job for the faint hearted. Kids couldn’t care less if it’s an app, a book, or a video—to them its media. Some of the most exciting things we’ve seen on the app front are new ways to get great content to kids via channels, subscriptions or aggregate models. Take a peek at new strategies to get kids on the app-wagon and learn where you can fit in.

Nancy MacIntyre, CEO of Fingerprint, understands the ups and downs of building a kids’ mobile technology brand. She’s navigated through the very crowded kids’ mobile app space in order to find the right business strategy. She’ll share her vision on why building a kid-centric network of apps is a far more effective strategy than launching one app at a time. She’ll be joined by her latest business partner, Samsung, to unveil their upcoming project.

Andrea Smith, executive producer at MommyTech TV introduces us to women who define today’s entrepreneurial spirit.  Find out what they know that you should.   

Whether you’ve grown up with social media, or you came to it later, social networking changes everything. And it changes on a daily basis. Randi Zuckerberg, author and founder of dotcomplicated.com talks to us about the wild ride we’re all taking on the dotcomplicated highway. Her site helps us find the new normal and maintain balance in our wired lives.

Lost keys, dirty laundry, messy floors, boring lighting and tinny music. The mundane world of domestic life will be turned on its head thanks to the Internet of Things—the ability of everything to have an IP address. Join us as we showcase five killer “things.”

As digital becomes the lifeblood of our children, we need some way to reconcile the fact that they lack some of the cognitive development skills to handle themselves appropriately. We talk to the top companies wrestling with keeping kids safely entertained including Facebook and other social networks.

Get a sneak peek at the highlights from our FashionWare show and hear from the arbiters of fashion-meets-function in wearable, embedded and new technologies. From glitz and glitter, to new fabrics and functionality, the fashionable woman is entering the tech world fast.