Hopefully all of us made it back from the annual NRF Big Show safely. My partner Brian famously coined the phrase that there have always been two different versions of the show – those when a great retail year causes people to come to toast and celebrate, and those when a not-so-great year has them drowning their sorrows together: either way, there’s a lot of drinking!

But this week he also points out that there are two other very different thematic variations of each NRF Big show: those where inspirational technologies dominate, and those where practical use cases take over. For me, at least, this year was the first time I think I’ve ever experienced a perfect combination of the two.

I saw examples of IoT that were far more practical than anything I was expecting from Intel, JDA, SAP and Theatro. I tested out a virtual reality merchandising application in Symphony’s booth that seemed far more plausible in a business sense than anything VR-related on the floor just 12 months ago. I saw robotics from a company called Rightarm that have practical pick and pack applications right now – and are designed specifically for retailers’ small budgets at holiday time in remote locations. I saw some no-brainer barcode scanning solutions from a company called Scandit. I even saw a BI demonstration from a company called Domo that seemed so useful to LOB execs wanting to modernize their business view based on endless new sources of data streams that I mentioned it to nearly anyone who asked what I was seeing. Practical stuff.

But at the same time, the NRF iLab, which I’ve always reserved time to visit in the past, completely transformed itself this year. Yes, it moved its location to a far more prime piece of real estate above the show floor. But what has always felt like leftover whiz-bang stuff from the CES show, intended purely to provide attendees a handful of fun distractions, has morphed into something else entirely. It felt like a Silicon Valley event up there. 3D printers that were rolling from one hipster popup store to another around the city. And a technology called RightSize that will no doubt alter how people order shoes online – and drastically mitigate the returns that plague that industry so heavily. Cool stuff. But also practical stuff?

So I’ll try on my own phrase for the 2 different versions of NRF Big Shows going forward. The cool stuff version vs. the practical stuff version. Here’s to hoping that they are never again mutually-exclusive going forward.

And if you’d like to know the detail around these and all the other technologies we saw last week, please join us for our annual NRF Big Show Debrief Webinar. You get the multiplier effect of having several of us reporting back from so many different parts of the show floor at once. But you also get something unique: you know we’ll be 100% candid about what we saw.

We do hope you join us!