Although CES 2014 was my first, I felt I learned a lot from that experience. And since I've been told I'm a pretty smart guy, I devised a plan to make CES 2015 even more efficient. Maybe this time I wouldn't end up with a blistered limp by the end of the week (I didn't!). But this meant passing up on any scheduled booth meeting, minimizing backtracking across the show floors, and using buses as breaks to rest my soles. With this in mind, I had high expectations to squeeze out more for myself, like a glorified tech glutton.
Naturally, things didn't go quite as planned.
CES was so much bigger this year that my time went from being 'premium' to being borrowed. Compared to my vision of how I anticipated things to pan out, it was kind of a bummer. Although I can always hit up people via email in order to set phone/video conversations with company CEOs or managers, the dynamic is so different in person. There is a lot more to be had from keen questions when the answers come from breath and blood.
It was real (notice how someone checked), but never I saw a single slice go out!
Just as last year (and likely each year to come), breakfast consisted of a single piece of fruit and an energy drink, consumed during my march to the closest free bus to the LVCC.
Aside from water during the day, that was it for me until the free dinner buffets at Pepcom, Showstoppers, and Western Digital's 45th anniversary party. Unhealthy, right? Maybe. But breakfast and lunch lines are luxuries for those with time on their hands.
My apologies go out to all those companies who got stuck in the Palazzo suites and didn't get much foot traffic. It's a really craptastic place to be, because it's the absolute opposite of convenient. The same could be said about the Venetian's floors packed with high performance audio, but at least I can make good use of my time there. Even from the Sands Expo, it can take about 10 minutes to reach either tower's elevators. Tick tock.
There were way more overseas companies (e.g. Shenzhen, Guangzhou) this year, and they no longer just rimmed the outskirts of halls. Some had primo locations and sizeable booths. Aside from the extra walking spent to reach something more interesting, I didn't mind most of them – not even the booths showcasing a wide variety of products that looked all too similar to everything else. What I didn't care for in particular was that 'flea market' vibe given off by some. Unless you were a buyer or distributor, some people looked and/or talked to you as if you were in the way of an…
Continue reading CES 2015 Wrap-Up: Trends and expectations (part 1)
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