My CES Wrap up - The Show MUST go on!

On the first day of CES everything was a bit different – no traffic, no huge crowds or long taxi lines, while walking towards the show, a police officer greeted us we greeted him back and said its probably not what you had expected, so little crowd. He replies – what are you talking about? Its way better than what we had last year (for the ones of you that are not regular attendees to CES – the in-person show was canceled due to COVID concerns in 2020).

It’s all a matter of perspective and what you are comparing it to.

Now that the show ended, I can say that for me, even when comparing to the last dozen I attended it was an excellent one.

Let's talk in numbers – instead of the regular 200K+ participants that typically attend the biggest technology event of the year – only 60K actually came. If I need to judge by my own interactions, I would say that a lot less people from Europe, China, Taiwan attended. It was also a bit less condensed in terms of spread – no exhibition on the south hall of the convention center, and I am also not sure regarding other hotels in the periphery.?

When talking to friends that exhibited they all said it's not about the quantity but the quality and the ones that arrived – were high quality. it was the professionals of the industry. You didn’t see a lot of families roaming the show, but all very relevant, focused and well prepared attendees.??

For me this year was also different, it's the first time I attended the show as visitor and not as exhibitor – so was really able to roam the floors, network and was not busy in back-to-back meetings. ?Also here – unlike past year, I met the actual technology people in the booths and was able to create very meaningful dialogs as it was way easier to get attention.

During the show I had the pleasure to speak in Connections Summit – for anyone that is part of the Smart Home/ Security industry – this is one of the best events. I know that Elizabeth and Mindi and the entire Parks team had to face so many last-minute changes in order to keep this conference but it was so worth it. At the conference room of the event or the reception you didn’t feel what I was describing in the first paragraph – you felt as if almost all the industry attended. If I am not mistaken, it was the first in-person event after two years of only virtual and all together – both CES and Connections prove to me what I knew by fact before – there is no real substitute to the face-to-face meetings, the interaction with the people and with the technology.

For an industry that in order to progress rely a lot on successful partnerships, shows like CES are crucial.

I think Steve Jobs was quoted in the past "There's a temptation in our network age to think that ideas can be developed by emails and ichats – Its crazy, Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you say 'wow" and soon enough you're kicking all sort of ideas." – this is the essence of CES for me.??

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