Its intense. The day starts at 5am, working with the UK office, meetings mean I'm done with my normal work and off to the show by 9am, fighting the monorail queues that seem to get bigger every year, and worse if you stay at Paris!
The show, resplendent in the increased decorations of future global economic recover though, is something else! A staggering 2700 exhibitors, using 1.6m sqft of space, ranging from the old school heavy weights of Sony, to the last week start-ups of iChair.
Celebs are on hand, Ozzy Ozborne makes an appearance in the iLounge, right next to the Jaybird stand, and while posing for pictures, turns a blind eye to the draft beers on supply. Looking as flummoxed upon departure as he did on arrival, Ozzy likes his "tech" and wonders off, cheque in pocket no doubt.
The chinese whispers (and not just concening which technology looks best to backwards engineer this year) flourish, as more Celebs are spotted.
A headphone brand called Fanny Wang has popped up and with more connotations, double entendres than you could shake a stick at, a law suit from Monster, and invites for a penthouse party at Trump Tower, I'm liking their style, and controversial name, all part of the marketing genius of their CEO, a spectacular character of spun of business acumen, American ambition, and intellectual prowess.
Bluetooth innovation finally lives up to the hype, as Jaybird finally have brought the Bluebud to market! Indeed, with a launch date of April 2011 in the UK, headphone fans are rightly in a frenzy as their "must-have " product is about to finally go on sale. Look, touch, feel, their products are on hand, and over her shortly.
Tablets - wow! Those who thought the iPad was a "oversized" iPhone - shame on you. 18 months on and we have 87 tablets launching from 37 manufacturers. Desktops are so last year.....
iPad accessories, well they are everywhere - use it with your piano, make it a karaoke evening, play old Atari games on the new iCade - you name it, if you can think of it, there is a new use for iPad. I wonder if it featured as heavily at the other convention in town?
Clearly mid-way through the trip the sleep deprevation, entertainment, and amount of oxygen fed to me in the Casinos was hitting home. I came across this interesting mission statement from Joby - took the pic for the office;
Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Sharp, LG all clamber for the CES "Daddy of the show award". And by that the award for the company most likely to have written off a small countries debt building and stocking and staffing their stands.
3d TV, meets connected home, meets tablet, meets IPTV, meets more on demand, meets 3D cameras, meets 3d camcorders, meets the next gen non-glasses TV's. The size, the scale, the colour and the pizazz are almost as impressive as the speed of development in the last 12 months.
Collect the 2011 CES International Daily (well twice daily) and the product headlines scream loud and proud.
Above all though what stood out at CES for me was the amount of people there trying to realise their dreams, find their products, company's and ambitions a platform for the future. What was so evidently on display is something that was missing last year. The "can do" spirit has returned, optimism is back, and start-ups are back fighting their way in to small stands in the halls.
For me the little companies were the stars of the show. Good luck to them all.
As for me, back to sleep, back to my bed, back to work fully inspired for 2011 and all that it may bring. Fruit and veg have been treated with a new lust, since the Vegas week, and i slept more in 2 days than I did in 6 being there. But hey, isnt that what Vegas is all about"baby"?(as they would add in if i was still in LV)
Roll on 2012, Jan 10-13th, at the LVCC again, but just Tuesday to Friday - might be rude till leave before Monday!
