Still the Coolest Tech Show in the West

So it’s well known by now that the New York Times thinks the Consumer Electronics Show is passe.

Somebody must have spiked that Big Apple because these are the same folks who think they’re gonna overtake Silicon Valley as the tech capital of the world.

And that the television is dead (Samsung is selling them at the rate of two units per second).

And that all geeks are guys (women are more often the purchasers of new tech than men).

Sure, CES is the epitome of bad timing. It’s just two weeks after the Christmas season, the biggest consumer goods sale ever devised. We get that.

Sure, it’s too big to be advantageous for any one company. Some large companies have known for a long time that it’s possible to get more exposure by doing big press events elsewhere, rather than battling to rise above the noise.

Sure, it’s still about gadgets, which means hardware, which means not software, which means not trendy or terribly profitable.  Or so the thinking goes.

In a lot of respects, CES is about the most illogical trade show ever devised. Which is funny, because it’s the perpetual brainchild of some of the most gifted engineering minds in the world.

In other respects, though, the show’s enormous success is very much the result of crystal clear thinking.

CES isn’t about the tech you bought this Christmas.  It’s about the tech you haven’t even thought about buying  yet, because you’ve never seen it before.  It’s not on store shelves.

CES isn’t about rising above the noise, either, although everyone will tell you so. In fact, CES is about being there, absorbing the technology, learning from others’ insights, triggering adaptive strategies that will help you move your company in the right directions and avoid the signs of early death.

CES is about ignoring the hype and checking out the technology – something you can’t do from a high rise in New York City. You have to be on the show floor, tinkering with gadgets, trying out new ideas, before you can know for sure what is an emerging tread and what is a flop.

The hype for several years was that 3D television and augmented reality were going to be huge hits. The reality was that neither technology was ready. But you had to be on the show floor to know that.

And it isn’t just whether something is hot at CES that makes the show interesting.

It’s also about how cool tech happens.

The iPad wasn’t a sensation just because it was a tablet. Tablets were 15 years old by the time Apple rolled it out.  Rather, the iPad was a hit because it was an incredible achievement in design and functionality, just as Samsung’s new notebooks are with their razor thin profiles.

Smartphones aren”t continually in the limelight because they are nifty boxes. They’ve also a collaborative powerhouse, representing the best efforts of engineers, developers, designers, and operators.

It’s this collective effort to push the barriers of achievement in design and engineering that makes CES what it is.

It’s the coming out party for some of the coolest tech we will see…next Christmas.

Advertisement