2008 International CES Underway

The International Consumer Electronics Show got underway today in Las Vegas. It's the world's largest tradeshow for consumer technology and America's largest annual tradeshow of any kind. If you've never been, let me give you an idea of what it's like.
A normal sized tradeshow would take up one exhibit hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. CES takes over the entire LVCC. All exhibit halls, meeting rooms, hallways, parking lot, everything. (Microsoft even built a house in the parking lot in 2003 to display 'digital home' technology.)

All the convention rooms at the Hilton, Sands, and the Venetian hotel are full too. 150,000 attendees from 140 countries swarm to the exhibit areas every morning. Dozens of buses run all day to and from the various hotels and between exhibit venues. Everywhere you go people are trying to hand you something in Vegas and the sidewalks leading into CES are no exception. Usually the adult entertainment canvassers are out at night, but here they are in the morning as people are walking to the LVCC. As you get really close to the entrance, canvassers handing you materials having to do with products/services/events at CES appear. You have to be really selective what you take, because you have to carry it around all day. Many wheel around a suitcase to carry their freebies and handouts-the schwag.

Inside, the main halls closest to the center of LVCC hold the big booths from the major CE names. Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sharp, Samsung, Toshiba...all have a huge presence here. Everything from home electronics to car audio/accessories to cell phones and personal gadgets are displayed. As you get to the South halls, you see more of the smaller import companies and their products represented. My favorite part is to see the weird imported gadgets that never see the light of day in the US; and to be there when exciting new stuff is announced. I was there in 1998 when XM and Sirius debuted satellite radio. And in 2006 when Creative launched the Zen Vision M player. Some technology that is shown to glowing reviews never gets released or just dies in the marketplace. DataPlay (2001), Microsoft's SPOT technology (2003), and the Moxi Media Center (2002) come to mind.

The bad part about CES is that it's so crowded and theres so much to see, you cannot possibly see it all. The traditional media does a poor job at covering CES, especially TV news. Good thing it's one of the most covered events on the web. Checkout C|net, Engadget and Gizmodo for their great continual coverage of CES over the next four days.