CES 2009: How Would I Make It Better?
The CEA sent me a survey. They asked me this question:
Do you have any additional comments or suggestions to improve the International CES for press attendees?
Unfortunately, they didn’t give me enough room to give a full answer, so I’m posting it here and linking to it.
There was very little that I saw at CES this year that I didn’t already know about. CES doesn’t get the word out about products anymore because companies do it themselves on the Internet.
The good thing about CES is that you can actually TOUCH and play with the new products. Companies are having more problems with having products available to try out in stores than distribution.
We all could buy anything we want online, but being able to play with it first is getting increasingly more difficult. Electronics manufacturers need to find a way to get past that and the Internet isn’t going to help them there.
We don’t want to buy things and return them if they don’t work out. We just want to have five minutes with a product in a store to see if it will work for us or not.
CES is the ONLY place where we can do that, and that’s only with the exhibitors that don’t put their stuff under glass. Getting more exhibitors to set up areas where customers can play with their products is the smartest thing that the CEA could do right now.
There are people out there who think that the era of the trade show is dead. I’m not one of them. There are many reasons to converge on one place:
- Camaraderie: Seeing other people in your industry. Never discount the power of networking.
- The Touch Factor: Being able to play with new products in person.
- Pulse Taking: A trade show gives you a visual indication of what people think are interesting. Just by following the crowds, you can track the trends.
For all of you out there who saw the lack of crowds and exhibitors, that’s more an indication of health of the industry than an indication of the health of trade shows in general.