Every year there is this event. The International CES. Some of you might have heard of it. It is the single largest tech event in the world. It kicks off every year in January in Las Vegas. The show covers all aspects of technology from next years TV’s, Cars, Connected Homes, Start Ups, Tablets, Phones, Accessories and everything else in between. New products get announced, new concepts get shown off and upcoming technology makes the headlines across the globe. It spans 1.9 million net square feet, and that just covers the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton and The Venetian. That number doesn’t take into account the numerous suites and meetings held at the Bellagio, The Pallazo and countless other hotels up and down the strip.
How does a site, like ours, plan for such a massive event? Very carefully. Seriously though, it is nothing short of a tedious task. So I thought that it might be interesting for us to share a little bit of what goes into attending this show.
Negotiating 1.9 million+ square feet is pretty insane when you think about it, but it is nothing compared to when you first step onto the show floor. The first task at hand was navigating the 75 to 100 daily emails for meeting requests. Filtering out what is most relevant to AndroidStory and our readers, and what is just too cool to miss regardless. Then there is the limit of time. Crossing from North Hall to South Hall isn’t just a 5 minute walk. Booking our meetings based on their location was imperative. Keeping walking time to a minimum so that there would be more time to talk, video, photograph and learn about anything we are looking at. The good news though is that the first few weeks of December is when you get bombarded with requests and then they slowly taper off around Christmas until opening day.
There are only so many hours in a day and only so much a small crew can see. We have about 70 meetings scheduled over 6 days on the floor. We will see plenty more though. Having been multiple times myself, I know we will have shorter meetings than expected and less time moving to the next than planned. That is where the next phase of planning come in. I call it “The List”.
The list is an organized list of companies and their booth numbers organized by their locations and in numerical order. Many are ones that requested we come meet them and don’t have the time to schedule a formal meeting, others are companies I know we should visit or have visited in the past. Currently our list has another 50 booths to attempt to make it to also. Mathematically, if we make all the meetings and hit all the booths on the list and nothing else, we will have visited roughly 120 various companies. I have no doubt in my mind that we won’t probably hit the 200+ number though. Especially considering events like CES Unveiled, Showstoppers and Pepcom Digital Experience housing multiple companies at small tables.
None of what I have mentioned above is a secret. Anyone can visit cesweb.org and take a look around. Â See a list of companies, find their locations on the various how floors and check out a photo gallery of last years show.
We are definitely excited to make the trip this year and have a number of plans to bring more to you guys then we have been able to in the past. Next week I think I might clue you into the packing stage of the prep work. If anyone is interested I mean.
I am sure there are a number of my fellow bloggers and news sources out there that will be in attendance as well. How is your planning and booking phase going? Are you overwhelmed, overbooked and ready to go?
