I spent more time than I am interested in mentioning in recent years asking myself aloud the value of fairs in person. There is something seemingly old-fashioned about the idea of jamming a group of people into a room, walking from cabin to cabin. Sure, they've fulfilled an important need in the past, but aren't they just a relic in this hyper-connected world?
I always felt that if fairs died out, it would be a gradual process - a slow fade into cultural irrelevance, like bookstores and record stores (both of which I miss a lot). Technology has, for many purposes and purposes, drastically reduced their relative value to our society.
While it's undoubtedly true that Spotify and the Kindle Store lack much of the charm and charm of their real-world counterparts, we're happy to sacrifice all of that and more for convenience.
A violent pandemic has effectively given us a year without fairs in person. This means that, among other things, we had a much more immediate control variable in this question about trade shows. Last year's CES managed to get in just below the wire. The next big consumer electronics show - Mobile World Congress - has finally been canceled after many handshakes.
The CTA (the governing body behind CES) appeared to have planned an in-person version of the show this year, following a similar move by the team behind the Berlin-based IFA over the summer. In July, however, it was clear that such a plan was unsustainable. To put it bluntly, the US hasn't had its shit together when it comes to keeping this virus in check (I would be remiss if I didn't recognize that we just hit 400,000 deaths the day I write this).
CES 2021 was far from being the first tech show to go virtual in the past year. The size and scope of the event, on the other hand, is relatively unique here. According to the CTA, the 2020 show attracted 170,000 attendees north. Most of the technology events I've attended virtually in the past year have been organized by a single company. CES is obviously a completely different beast.
The role of the CTA (born CEA) in the industry has certainly offered him a good deal of goodwill upfront. The show, after all, dates back to the late 1960s. Over the years it has declined and flowed (suffering blows from external forces such as the 2008 financial crisis), but it has remained a constant. Those of us who have been doing this for a while tend to approach the show with equal parts anticipation and fear. But companies always go out.
According to the CTA numbers, nearly 2,000 companies launched products at the 2021 event. The figure pales from the 4,419 companies that exhibited last year, but that's to be expected. In addition to the uncertain nature of the event, it was a downright lousy year for many companies. I certainly had my questions and doubts: first of all the value of an event like this for a startup? Without a persona element, wasn't it just another chance to get lost in the noise?
I've heard similar feedback from startups, even though nearly 700 eventually chose to exhibit at the show. I know this because I ended up going through them all for the purpose of our coverage. It brought back a kind of visceral memory of the year when I challenged myself to walk every square inch of the show, and ended up being inspiring for entirely different reasons.
Ultimately, this was the element I missed the most. For me, the greatest appeal of CES was the element of discovery. Eureka Park, the packed kickoff part of the show at Sands Expo, is arguably the best part. The vast majority of exhibitors are not for us, but I keep getting a boost to stumble upon something new and innovative that I've never seen before. The blogger instinct living asleep inside takes over and I can't wait to get back in front of my laptop to tell the world.
There was no Eureka Park this year, not even a virtual version. There isn't just one good way to approximate an online show floor, at least none that I'm aware of. A couple of existing contacts offered to mail me something to look out. Sensel, for example, has a new version of its trackpad (which it announced today will be integrated into Lenovo's latest ThinkPad). But for obvious reasons, it's not possible to get all 700 startups to send review units to my Queens studio.
More than anything else, the virtual event highlighted the technological limitations of an event of this magnitude. Press conferences are fairly straightforward (although I found frustration in the various platforms used by the CTA). Most of the time, these looked like long commercials for the exhibiting company. Of course the in-person versions are too, but we tend to be blinded by the show. For my purposes, there wasn't much that couldn't have been done more efficiently with a press release.
The nature of the press releases has been much more nebulous this year. More companies have apparently taken liberties by downloading their news well before the show. Other companies have offered their own type of counter programming. One of the biggest benefits of these events when it comes to my peace of mind is how they govern the flow of news. I know during the year there will be an incredibly difficult week at the beginning of the year where a lot of news will be announced.
With CES less than a center of gravity this year, I expected to see less segmented news flow. I've been commenting to colleagues over the past couple of years that there is no "slower season" when it comes to hardware news, and that will likely only add to that sentiment. Obviously there is a silver lining to having things more evenly, but I have a feeling that we are moving towards something more like a series of small CES-like events throughout the year, and the thought makes me freeze the blood.
It has been clear in recent years that companies would rather get out of the noise of CES in favor of their own events, following in Apple's footsteps. Virtual events are a perfect opportunity to take this approach. Apple, meanwhile, went from one event to a series of smaller events each month towards the end of the year. When you don't ask people to fly across the country or the world to attend an event, the level of what qualifies as news drops dramatically. Perhaps instead of having thousands of companies vying for our attention at one event, we are moving towards a model where there are thousands of events instead. The mind falters.
I have some hyper-specific complaints about the CTA format, but I will save them for the post-event survey that I may or may not be able to fill out. I still found value in the virtual event. It was an excuse to talk to a startup group I didn't know. Ultimately, however, I think the event served as a testament to the fact that as much as we complain about all the headaches and colds that come with an event like CES, there is still a lot of value to have in person. event.
There is no doubt that the CTA and the rest of these kinds of organizations are striving to get back to events in person, even if the erratic implementation of a vaccine leaves a big question mark around the expected timing. Chances are we will see 2020/2021 as the beginning of the end for the fair in person. But given the kind of limitations we've seen over the past year, I'm not ready to declare them completely dead anytime soon.
