Well, friends, it’s almost that time again. The 2023 CES show starts this Thursday and runs through Sunday. For the first time since 2012, we won’t have “boots on the ground.” It’s been a hard decision, but ultimately I think it’s the right one. You might see an article here or there if we get information from vendors, and we’ll post images that you post to our Facebook group if you’re there. But short of that, you won’t see a lot of coverage on this blog of the show. Here’s why.
The show literally isn’t what it used to be
The show that existed in the 20th century and early 21st, known as the Consumer Electronics Show, was sold some time back to the Consumer Technology Association. They’re essentially a spinoff of the old Consumer Electronics Association and I don’t have anything bad to say about them. After all Signal Group is a CTA member. But it’s meant some changes for the show, and when you combine them with the changes in the world, it has made CES less of a “must-see” event than ever before.
The 2020s haven’t been good to the CES show. The 2021 show was, of course, all virtual. The 2022 show was very empty as vendors pulled out in droves. But let’s be honest, the changes came before that. In the ’00s the show was the place to learn about the upcoming changes in big televisions and a lot of other crazy gadgets. It was bustling every year, except during the Macworld General Session, which competed with CES and was held in a different place.
Unfortunately, the ’10s weren’t really a good time for the CES show. The big TVs were there but let’s be honest. You could get just as good of a show by going to your local club store. Software and apps started taking over the gadget market, and that made the show a lot less interesting. Every year seemed to be just a recycling of the prior year’s content.
There was good, there was bad…
The show shrunk in the late ’10s to a more manageable size, making travel easier. But it also meant that there just wasn’t as much to see or as many people to see it with. I always found something to blog about, but I’ll admit that it wasn’t as easy in later years.
It’s not fair to say that the pandemic killed the spirit of the show, as some have said. I do think that we all learned that we don’t have to travel in order to experience new things. Some of us also learned that big crowds aren’t always the safest place for your health. But really, I think the decline of the CES era started long before the pandemic. If anything, the pandemic just hastened a change that was already on the way.
There’s one more thing to consider as well and I hate to bring it up because this isn’t “that kind of blog.” But, I think it’s fair to say that conventions of all types were sort of the last bastion of the “fun times” mentality. The stereotype of the repressed businessman (and it was always a man) coming to the desert to party and not tell his wife… that was fun for those who could participate. It wasn’t fun for those who couldn’t because of their gender or for other reasons. When I started going to CES in 2006, the “booth babe” was very much still a thing. Models in bikinis were a big draw in trade shows, even though that sort of marketing doesn’t appeal to everyone.
With more diversity in the workplace than ever, CES and all trade shows had to change. And if you were the sort of person who only went for a good time, that probably meant you didn’t like those changes. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
Will CES come back?
Folks, we live in the internet era. You don’t need a trade show to launch your products. Our vendors used to wait until the show to make big announcements, and now they come year-round. That’s not a bad thing, is it? I think there’s still hope for the trade show in general, but perhaps in a smaller or more focused capacity. I don’t know what that means for CES specifically but like you, I’ll be watching carefully.
