Lessons learnt from International CES 2014

by

I kept a diary on my TCT Magazine blog throughout most of last week, describing what it's like to be both an exhibitor and a member of the press at arguably the world's largest technology trade show.

Having been home for nearly 20 hour now and feeling itchy that I haven't written any 3D printing news - or any news for that matter - on my work laptop since the show closed on Friday night, I've decided to round off my brief journal of what went on at CES with a summary of lessons learnt/things to ponder.

Lessons learnt/things to ponder

As an exhibitor:

  • Order a crate of water bottles to hide somewhere on the stand - the Las Vegas Convention Center is hands down the worst venue in the world for "grabbing a coffee". Luckily, team TCT + Personalize are a generous bunch so we all took the trouble of queuing for the best part of an hour for coffee for everybody at least once last week, but 40-min waits for a cup of tea and lines around the block for solid food throughout the day mean coming up with some kind of Plan B. My Plan B involved buying water and Cheetos for the team from the hotel gift shop before we set off each day, but a crammed monorail journey laden with bags of bottles and snacks is not ideal.
  • Make a concentrated effort to use hand sanitiser from the very first day. I was struck down with a nasty case of the sniffles on the second and last days of the event and it made handing out flyers for free subscriptions an unappealing prospect to passers-by.
  • While we're talking about handing out free subscriptions - I really felt quite bored of my "free subscription to our 3D printing magazine" broken record-type spiel after just one day. I think we all did. Maybe next year I'll put some thought into it and change it up? Or maybe next year we'll have the delightful Angelina, our 'stand lady', for more than one day?

As a member of the press:

  • Make better use of the press room. Not only is the press room a great place to find sustenance - even only in the form of bitter coffee, a water cooler and paper cups, and the odd cookie - but it is a much better place to write stories than on the stand, where there's myriad distractions and jobs to be done. Half an hour of working in the press room is equal to two hours of trying to work on the stand.
  • Try to get round to seeing everybody earlier on in the week because invariably note-taking in meetings later in the week will be incoherent (or more incoherent than usual).
  • There must be an easier way of doing things than transcribing shorthand or interviews on your Dictaphone - there just must be.

Until next year CES! In the words of one former Las Vegas resident 'urh, thank yew, thank yew very much'.