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View Full Version : Coming to CES? Stop By and Say Hello!


Jason Dunn
01-06-2007, 01:00 AM
<img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/zt/2007/CES-logo-2007.jpg" /><br />Are you going to be at CES in Las Vegas in a few days? I'll be there, buzzing around take pictures, networking, and finding cool new gadgets to review. I've got a busy schedule, but if you're going to be on the show floor on Tuesday the 9th, stop by the Windows Vista area - I'll be there between 9am and 12pm doing demonstrations of Windows Vista and answering questions. I'm volunteering as a "thank you" to the Microsoft folks who are paying for my flight to bring me down for the Featured Communities Vista Lab 2007. I'd love to meet you if you're there, though you may need to introduce yourself to me using your forum login name (and carry a picture of your avatar) before I'll have a chance of knowing who you are. ;-)<br /><br /><b>UPDATE:</b> Watch <a href="http://www.jasondunn.com">my blog for personal updates</a> about Vegas and CES, and <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com">Digital Media Thoughts</a> for my coverage of the Vista Lab.

ctmagnus
01-06-2007, 04:15 AM
though you may need to introduce yourself to me using your forum login name (and carry a picture of your avatar) before I'll have a chance of knowing who you are. ;-)

:rotfl: I made a stack of business cards with my avatar on them once.

brianchris
01-06-2007, 03:32 PM
I'll be there, so I'll try and stop by.

Paul Martin
01-06-2007, 06:37 PM
Interesting story on the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/technology/06electronics.html?_r=1&amp;th=&amp;oref=slogin&amp;emc=th&amp;pagewanted=all) (free subscription required) about the incredible cost and value to put on a booth at CES. It follows Diego's expenses for the show. A few interesting quotes...

"It starts with $24,500 for reserving 700 square feet of booth space on the sprawling convention center floor, tens of thousands more to furnish and operate the booth, plus $300 a night for hotel rooms for the 29 Digeo employees who are attending the convention. Then there is the cost of rental vans, thousands of dollars to advertise at the show and meals for employees. The eight-year-old company, which makes gear and software for home entertainment, estimates that it will spend $500,000 to $1 million on the show this year. Is it worth it? “Ask me afterward,” said Allison Cornia, vice president for marketing at Digeo."

...

"For some attendees, C.E.S. is not just expensive and essential — it is also a tad bittersweet. Jason Chudnofsky, who will attend this year on behalf of the trade show and publishing firm Pulvermedia, ran the Comdex conference for 16 years before it imploded in 2003 after the technology bust. Many of the companies, speakers and attendees have since migrated to C.E.S. Mr. Chudnofsky thinks that even though the same growing pains that afflicted his show also plague C.E.S. — overcrowding, draconian room rates and grueling convention floor walks — the annual Consumer Electronics Show is not going away anytime soon. “The reason is simple,” he said. “There is no other event that can take its place and bring the entire industry together like C.E.S.”"

daS
01-06-2007, 08:04 PM
Interesting story on the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/technology/06electronics.html?_r=1&amp;th=&amp;oref=slogin&amp;emc=th&amp;pagewanted=all) (free subscription required) about the incredible cost and value to put on a booth at CES. It follows Diego's expenses for the show. A few interesting quotes...

"It starts with $24,500 for reserving 700 square feet of booth space on the sprawling convention center floor, tens of thousands more to furnish and operate the booth, plus $300 a night for hotel rooms for the 29 Digeo employees who are attending the convention. Then there is the cost of rental vans, thousands of dollars to advertise at the show and meals for employees. The eight-year-old company, which makes gear and software for home entertainment, estimates that it will spend $500,000 to $1 million on the show this year. Is it worth it? “Ask me afterward,” said Allison Cornia, vice president for marketing at Digeo."


It sounds to me that poor Allison is new to managing marketing. If she wasn't then she'd know that it's almost impossible to judge if a trade show was worth the expense because rarely do you get someone to walk up to your booth who has never heard of you before and manage to get a sale. Instead you might close a sale to someone that sees you again, or knows you but sees your new product there. Could you have sent a sales person to that customer to show them the new product outside of the show? Most likely. But might you have missed them? Or would they assume your company is not doing well if you don't appear at the industry show? Basically, a trade show is normally only one factor among many that closes a deal.

Also, while CES and Comdex before it are way over priced, the numbers in the NYT article are misleading. a 700sqft booth is quite large and expensive to decorate and staff. On the other hand, many small companies do okay with a 10x10ft booth. And while it's easy to spend $300/night for a room at a major hotel on the strip during CES, you can also get reasonable rooms for half of that. Giving that this company is sending 29 people (which might also be excessive) they could save well over $10K on rooms and meals if they don't try to keep up with the high rollers. If they are spending half a million to a million dollars on the show, it tells me that they have investors that are not watching the books.

While it's not as sexy a story for the NYT to report, I'm sure that a small start-up could make a showing at CES for less than $10K. The hard part would be getting noticed in the sea of about 3000 other exhibitors. It's because of that, I think CES is way too large to be productive. Unfortunately, there are no worthwhile smaller shows for the computer industry. There's no value in mixing the guys selling car stereos with the people selling home security systems with the people selling Pocket PCs.

Of course that's not stopping me from showing up in Vegas tomorrow and spending the next 4 days wandering around looking for the next great thing. (Unfortunately for Ms. Cornia, I'm certain I won't find it at the Digeo booth. :wink:

And back on topic: Jason, I'm sure I'll see you there, perhaps at one of the press events?

Paul Martin
01-06-2007, 09:18 PM
Thanks, Dave. Sounds like you have the voice of experience.

daS
01-06-2007, 10:00 PM
Thanks, Dave. Sounds like you have the voice of experience.
In my "life before Windows Mobile" I was the Director of Sales and Marketing for a small electronic test equipment maker. In over 15 years of spending money on trade shows, there was only a single small (about $200K gross) sale we could claim was directly a result of the customer finding us at a trade show. Most of the "leads" we got at the shows were not from people that never heard of us and just discovered the company at the show, but instead were people that our sales staff had talked to before (or were directed to us from another customer), but they hadn't seen our equipment.

When Shier Systems was selling handheld computers and accessories retail, I did find a few new products for our catalog at Comdex, but in every case, they were from companies with tiny booths that others hadn't discovered.

There is another value of the shows: Being able to "network" and re-establish contacts. Face-to-face discussions are almost always more productive than email or phone calls.

Some companies have elected to not even bother to get a booth at the show, but instead co-sponsor parties for the press and financial analysts. These parties are in hotel ballrooms and are a much better chance to talk than on the noisy show floor.

Of course, there's the final value of trade shows: They can be fun! It's a chance to socialize with people in your industry. And for some people, Las Vegas is their idea of a vacation. (I just don't happen to be one of those people that like Vegas. :? )