Why CES is Still Overwhelming for Me
By Aaron Broder, Scholastic
Every single year I've reported on CES for Scholastic, I seem to try a different method of preparation. The first year, I did very little preparation, intending to wander the halls, not realizing exactly how big the show floor was. That was... not ideal. The second year, I had almost every minute planned of where I was going to be and when. That also didn't work. So this year, I tried yet another approach - schedule a few big meetings, and then make a list of everything else I was interested in seeing.
One big problem. I'm still at the show for another day, and my list is empty. I'm sure that there are all sorts of interesting things around, but I have no idea where to start. Help!
Alright, I'm going to change the subject, before this turns into the same "CES is overwhelming" rant I had last year.
It may sound like a shameless plug, but I have to give major props to NBCU for the new booth. This is a lot cooler than last year's booth (which was already pretty awesome). I particularly love the Microsoft Surface tables spread around the booth - I'm a huge fan of the Surface, largely for the concept. Although I can't imagine a practical reason to have one in my house, I can't help but thinking of how awesome it would be to have one to play with.
Microsoft, by the way, was one of the big meetings that I scheduled. The most exciting was my interview with Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft! I had a spectacularly long list of questions for him, but I ended up decided to cut it down to about seven, because I thought that I had too many questions for the fifteen-minute interview I had.
Murphy's Law decided to rear its ugly head, however. I ran out of prepared questions fairly early on in the interview, and I had to wing it. Thankfully, I managed to hold my own for the remainder of the interview, but there is a lesson here: always make a list of questions much longer than the interview is going to be.
Besides that, I've also gotten to see a lot of cool (and some weird) products. Mattel, for example, has this "Mindflex" thing where you where a headband that measures how much you are concentrating, and converts it to a fan that moves a ball up and down. And in the Gaming TechZone, there are some companies trying to cash in on Guitar Hero and Rock Band's success (some effectively and some... not, as in the picture below).
Well, I don't want to take too much of your time. I guess I'll be going now. If anyone has a good organization technique for CES, I would love to hear it.
Bye!
P.S. Oh, man! Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont from Revision3's Tekzilla are right in front of me on the NBC Universal main stage! No way!
