CES – Greyhawk's Meanderings

CES 2012

Greyhawk68 / Entertainment, Technology, Work Life / CES, ces12, las vegas / 0 Comments

January 12, 2012

For those of you that don’t know, I work in the trade show industry. I’m the Director of IT for a premier exhibit marketer. We do everything related to exhibit marketing. Design, Build, Warehouse, Ship, Install, Tear Down etc.

Since I’m on the back-end IT side of things, I normally don’t go to the show floor to see how things happen leading up to an event. This year I decided to change that, and go see what takes place before an event. I figured I might as well go big and hit the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.

In a word, overwhelming.

This show is absolutely huge. On the CES website they state that there are 35 American football fields worth of exhibit floor. I walked all of that. Every day. For three days straight.

I walked it on Monday, before the show was open to the public. I had my exhibitor badge and got to wander and check everything out. This was about 20 hours before the show went live, and it’s amazing how much work still has to be done in that last period of time. I honestly was floored by how much teams for every exhibit do in that last day. They had been setting up for a week already, and still had tons of fit and finish work to do.

One Tuesday I got there about an hour before the doors open, and I was able to once again walk around before the floodgates opened. There was still polishing and vacuuming and tons of other things going on everywhere. Teams really do make the most of their time. 🙂

I spent the day walking the floor again, taking pictures, and checking out various products. I just wanted to take in the enormity of things, so I spent most of my time walking and checking out differing booth designs and how different categories of products related to each other. It tends to become sensory overload really quickly. There must have been 40 premium headphones vendors and just as many iPhone case manufacturers. Those were just two of the many categories of products. But even though we in the tech industry enjoy CES, this is really a show focused on the average consumer. People buying TV’s, cell phones, tablets, stereo equipment, accessories, car stereos etc. Sure, many manufactures showed off ultra-book designs to compete with the likes of Apple’s MacBook Air, but that wasn’t the big focus.

So I enjoyed it, but since it was my first time, I ran around and looked at everything fairly superficially. I think in future years I would probably plan out what I wanted to look at first and map out where I wanted to go. It would make for a less harried experience. That said, I really have a new admiration for the people that put these events and booths together. The work put in is simply mind-boggling.

In all, CES is an awesome behemoth of a show and worth a trip to other gadget addicts out there such as myself. It’s absolutely overwhelming in every sense of the word, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing 🙂

If you want to check out my photos of some of the various booth designs. You can find them here.

Bah F’ing Humbug

Greyhawk68 / Personal Life / bad mood, CES, holidays, lotusphere / 0 Comments

December 28, 2011

Not sure why really, but I just couldn’t get into the holiday spirit this year. I generally love the Holidays and the time leading up to it but this year I just went through the motions.

It could have been the fact that it’s been an incredibly mild fall and early winter so far. We’ve barely had any snow, and temps have been really warm for Chicago. It’s been rainy and grey and bleak. So the season didn’t feel like Christmas.

In addition, I love to give gifts. I love to surprise people, and try to get that perfect gift that makes them go wow. But this year, things have been much tighter money-wise and so we scaled WAY back. In fact the wife and I pretty much knew what we were getting each other, and it wasn’t much. So I didn’t get that feeling of snagging the perfect gift. I know that’s not the reason for the season, but it’s a fun piece that I felt I missed out on a bit.

Work has been high stress at the moment too, and it’s for a good reason, but the normally relaxed holiday season has been a million miles an hour. A major office move, and a major project all aligning at the same time meant glitches. Glitches that normally aren’t a big deal, but when you are on a deadline, things change a bit. Some of glitches are out of our hands too, and I hate that feeling of being responsible for something yet not being able to fix it myself.

Next, my kids are at an age where they are constantly at each others throats. So it seems every time we are in a car, or spending time together as a family, they are fighting like cats and dogs. The eldest is constantly neglecting the youngest, and the youngest is purposefully being annoying to compensate. In addition, the youngest is hypoglycemic, so she needs to eat right and watch her sugar intake. But she’s been horrible about not wanting to eat anything that might be decent for her. So THAT has been a struggle. Then she spent all of Christmas with a horrible cold that blossomed into nasal and ear infections. So she was completely miserable for the holiday and it sucks to see her this way. After the doctor’s visit today, hopefully that improves.

It also seems like forever since the wife and I have had a date night. We don’t do babysitters, so it’s always generally my in-laws that take the girls for a night when we need it. But, we’ve been so busy for the last several months that we just haven’t had time to get away for a movie or dinner. So I’m missing that.

So fuck it, I’m in a shitty mood. And today’s work glitches (that we couldn’t control) did not help matters.

But all of that said, I think everyone is entitled to have shitty moods once in awhile. So I can wallow a bit and not feel the least bit guilty. But, I’m not going to take it lying down. It’s time to reverse the mood, and here are some reasons why.

For one, I’m speaking at Lotusphere for the first time ever. That kicks ass. For those of you who aren’t part of my Lotus circle of friends, Lotusphere is the annual IBM conference that talks about social software. It’s a honor to speak, and I’m thrilled to be a part of two sessions.

Next, I’ll be attending the Consumer Electronics Show in a couple of weeks. The company I work for does a lot of work for that show, so I wanted to see some behind the scenes, and I’m just a huge gadget nerd too. So even though it’s work, I think it’s something I’ll really enjoy.

Most importantly, my family has their health (minus poor youngest’s cold), I have a job that I really do love, I work with people whom I trust and admire, and I’m blessed to have family that I actually like to be around and see on a regular basis.

So as I sit here in my kick ass man cave, listening to music on the Sonos, smoking a cigar and drinking some Scotch while typing this blog, I just have to say to myself “Suck it up you pussy.” So that’s what I’m going to do. Time to harden the fuck up.

So today, Bah Fucking Humbug. Tomorrow, I reign supreme.