CES, the world’s largest tech show, is quite a sight to behold. Or it would be if you could actually see it in person.
Sprawling almost unimaginably in its pre-pandemic incarnations, the industry extravaganza spanned the entire Las Vegas Convention Center, the nearby Sands Expo, and chunks of a dozen or more hotels up and down the Strip. It was like a Disneyland for tech: Since reporting on the annual January event in 2001, I’ve fired a computer-controlled sniper rifle, attended a Tesla coil music concert, took a ride in self-driving vehicles, and met countless robots. I once took control of a Fujifilm hot air balloon in flight.
This year you can actually see everything – but only from the small screen, which means you can see almost everything else these days. Vegas and CES will be without each other for the first time in decades. No more blimp journeys.
The tech industry saw many conferences run virtually in 2020 amid Covid-related lockdowns, travel restrictions, and a general desire to reduce viral spread. But CES is not an event based on the agenda of a single company or organization: it is a global crossroads where more than 170,000 visitors interacted with more than 4,500 exhibitors last year. It has been a media spectacle, but also much more: a forum for innovators, manufacturers and retailers to meet, according to plan or by chance, and find out what comes next.
For CES 2021, starting Monday, organizers had to work hard in the digital space that is, perhaps ironically, unknown – and a bit of a gamble.