The return of the cheery gadget pusher
Optimism abounds at Vegas tech show
By Daniel Sieberg
CNN
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Lynnea Kimball, left, and Brian Roccoforte check out the Dell DJ portable MP3 player at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
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LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- It's easy to describe the Consumer Electronics Show in one word: overwhelming.
Sure, in many ways, the CES is no different from other tech conventions across the country, but this year, it seemed to have more relevance and intensity than in recent years.
There was a faster pace, even more products, and perhaps most important, a more upbeat attitude bubbling beneath the surface.
Now that I've had the chance to recover from my own whirlwind experience, I find myself reflecting on why.
During the past few years, I've been to about 12 tech conventions of various shapes and sizes, including the recent Comdex show in November. It also took place at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Comdex attendance was down dramatically, though, from about 250,000 people during the dot-com boom in the mid-1990s to 55,000 in November.
Leading up to the CES, attendance and interest in tech conventions had been waning. The high-tech economy had been struggling, if not declining, and companies could no longer afford to send so many employees to a convention that often turned into nothing more than a huge party.
Comdex organizers opted to position their gathering as a business-oriented one, a place where companies could meet in back rooms and, yes, actually do business.
While deals may have been brokered at Comdex through the more practical approach, it still left many observers feeling like the shine on technology had dulled.
Then along came CES 2004 -- more than 2,300 exhibitors, about 110,000 attendees and countless must-have gadgets that ranged from a key chain-sized camcorder to six-feet-wide plasma.
All of it stretched out over 1.2 million square feet of space that filled several halls.
Many of the companies that used to debut products at Comdex in November decided to wait until the CES, thereby cramming even more gizmos into one place.
So perhaps a large part of the feverish pace at the CES was simply this shift in shows: subtracting from one and adding to the other.
But there's something else, something that's tough to put my finger on.
Maybe it's the pulse of the tech industry. It now seems to be speeding up a little, rather than flat-lining, and I don't just mean the markets or the profits, though they're a part of it.
I mean the underlying attitude of gadget heads, investors, geeks, employees, early adopters, and the average person, who may be seeing technology as more relevant and exciting.
This sentiment was clearly more evident at the CES than at Comdex.
Measuring a pulse can be tricky at times, even deceiving. And I'm not a doctor. But I do think it's worth monitoring.
