Transcript:

Gary Shapiro: I am Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of the Consumer Electronic Association, the owner and producer of the international CES.

Benjamin: So, you are the guy that makes all this go?

Gary Shapiro: I am the lucky enough who has a phenomenal team that, that puts this in the place. This is our 40^th Anniversary at CES. We started in New York, it’s a very tiny show and it was just Radio and Television, and here we are today 1.8 million net sqft with exhibit space, 2700 exhibitors, 130 countries, 25,000 people from abroad, over 20,000 new products and technology as we introduced in this event alone.

Benjamin: How big is this show compared to other shows

Gary Shapiro: This is the largest show of any type in the Americas. Its largest consumer technology show in the world and we gather people from all over the world and its just not technology, its all related industries, broadcast, cable, satellite, content, Hollywood, the music industry, transportation, communications they come here and we used to talk about the convergence of technology. Now we are talking about new convergence, which is the convergence of content, services and technology. This is where the deals are made. This is where the CEO’s of every one of those industries is. They are coming here, because they wanna see the future and the future starts here at CES. Instead of fighting it, they are embracing it. Because, technology by definition changes, since the change is the status-quo and what they are doing is they are dealing with event. Instead of being travel agents and saying “the internet coming up, my gosh I am done�. What you see is people like CBS and Disney and all here sitting and saying, , you know what, in cities that’s spriting the status-quo are becoming the horse and buggy people. We want to be part of it, we want to deal with it. We are not going to try to fight it or block it or kill it, we are going to partner and we are going to make it work for us.

Benjamin: So what would your big picks for the companies that are trying to find the status-quo, that are really trying to make a big difference that really cool, cool products in the show, what are your big picks?

Gary Shapiro: Well, the picks are the phenomenal ray of screens of any type. Let’s face these flat yellow DLP plasma and obviously LCD are absolutely great, but beyond that we have all sorts of technology, with shift content, time and place, which has GPS, cameras and phones. We have all sorts of ways of doing neat things. All sorts of things that are part of internet programs now, it’s alive. The story of 2006 was MySpace, and YouTube. The story of 2007 will be in something that we don’t know, but I am sure it will involve technology, and content and service put together mashed up, may be using mapping and location in GPS. Having video, may be using sensing technology, NANO technology, BioMetrics all the cool things that have come together that give us such bright future.

Benjamin: Now this show is “gianormous� it’s massively huge. How does one navigate the show and actually see all that there is to see?

Gary Shapiro: Well what we’ve done to various of own web chose is, we made this show tiny. We personalized it for everyone who comes, they just go on to mycesweb.com, they typing their key word searches, they put it in, they setup prime as they fit their map and all of a sudden, it’s a tiny show depending on what your interest is. So, really this is a collection of about 15 different trade shows, evolving different categories of products. We also invest millions of dollars and you are here maps, signage, translators and interpreters, colored carpets of different sites, you name it – we’ve got it here, so people can feel comfortable coming, because we want people with business interest to come here, every year and make the decision they have to be here. We as partner, we have hundreds of partners from companies.. It’s a publication, other associations, so they know that this is the place to be.

Benjamin: Now, you mentioned with business interest, which is the key point. You don’t let anyone into CES. You actually must work in the industry in order to attend. Not to even exhibit, just to go to show for, what about the hover geeks, like the hardcore Geeks that wanna see the technology that’s coming out, in a year or 2 years, because those space it, it’s all announced here. How do they get that information? What the best way, best medium for them?

Gary Shapiro: The best thing to do is to obviously do a journalist like yourself. Read the blogs , go to the websites, read the publications. We are very careful not to allow consumers in, because it’s a business only show and when a company is spending millions of dollars to showcase their products, technology and services. They wanna do with other business people and present themselves that way. Consumers have lot of good questions, we love the people who are hobbyist, early adopters. Those early adopters have the opportunity by just staying tuned with the media in the blogs.

Benjamin: How many were you expecting this year at the show?

Gary Shapiro: Well we are trying to actually restrict. Last year we had 152,000. Our goal this year is a 140,000. We have been very careful about restricting people from the Nevada and California area. Super qualifying them and making sure that we have only trade interested people here.