After a year without in-person CES and another teetering on the bring, are we thinking about CES and events like it in the right way?
CES 2022 will go on, but without virtually all the tech media who over nearly six decades have helped build it into the consumer electronics powerhouse it is today. This is nobody’s fault. Covid variant Omicron is not a corporeal presence and the CTA, a non-profit organization that runs CES, could not have predicted the Omicron’s virulence (though we all saw more variants coming). In the days and weeks leading up to the Las Vegas Convention, the CTA introduced multiple layers of protection, from vaccination requirements to redesigned floor spaces to accommodate more space between exhibitors and attendees, and special badges that indicate your tolerance for physical interaction. As the Omicron variant took off, the CTA ramped up efforts, adding PCR testing before anyone could enter the show floor. I appreciated all the effort and have been looking forward to a return to the show I’ve been attending consistently since 2004 (prior to that I was more of a COMDEX guy), especially after last year’s all-digital fiasco. Even so, I must admit that I had moments of panic where I realized how royally screwed I’d be if I happened to — after arriving in Vegas — test positive for COVID. With the prevalence of Omicron, even with my double Vax and Boost, I knew that was a very real possibility. A positive test would trap any of us covering media in our Las Vegas hotel rooms for 10 days and mean that we missed the in-person event. Now, I and countless others, including major tech companies like Amazon and T-Mobile, are staying home. But none of us are disengaging. What we lose by not being in Las Vegas from January 2 through January 8 is the connection to thousands of people in the industry, but then we lost a good part of that almost two years ago when COVID first hit.
