Tech carnival begins Sunday
Technology still hasn't delivered the flying car.
But it's making the plain, old rolling variety a lot more interesting.
It's also burrowing so deep into daily life it's difficult to define the line between electronics and the cars people drive, information they absorb and conversations they share.
Enter the International Consumer Electronics Show -- the world's biggest carnival of lithium-powered gadgetry and global nerd worship.
About 140,000 people from around the world are set to descend on Las Vegas for the event that begins Sunday with a speech by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates.
It's the biggest annual trade show in North America and a global showcase for the future of technology. Digital video discs, plasma televisions, compact disc players and high-definition television were all introduced at previous CES gatherings.
This year, self-driving and gasoline-free cars are among the marquee exhibits. "NBC Nightly News" will broadcast live from Las Vegas.
CES, which attracts about as many media members as the Super Bowl and commands the attention of business and technology news cycle for a week, is also a showcase for Las Vegas.
"It is an overwhelming convention. There isn't even a convention that is a close second," said Rick Forman, vice president of sales and marketing for AWG, a Las Vegas-based destination management and transportation company. "Everybody here better get their game face on."
Forman said AWG will have its entire fleet of about 100 limousines, buses and cars plus about 100 more contracted and rented vehicles on the road beginning Sunday and running through Thursday.
The massive convention fills the Las Vegas Convention Center and Sands Expo and Convention Center. It also spills into suites at The Venetian and the Las Vegas Hilton.
That makes transportation -- already a sore subject on and around the Strip -- key to making CES work.
Leaders of companies such as Microsoft, Oracle Corp., NBC, General Motors Corp. and Samsung don't like standing in the wind and cold waiting for a cab to whisk them to high-tech, catered parties that can cost six figures to produce.
"They have learned in the last few years that logistics in Las Vegas (are) very poor and they don't want to wait," Forman said.
Once the world's technorati move from the street into CES, they'll be confronted with 1.8 million square feet of flickering screens, thumping music, television lights and hype. There are more than 2,000 exhibitors and tens of thousands of new products.
"You just don't realize ... how much time, effort and money these companies put in," said Mark Munhall, senior vice president and general manager in Las Vegas for GES Exposition Services, the contractor that coordinates setup and breakdown of the show. GES has been the contractor for the show since 1978.
Munhall estimates as many as 500 tractor-trailers per day will move through the GES marshalling yard on Las Vegas Boulevard, south of Russell Road en route to CES.
At peak setup, there are about 2,000 people directly working on the show, according to the contractor.
The firm estimates it will deploy about 254,000 square feet of graphics, enough to cover five football fields. It will unfurl nearly 138,000 linear feet of carpet.
Workers will use about 300 fork lifts, 100 boom lifts, 50 portable truck ramps and roughly 350 passenger and flatbed electric carts during setup.
Despite the tons of hardware used to support CES, the event itself continues to blur the lines between technology and information and even technology and life itself.
For the first time an automobile executive will deliver a CES keynote address. On Tuesday Rick Wagoner, chairman and CEO of General Motors, will speak at The Venetian.
Wagoner's company is working to make electronics the core feature, not a complementary add-on, to new vehicles. GM will display a fuel cell vehicle, a battery-powered vehicle and a self-propelled vehicle as examples.
Information is also becoming a bigger part of the show. Media companies realize the devices people use to access content are becoming as important as the information itself. So the companies have greater interest than ever in CES.
"I think every media company should be at CES, because if you are going to understand the personal media revolution you have to see it firsthand," said Steve Safran, a Boston-based technology industry analyst. "Gadgets are worthless without content."
Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or (702) 477-3861.
GATES TO SHARE VIEW OF COMPUTING IN FUTURE
For the 10th time, Bill Gates will inaugurate the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas by touting new Microsoft Corp. products and describing his view of the future of computing.
Before you rush to the edge of your seat Sunday, consider this: Gates is a mediocre prognosticator.
In fairness, predictions are very hard, especially ones about the future. Scouting a technology on the horizon is one thing; it's another to foresee the business-execution problems and competitive troubles that might waylay it.
But this is Bill Gates, that savvy guy who has spent more than 30 years atop the dominant entity in personal computing, a company that pours $7 billion a year into research and development. His drawing power is so strong that CES organizers always give Gates top billing at the industry's premier extravaganza.
And so, since this is Gates' last keynote before he leaves his day-to-day Microsoft duties to focus on philanthropy, it's as good a time as any to scour his track record.
The highlights include Gates' debut of the Xbox video game console at CES in 2001. The Xbox became Microsoft's most successful piece of hardware.
In 2000, Gates correctly explained the rising importance of networked mobile devices, even as PCs were still becoming more prevalent. Indeed, the following year he predicted that the percentage of American homes with PCs would grow from just over 50 percent at the time to 75 percent by 2010.
Depending on where you get your market research, Gates more or less nailed it. Analyst firms IDC and Forrester Research Inc. say the figure has already hit 75 percent, while Gartner Inc. says we're almost there.
And if you were paying attention to Gates in 1999, you would have had early word about the importance of XML, a programming system that has made it easier for computers to share information.
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