CES 2007 Wrap Up: The Booth Tour

Introduction

So, CES 2007 has come and gone. Wil and I were just two of the over 150,000 people that descended upon the city of Las Vegas, Nevada - the place was packed. The convention fills two halls each year (the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands Expo Center) with over 2 million square feet of booths - that doesn't even include the hotel suites rented out by companies that either couldn't or chose not to get on the show floor.

The sheer amount of walking is enough to give me a good start each year on my New Year's resolution to get fit (which I never stick with much past CES). Once you add in the trips from the convention centres to the various hotels to visit with the other companies, you have a four-day walk-a-thon filled with hustle, bustle and noise. People, PR, and products for as far as the eye can see.

Each year, we get a lot of questions as to what it's like to be on the floor of the show. In a word - massive. That's why we decided to do a different type of CES recap this year. So strap on your walking shoes as we take you on a bit of a booth tour illustrating just a small sampling of the show floor.

As this is mostly a visual tour, you can feel free to click any image to enlarge.

The outside of the convention center is not quite as much a zoo as the inside. That being said, there are still plenty of places where the traffic can get overwhelming, particularly around rush hour.

In order to get the most amount of time in on the floor, our days at the convention center would begin early. The two shots above are taken at 7:30am, a full hour before the press room even opened. Of course, this was a small oversight on our part and so was staying up until 1:00am the night before.

The exhibits open each day at around 9:00am. As you walk through the door, you have plenty of opportunity to hit the business centre for some $8.00 batteries, send a fax for $1.50 a page, or buy a bottled water for $3.50. Here in Vegas, the organisers just don't miss a trick - I've seen cheaper amusement parks.