The Head of CTA Explains CES

0:02Gary Shapiro, I am the CEO and the Executive Chairman of the Consumer Technology Association. So, Gary, thank you for talking with us. Everybody looks to CES every year for the trends in technology. What do you consider to be some of the sleeper trends this year? The sleeper trends? Well, that's a tough question. Yeah, because everybody's going to say AI. What about not AI? Well, certainly there's a focus on things we haven't focused on before. For example, robotics is clearly here in a bigger way than it ever has been. With all sorts of different types robots from humanoid to specific task robots to even, you know, we were all familiar with industrial robots, obviously.

0:48Agriculture technology is here in a way. Also, technology which will expand your lifespan, healthcare, also monitoring and sensing devices, powered, of course, by artificial intelligence, but it's real. And mobility, of course, is always very big. But here there's different forms of it, whether it's on water, in the air, in agriculture, if you're driving around. Caterpillar CEO, for example, is one of our featured keynote speakers. So we have a whole range of things to do here. And one of the other areas that's really interesting is accessibility technology. That's a new thing. We have a special stage for it.

1:26And you'll see a lot there of technology meeting the community of people with disabilities, which is very empowering because it's a two-way dialogue. The companies here hear from disability advocates, and they realize they have technology which can make a difference. Yeah, that's fantastic because it's been a growing space that people realize is important, so it's good to see it showing up even more. It's a technology that's such a great enabler in so many ways. And if you think about it, even autonomous vehicles are great for older people and people with disabilities. It's empowering. And that's why people are so excited about it in part.

1:59I want it to get really good by the time I need it. Absolutely. We're all going to need it or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the tagline this year is innovators show up. Obviously, everybody knows about the big companies, the Samsungs, the LGs that show here. Talk a little bit about some of the smaller businesses, some of the startups that show up. That's a great question. You know, we have over 4 ,000 different companies exhibiting, and most of those are smaller companies. We have a special area called Eureka Park where we'll have over 1 ,200 startups, essentially, showing the first product or so.

2:34And that's part of our culture. Literally, since I joined the organization decades ago, I'll never forget the first board meeting I went through. That was a discussion. We always have to run CES so anyone with an idea can expose it to thousands of journalists like yourself, to thousands of buyers, to investors, to potential partners, to potential first customers, which are big companies. What people ignore about CES is a lot of exhibitors are there to see other exhibitors. They're looking to acquire them. They're looking to invest. They're looking to be their first customer. But good ideas can come from anywhere, anywhere in the world, any size business.

3:09And certainly big companies, sometimes it's harder to innovate. So they look to smaller companies, and that's the culture of the show. It's the culture of the United States, actually. What does a small business have to do? What does a startup have to do if they want to show here? If you want to be in Eureka Park, we have certain standards. You must have a product that has not been introduced more than a certain period of time ago. And you must fall in with our categories of consumer technology and even business technology. And you must be willing to be around for four days, stand on your feet.

3:43It's just a few thousand dollars. It's heavily subsidized, but that gets you a 10 by 10 booth with everything you would need for that, including electricity in a garbage can. and you show up with your product and you show up, frankly, listening a lot because everyone from Mark Cuban to the CEO of Walmart will walk by that area and if you could catch their eye, they may ask you some questions and give their opinion. Longevity is amazing for CES. It's been around since the 1960s and it is also international. Tell me a little bit about what you think the secret of that appeal is. We have so many companies from China still coming, still exhibiting, still valuing CES.

4:24Well, yeah, first of all, I'm lucky and I'm thankful and sometimes to make good decisions. And our decision a long time ago was we thought different vertical industries were converging and we wanted CES to be the place for it. Another is we wanted to be a global event and just beyond retailers. And the number of retailers that mattered could fit in a small room in terms of 80 % of the business. so we expanded it to the investment community and we made a very big effort to make it global so 40 percent of the people who came last year to the show are from outside the united states so it may be they're not doing business in the u.s but they may be meeting someone from latin america and they're from asia and vice versa so that's focusing on global nature which is very unusual in the u.s because we are not the home of most global events frankly and cus is one of the handful events that are globally dominant but we work really hard we travel around the world and we preach the mission of innovation as resolving some of the world's biggest problems so a lot of those things have worked and we always want something new like i used to say we have to have three new things this show we have like a dozen new things it's very different so we have we have the we have a basically uh a focus on disability we have a focus on um longevity of of people getting older.

5:38We have a focus on something called the Foundry of the Fountain Blue Hotel, which is really designed for quantum and cybersecurity and I with demos and discussions and things like that. We also focus on public policy around the world. So we have leaders in the public policy community coming here from all over the world and from Washington, D.C., and state legislators, governors, legislators, you name it, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology, the chairman of the FCC, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. This is a place where the biggest issues get discussed. We'll have over 1 ,200 different speakers in 400 different sessions.

6:11And a lot of it will be on our website for those who can't get here, ces.tec. And it's something we do because we really want to spread the gospel, if you will, of innovation and be something which is really important for the future of mankind. And our tagline here at Daily Tech News Show is helping each other understand. Seems like it goes right along with that. I totally agree with that. All right, last question. If there was a piece of technology someone could event for you that would help you that you haven't seen yet, is there anything that comes to mind? Well, yeah. I mean, I grew up with science fiction, and CES is science fiction coming to life.

6:48But still, you know, if you remember the Star Trek days of, you know, Be Me Up Scotty, I'd love one of those. I'd love time traveling. I thought of being able to go to CES 30 years from now and see what it looks like. You know, it's just very, very exciting with robots. And by the way, I mentioned robots. Robotics is another huge thing that's here at this CES, which is extremely different. But robots can do more and more. And what we've seen with, obviously, AI is a big component of the show in every way from the leaders of AI, like Lisa Su of AMD and Jensen Wang of NVIDIA and so many others that are here.

7:20This is the place of the future. And with the chip companies, you get to see the future quicker. And all the platforms are here as well. All the major platforms for consumers, the major platforms for AI, they're all here. And we have, I don't know, 10 or 15 different venues around Las Vegas. If you're a marketer, if you're a tech person, if you're a CIO, if you're son of the government, if you like audio, if you like video, if you like mobility, health care, technology, it's all here. That's how we get over 4 ,000 companies exhibiting. And it's very efficient for anyone who comes here. So they get to see the average person that comes here has 29 meetings.

7:56So it's like totally green, totally efficient to come here. And that's why people do it. there's nothing like face-to-face. Gary, thank you so much for chatting with us. I appreciate it. We appreciate you being here.