Monday, January 09, 2012

There is nothing more irrelevant than journalists covering CES.

NBC Bay Area by Scott Budman.

"The New York Times just published a piece about how CES is pretty much over. The products don't matter, and even the cool stuff doesn't ever really make it to the real world."

I read this piece this morning and it made me want to punch journalists in the neck.

Listen, I am not going to defend CES. The past few years have been almost like death. It isn't because of the show. It's because the capitol to start new innovative companies has evaporated. Products are basically in refresh mode.

However, when I read this paragraph it really made me realise what idiots the people covering this conference really are.

"That said, I can't really defend the show as being completely up to date - even with its futuristic leanings. Where's the Square checkout counter? Where's the Facebook shopping demo? Amazon? Twitter? All used regularly by consumers, but rarely shown off at a convention like this."

Let me translate this: "I'm a journalist, and I'm bored. They should retool the show to entertain me rather than appealing the actual paying customers for which the show is intended." i.e. retail outlets like Best Buy. That is why you are suppose to actually work in the industry to even get into the show. Unless you are an idiot journalist who gets in for free.

Square should be there. They however are relatively new. But seriously? Facebook shopping!? Amazon and Twitter? Have any of these dumbasses even been to a software convention? People are going to fly from all points around the world, to look at a monitor where software is displayed? Ridiculous. Software shows are typically small because they have one or two product segments to demo.

Demo being a key word here because most of the products are CES are almost vaporware. They exist, but they typically are not functioning.

Software shows are domain specific. It could be an augmented reality show, or AutoCAD, or GIS shows like ESRI, but they are all focused on one segment.

You can't have a show like CES for software, because you can't sell software by showing a box. You can't sell software by visual dynamics, you have be convinced of its worth.

What exactly would someone coming to a convention see with a Twitter booth? Or an Amazon booth? I mean, the postal service has a booth almost every year. Maybe they should hunt that down.

The hardware sector is moribund, but what do they expect software to run on? Eventually it will go through a product cycle and things will reverse.

Having said that, if the journos are bored - what hope do I have?

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