CES chief Gary Shapiro explains the coming chaos of the gigantic tech trade show (interview)

Above: These attention grabbers showed off action sports cameras at CES 2014.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

VentureBeat: Do you have any observations about the keynotes?

Shapiro: We have the two keynotes before the show now, with Samsung and Mercedes. For our opening, Mark Fields, the new CEO of Ford, is speaking. I’ll be introducing him after I speak, the first day of the show. Then we go to Intel. To me, the chip companies are really helping to find the future, whether it’s Qualcomm or Intel or Nvidia. Those are huge. We have a Nobel Prize winner speaking, Professor [Shuji] Nakamura.

Besides the single-person keynotes, we just announced some other panels that are interesting. John Chambers of Cisco, Neil Smit from Comcast. We have the head of CBS. That’s exciting. At the C Space we have Google, Twitter, Yahoo, IBM, Ryan Seacrest. Altogether we have 750 or 800 people speaking. We have a lot of stuff going on.

VentureBeat: You’re expecting about 5,000 journalists and 35,000 international people?

Shapiro: We set these numbers up as our outside points. We have no reason to think they’re wrong. I don’t think we’ve ever not met the number we’ve projected, but you never know with weather and things like that. You get paranoid when you’re putting on an event. It’s always nice to exceed expectations, but the numbers have been the same for a while.

The number that really counts is the independently audited number, where we hire someone and they actually contact everyone and work out their own formula. They come up with actual precise numbers, and those are the numbers we use. For now, I’m expecting more than 150,000 attendees, more than two million square feet of exhibitor space, more than 140 companies, more than 35,000 international, more than 3,500 exhibitors, more than 5,000 press, 20 product categories, 25 marketplaces, 250 conference sessions, 750 speakers, more than 2,500 financial professionals, 20,000 products introduced.

As far as differences, last year we had 15 product categories. This year we have 20. We asked about deals this last time, and we tried to use some math that we haven’t done before. That’s how I was able to give you that number about what happened with Eureka Park. We also found that companies exhibiting at CES in 2014, several ended up being sold for an incredible amount of money, a couple of billion dollars altogether.

Above: Xiaomi’s Redmi Android smartphone.

Image Credit: Xiaomi

VentureBeat: I noticed that there seem to be more press conferences happening at the same time. Has that opened up a bit beyond the usual big companies?

Shapiro: For years we’ve been trying to manage that process, having them work things out before the show so you can attend those. We moved it to Mandalay Bay, and that eats up a lot of the pressure because companies have more time to set up their press conferences. That seems to be working. If you’re talking about press conferences outside that area, that’s something we don’t control.

VentureBeat: A lot of the Chinese companies are doing them now, like Xiaomi. There are just more large players around the world now who want to get in front of the press.

Shapiro: There’s an incredible number of press at the show, and they want to take advantage of that. It makes sense. We’ve announced that we’re having a show in Asia. Earlier you asked me that question about the iLounge. We’re not allowing companies which are just doing accessories and things like that. We’re requiring companies to have a brand or some real innovation. We’re curating the event in Asia. It’s going to be in Shanghai.

We’re hearing frustration from some of the Chinese companies. They want to be an established brand, and so part of their strategy has to be getting their name out there, having a press conference. They want to be known for innovation, not just for the cheapest manufacturing. Press conferences, in the scheme of things, are a very effective way of getting the message out.