How I survived my 20th Consumer Electronics Show

I survived another Consumer Electronics Show. I believe this is my 20th time at the biggest tech trade show in North America. After five days in Las Vegas, I’m tired but not sick. I’m still writing stories from all of the events and booths I saw at the event, which drew more than 170,000 people to view 3,800 exhibitors across more than 2.47 million square feet of space.

But I’d like to take a moment in this post to explain the small arsenal of gear that I used to survive the show. I’m also open to ideas on how I can do it better in the future. So please supply me with your feedback.

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I’ve written 69 stories about CES, during the event and in a period leading up to it. But sometimes there’s a story behind the stories. Did you ever wonder what it takes to bring readers the best coverage possible at a massive event full of 6,000 other tech writers? That’s what I’m here to tell.

Parachuting into Vegas

Our team (four writers, a freelancer, and a surprise guest writer) prepared early. So early, in fact, that I booked my arrival for Sunday instead of Monday. The show was pushed back a day this year, and I decided to come in early. That was a lucky decision, as storms and fog hit Las Vegas on Monday, resulting in a lot of canceled flights.

I brought two bags with me, a backpack and a shoulder bag. I also brought my roller cart, but those were banned this year. I kept the shoulder bag as light as possible, and left the backpack and roller cart in the trunk of my car. I finished off some stories on Monday morning and made my way to the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. I drove to self-parking with my colleague, Stephen Kleckner, who was at his first CES. I logged exactly where I parked by dropping a pin on my Apple Maps location. I also wrote it down in my notes. I’ve had to search for rental cars in multi-story garages before, and that’s not fun.

We walked a quarter-mile to the convention center and got our badges. Mine wasn’t actually ready. But I was verified soon enough, and they stuck a green “security approved” sticker on my bag. That was the first time since 9/11 that I had my bag searched at CES.

I went to the press room, huddled with my colleagues, and then went on to three events. The first two were talks about CES trends and global tech forecasts. The third was the annual CES Unveiled party, where the press could gorge on food and ogle tables of new tech products. My Dell XPS 13-inch laptop survived that challenge easily, as I never had to break out the spare Toshiba Satellite laptop. I rolled my roller bag around at that event and eventually just hid it under a table. I took pictures with my Nikon Coolpix p610 point-and-shoot camera, and I took occasional pictures with my iPhone 6 and shared them to Facebook and Twitter. I went on to Nvidia’s press conference.

That’s where I had my first trouble, as I couldn’t get on the Internet on the hotel Wi-Fi or on my T-Mobile Mi-Fi modem. T-Mobile, by the way, has pretty bad reception just about anywhere I go, at least compared to Verizon. I’m thinking about switching back if Verizon ever gets its data plan together. Our content management system was slow, and it took forever to post. I had to write offline in Notepad and then post when I could. I was only able to post by moving to the back of the room, where the Wi-Fi worked. Overall, the first day was a breeze.

Press day

The second day was the Day of Days for a tech writer. (Yes, that’s my reference to the D-Day episode in Band of Brothers). It’s the press conference day when 6,000 journalists descend upon CES. I had to get up at 5:45 a.m. and head over to the Mandalay Bay for a 7:30 a.m. press conference by Ford. My colleagues went to the FitBit press event at the same time. That was the beginning of a nonstop day that would last until 10:30 p.m.

The Ford event lasted for a half hour. I wrote two posts during the middle of it and moved on to the 8 a.m. LG press event. It was crowded, so I didn’t get a great seat. But I was able to knock out a few stories, even while my colleagues watched on livestreams. During the day, my off-site colleagues helped by capturing screen shots during the livestreams, so I wouldn’t have to post images at times when the Wi-Fi was bogged down.

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I made my way to the Panasonic event, the Qualcomm press conference, and a Ford interview. During all of these events, I had my trusty Sony IC Recorder, the ICD-UX533, a voice recorder that captures sound with pretty good quality. As a backup, I had my old Olympus WS-311M recorder. I didn’t have to change batteries for the Sony recorder during the entire length of CES. At lunch, I went to Johnny Rockets to fuel up, but they lost my order. They eventually gave me my food for free, but it made me late for the Qualcomm press event.

In between events, my colleague Harrison Weber and I listened to a Google Hangouts staff meeting call on his Mac, as I couldn’t get it to work on my machines. Then all five of us went into the Samsung press event. Surprisingly, we had good Internet connections with the Mandalay Bay conference center’s Wi-Fi. So we wrote our hearts out. If you notice that we did more stories on Samsung that day than at other press events, it is because we had good Internet access, not because we were all Samsung fanboys and fangirls.

As soon as Samsung was over, I had to rush to the Sony event at the Las Vegas convention center. During that ride, my colleagues noticed their phones were getting low on battery. Mine was fine, as I had a Mophie case that charged my iPhone 6. The Mophie case, as well as a separate Zendure charging battery pack, turned out to be lifesavers during CES. Not once did I run out of phone juice.

At Sony, we had another connectivity nightmare. I couldn’t get online at all, except via a chat function. I wrote a story offline and then submitted it to my offsite colleagues via the chat group. They posted it for me, and added the art, as well. Heather Newman was able to get online using my iPhone 6 as a tether, but the tether and the Mi-Fi didn’t work for me at all. We got our stories up, but spent much of the time frustrated. I watched as the battery on my Dell XPS laptop gave out, and I switched to the Toshiba. Harrison Weber, my colleague, left in frustration and watched on a livestream in a hallway where there was Wi-Fi. Sony keeps breaking my heart this way at every CES.

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When I was done, I rushed to the rental car in the parking lot, about a half mile away. The shoulder bag was breaking my back. I drove to the 10-story self-parking garage at the Venetian Hotel, where the opening keynote speech was held. I got there at 6:29 pm, just a minute before the scheduled start.

At the escalators, I met some goons (the security staff at the Venetian). They said the place was at capacity and only VIPs could go up. I told them that I was with the press. They said I couldn’t get in. They turned away dozens of people, and I waited. I sent a text message to Bill Calder, PR man at Intel. Then one of the security managers said we could go up a level. There, we met another line of security guards who wouldn’t budge. I called Calder on the phone, just as one of the security guys went into full riot mode. “Push them back!” he yelled at his guards.

I saw a Financial Times writer give up and turn away. And I’m pretty sure that I beat most of the other tech press who were coming from Sony. Fortunately for me, I got Calder on my phone. He came down the escalators with a VIP badge and took me upstairs to the room, where 5,000 people were watching Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel, give his keynote speech.

The Wi-Fi went in and out, and so I filed four stories via Mi-Fi, again with help from my offsite colleague Jordan Novet. He captured photos for me and I used them in my stories. The Toshiba battery held out. To me, that was amazing, as I got through the day on two laptops without having to charge either one. In the past, I remember going to CES events and running out of battery after one hour. Laptop batteries have advanced so far that I can almost get through the whole day with just one. To me, that’s a tech miracle that few people seem to appreciate. We take it for granted now.

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When that event was over, I continued writing and then went to the car in the parking garage, where there was a lighter traffic jam than usual. I drove to the Mirage Hotel, parked, and walked a quarter mile or so to the Pepcom Digital Experience party. The party had a couple of hundred tech product vendors showing their wares at tables. I grabbed a couple of hot dogs first, and then I went from table to table, taking videos and pictures.

During the party, the battery on my Nikon gave out. I used my second battery, and took videos on my iPhone. But after 45 minutes, the party shut down. While I was walking back to the car, I uploaded videos to YouTube via my iPhone 6. I went back to my hotel and finished my stories. That was the end of a trying day.

The rest of the show

The next morning, I had to get up early once again and head to the keynote speech of Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix. I took at lot of pictures, but we didn’t write as much about Hastings’ talk, as most of it wasn’t about technology. After that, I hit the show floor for the first time, taking pictures just about every step of the way. I also took videos with my Nikon, but the battery gave out by the afternoon. I tried a second battery, but it wasn’t fully charged, so it failed soon after. I found that video chewed up a ton of battery power on the Nikon. This was truly the first epic battery fail of the show. It was the only time I would have sacrificed my kingdom for a battery, a lithium-ion battery.

But my iPhone 6 battery, boosted by the Mophie, lasted all day. So I was able to take pictures at booths, record videos, and then do more of the same at the Showstoppers party, which also had hundreds of vendors present. Some of my colleagues were too tired to hit the party. But I figured it was worth it, as it was better to cover hundreds of vendors at the party than try to wade through thousands of vendors across the show floors. Sadly, some of the vendors who depended on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth couldn’t show their demos, as the wireless networks were too jammed at the party.

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I stopped in at a secret Intel press room to upload videos and pictures. There, I found highly valued wired Ethernet cables. But I had to borrow an Ethernet-to-USB adaptor, since I had failed to transfer my own from my backpack to my shoulder bag.

After the Showstoppers event, I made it to the Microsoft CES party at the Omnia nightclub. It was a true spectacle of Las Vegas, with loud DJ music from Steve Aoki and wall-to-wall people.They were jumping and dancing. I took photos and videos with my iPhone 6, and I posted them on social media. It would have been a pity if, at midnight, I’d had no phone battery left, because that was my Kodak moment of the show. I just wish my iPhone 6 had a better-quality camera.

During the whole affair, I had to remember to keep backups of everything. I had to upload pictures and voice recordings, just in case I wouldn’t be able to do so later. I had to have backup equipment in case something failed. I carried spare USB cables, recorder batteries, an extra camera battery (not enough), and spare SD photo cards. A single 64-gigabyte SD card actually lasted the entire show for me. That, again,was a minor miracle. I even carried a spare Samsung phone, without a service plan, just in case I needed to access my calendar or something else, in case I lost my iPhone.

My Intel Basis Peak smartwatch told me that, over four days at CES, I walked 73,376 steps, or 18,344 per day. The Basis Peak worked wonderfully, and I only had to charge it once. I wish it was a little better at warning me about low battery, as the first indicator is when the screen goes dark and it says, “low battery.” But fortunately, I had my charger when I needed it and I didn’t lose any of my Vegas step data.

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The Basis Peak also preserves my sleep data. But I can tell you this. There wasn’t much of it. Sleep is for the weak.