Viva CES Vegas: The Best Worst Way To Start The Year
It started as a trade show for buyers, it turned into a journalist’s cheat sheet to new tech, and it devolved into chaos when the marketers started showing up
Juicy one coming up folks, hope you’re ready for a sloppy, vile, heaping pile of piping hot Down the Pipes.
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Every January for a generation or two, Las Vegas has hosted one of the largest conferences in the world. Nearly 200,000 tech geeks flood the city of sin for a single week, right around the time when most mere mortals are still nursing a New Year’s hangover.
That conference is called CES, or the Consumer Electronics Show, a place where every technology brand on earth (AKA, every brand on earth) showcases their latest and greatest products. Ever thinner screens, “smart” everything, biomimetic robots, pocket-sized supercomputers, bleeding edge wearables, and state of the art so-and-so, all on display for a thirsting technophile public.
The first time I heard about CES, it was in 2008 when Gizmodo’s video correspondent used a Magic Remote to turn off entire walls of televisions, leading to his eventual banning and an unfortunate photo of him flaunting his badge in his underwear that I will not surface at this time because it is one of the few embarrassing photos that appears to have been successfully wiped from the internet. If you’d like to see it ask Kidder, I’m sure he has a copy.
While the stunt was admittedly puckish and annoying, it was also very much in the spirit of “technical disruption,” literal as it may have been. That’s what these guys are all about, right?
CES is like a carnival for every shade of dweeb; a miles-long Best Buy from the future. It wasn’t always like that though. Originally, it was a conference for true uber nerds who were tasked with making buying decisions for major corporations.
So for example, let’s say you’re a component buyer for Sony, and you know you’re going to need to sell 8 million TVs next year. That means you need lots and lots of components…8 million IR receivers for the remote, 8 million sheets of glass, trillions or probably quadrillions of LEDs. Sony might not actually manufacture all those components themselves, so a show like CES would allow a buyer from a place like Sony to go meet with all the LED manufacturers on earth and do a deal likely worth many many millions or more.
At a certain point though in the 80’s—about 10 or 20 years after the conference’s humble beginning—a new group of attendees started showing up in droves: Tech Journalists. By bumming around CES and covering the latest and greatest technology on display, tech journalists got a kind of crystal ball into the next year of consumer trends.
The vast majority of technology you use day to day likely has components that were first showcased years ago a CES. Touchscreens? CES. USB? CES. Wifi? CES. Cellphones? Yep. CES. In 2020, all the talk was about 5G and screens that can flip. This year, the focus seemed to be on AI interfaces, VR, autonomous vehicles and healthcare tech. I was particularly enthralled by the sheer number of at home metabolic piss labs this year.
But I’m not here to give you a glimpse of your future Quest At Home Diagnostic lab. That’s all well and good, but I’m not actually part of the tech journalist cohort here in Vegas. I’m part of the third wave of CES attendees: The Marketers.
The buyers brought the journalists, the journalists brought the public, and the public attention brought the kind of people who say things like “this is a tentpole event for us.” Joe Brown (Gizmodo’s editor in chief who famously ran an invite only late night poker tournament at CES, which we turned into a rager sponsored by Knob Creek one year) always would say “the best technology is like magic, you don’t understand how it works and but it can make your life unimaginably better.”
I would add that shitty technology—which most technology happens to be these days—is also like magic, but only because a bunch of marketers are backstage somewhere, smashing strobe lights and blasting fog machines to mask their mediocre product.
Still, marketers drive customers and driving customers generates revenue, so the marketing crowd at CES certainly serves a role. It’s just that we don’t really give so much of a shit about the technology on display. We’re there for the after hours, the parties, the dinners, and the meetings.
I’ve personally been to CES 10 times, and of those 10 times I think I’ve visited the actual convention center maybe 5 times. It’s just not where the marketers hang out. Instead we post up during the day in suites at the Venetian (if you work in tech), the Cosmopolitan (if you work in media), the Wynn or Encore (if you have money), or Mandalay Bay (if you don’t).
The meetings are some of the best you can have all year…seldom is every chief marketing officer and agency executive in the same place at the same time, and everyone feels a certain responsibility to accomplish something at CES. It isn’t cheap and it certainly looks like a waste of time and money to the assistants who book our hotel blocks and flights, but when we come home having inked a seven figure deal with a major brand, the value of a $100k week in Vegas starts to seem almost worth it. Almost.
The reality is that Vegas is always a boondoggle. There are too many available vices to stoke in a city of countless roads that almost all lead to ruin. Marketers are a rambunctious bunch to begin with, giving them an expense account in a place like Vegas is a recipe for debauchery. Deals at CES seldom get done because of a productive meeting or a slick sales deck, they get done after hours at the club, restaurant, bar, or craps table. And while there is a laundry list of things that Vegas is shitty for, one of the things it’s great for is after hours dealmaking.
Shane Smith, the former CEO of Vice, once famously ran the Bellagio high rollers blackjack table until the sun came up, and then spent $300k on dinner for 30 people (mostly investors, executives, and clients). The last time I bumped into Tumblr’s David Karp, it was nearly 4am and he was arguing with the cashier cage boss to increase his already-exorbitant line of credit at the Venetian so he and a Yahoo guy could keep rolling bones.
One year, I personally signed the bill on a $60,000 party at LAVO with Rev Run, the largest single transaction I’ve ever made with a piece of plastic. Another time we rented a 10-bedroom off-strip party mansion for our clients, the first and last time I will take responsibility for that many people in a town like this one.
As with all Vegas tales, the opportunity for mischief abounds at every turn. One year I unwittingly locked my boss out of his $5,000 a night Cosmo Cabana Suite to hook up with a journalist from The Daily in his hot tub at 2am. Another year a co-worker was so hungover, that same boss burst into his room and physically hauled him out of bed to make his 9am breakfast meeting. A senior executive at Conde once offered me a $400k job on the spot after I made him a small fortune at the craps table. I saw an engaged client hook up with a soon-to-be engaged sales rep (both are happily married with kids to their original partners, truly a “what happens in Vegas” moment for both of them). I “lent” several hundred dollars to an agency executive who was barred by his wife from hitting another ATM, never mind that we were standing in front of the $15 surcharge ATM at Sapphire. That cash withdrawal was ultimately expensed to the company, as were many other cash withdrawals for equally unsavory purchases while we were “entertaining.”
My favorite experience at CES though happened in 2015. My pal and mentor, David Carr, was here on assignment for the first time. We didn’t get a chance to meet up all week, but on the last night we made plans to grab dinner. “Somewhere away from all this” he said, suggesting we meet up with his local nephew at an off-strip Pho place that wasn’t Lotus of Siam (I believe it was the aptly named Pho King, but I could be wrong).
I picked him and his nephew up in the Gawker Media Limo we had on call all week and we ditched the strip. Vegas turns suburban almost immediately once you’re off of Las Vegas Blvd, and the lack of lights and sounds was exactly what we needed after 4 endless days and nights running around the circus. We sat in a dingy restaurant with plastic water cups and ate some of the most delicious Pho I can remember.
We barely talked about media or CES out of respect for David’s nephew Tommy, a middle school teacher and punk guitarist in Las Vegas (one of the toughest and poorest school systems in the country, and also a killer local music scene, pun intended). But it was clear that CES was bugging David. He just couldn’t figure it out and had a deadline to meet.
“I have no idea what any of us are doing here,” David admit with frustration. He was as panicked as I had ever seen him about finding an angle, a rare moment of writers block for a man who seemingly always had a hot take.
So I told him mine: CES isn’t about the tech, at least not for the advertising and media executives. For the media elites, CES was simply an excuse to dive head first into the new year with the rest of our industry in the most depraved way possible. A belated holiday party after a month of holiday party hopping, with the added pressure of needing to justify what we were doing there so we can keep coming back year after year.
He jotted some stuff in his notebook, grunted in approval, and we returned our focus to Las Vegas class sizes and Tommy Carr’s local punk band, The Quitters.
The three of us returned to the Palazzo just as the evening was getting under way for everyone else, and David of course was invited to every gathering there was.
Most exclusively, Kara Swisher was hosting a ReCode dinner with Nellie Bowles and Brooke Hammerling at Cut Steakhouse. It was a who’s who of journalism firepower seated around a long table (the stuff media conspiracy nightmares are made of), and we showed up late enough that the T-Bones were already on the table. We ignored the glares and the “nice of you to join us” comments as we sat and schmoozed for awhile, but having already eaten, David was antsy. He wanted to gamble.
“Let’s hit the tables!” He proclaimed, and despite Kara’s protestations (“You show up late and then leave early to play Blackjack?!”) we were already out the door and on our way to the casino floor. Ever the affable inquisitive, David quickly made friends with the entire table of randos, cracking jokes and electrifying the experience beyond the white knuckled stress of needing to hit on 16 repeatedly. He was on a roll.
But as it always goes, eventually our chips vanished into the dealer’s tray, and it was about time to go to my Gawker party at LAVO. Brooke and Kara were finishing dinner and planned to join us, except Brooke forgot her ID at her hotel and the bouncer was not interested in who she was or who she was with (even as I vouched for her as the guy with the credit card while flanked by two of the finest journalists in a generation).
David, ever the gentleman, decided he’d accompany Brooke home and call it a night too, and that was the last time I saw him. He passed away suddenly on the floor of the New York Times newsroom just a month later, but I am SO thankful we got to have that night off strip. He was in the rarest of forms, channeling the chaos of a city built for chaos in the most perfect of ways. I still keep in touch with his nephew Tommy, in fact I’m headed to go have drinks with him at Atomic Liquor (the finest dive bar in all of local Vegas) shortly.
I did hear from David one more time, a quick note thanking me for the inspiration on his column that week, all about how the movers and shakers in media were usurping the tech wizardry on display at CES. For someone who gave me so much advice and joy over the 5 short years we were friends, it felt really great to give him some perspective that he seemingly valued enough to write up in one of his last columns.
I moved to Vegas 8 months later, a story (or rather, volume of stories) for another time. But for me, CES was never about the technology, or even the dealmaking. It was always about the brilliant people I spent time with in a city that is scientifically designed to pick at your favorite worst things to do.
And while most of us have grown up considerably in the 10 years since and I can proudly say that I didn’t see the sun come up once this year (a vast improvement on previous years), it’s great to see all the old friends who still post up at The Chandelier bar at 11pm.
It’s also great remembering the memories left behind by those who don’t.
Until next week!
I've been to Vegas once, in 1990 with my brother. Our cousins from California met us there and we experienced all Vegas for one night. It's still memorable. Another enjoyable read James. Thanks for sharing.