Dear Friends,

I had a quick trip out to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show with a bunch of meetings and about as much traveling as show attendance. A bunch of people didn’t make it to the show because of the canceled flights due to weather. Hapy and I made it out to the show without problem, but our flight from Philadelphia to Burlington was canceled on the way home. Since we didn’t want to hang out in the airport for a couple days, we rented a car and drove the 8 hours back home.

This show is huge, and while I was able to see most of the exhibits, there were enormous crowds; getting close to the biggest booths was very hard. There were a lot of TVs, including this massive wall of displays — maybe 30 feet wide — that formed a single high-res 3D wall. I really like the OLED thin TVs, but I wasn’t there for TVs, after all… I saw a number of 3D printers, though, with prices below $1000. They are still not consumer items yet, since they are very, very slow, and the material to make the 3D item is quite expensive. But, they’re getting closer to the replicator on the Starship Enterprise.

The iLounge pavilion and the international pavilion should be named the iPhone and iPad case pavilion as there were literally thousands of varieties of cases. I was able to meet with some of our overseas suppliers, which saves a trip to China. True to trend reports, there was a lot of wearable technology, but the watches seemed clunky and not too versatile. No one has really come up with that useful of an item yet. I did see a few people wearing Google Glass, and that was good for a laugh.

One other technology piece that had me thinking of science fiction was the use of drones. Drones of all sizes, many of them equipped with cameras, were inside and outside of the venue. I was looking at the outside exhibits and noticed a reporter doing a story with a drone flying in front of her face recording the sound and video.

The show was worthwhile to get a sense of trends, and I had some very valuable meetings. My trip was so short that I didn’t even have time to make my annual contribution to the casinos!