Wrapup: CES and Mobile World Congress, or How I Spent My Winter Break

The first 45 days of any year for a digital media consultant typically means lots of travel. After all, even if Macworld and the  Consumer Electronics Show (CES) don’t fall on the exact same days, the choice of which to go to is not eliminated: it just means you get to make two trips to the west coast - one to Vegas and one to San Francisco.

Then there are the other shows that creep up and around the end of January; this year I attended Video 08, a trade show in Orlando geared toward those who do event videography for a living and who are discovering streaming media as a huge sales, marketing and revenue vein that can keep brides, graduates and mitzvah goers happy for years to come.


Packing it all in
Then, in early February, the small (tiny?) screen show takes place in Barcelona, the recently renamed Mobile World Congress.

This year’s press bags for both the Vegas and Barcelona events were decent backpacks; and, while I normally give up the goods for the kids (as one journalist waiting in the press line said: “I never have to buy my girls a back pack for school”) I chose to put these two packs to a real-world test in a climb up Monserrat to the Sant Jeroni chapel and overlook.

Turns out each one was useful after all, and not just for carrying a few pieces of swag and tons of marketing slicks picked up during the week-long booth troll [Note to PR firms: the trend toward USB thumb drives is a very good idea, especially if it combines multiple companies together].

Then there is the writing. Between the Sourcebook, Streaming Media’s year in review (and trend predictor) that I contribute to, the regular writing from each day at the shows and finalizing market analysis / go-to-market strategy reports for clients, the early part of the year turns into a 25,000 to 30,000 word marathon that keeps the consulting juices flowing and done to avoid the “2 year consulting” plague of cash-cow consulting that relies on old data.

So that, hopefully, is it for the winter break trade show travel schedule. Not that the travel slows down, as I’ve got client projects in late February and early March, then some personal travel for a few weddings, followed by the next big shows take place in April, May and June, with NAB, Streaming Media East and the Infocomm-NSCA-NxtComm glom in sequential order.

Makes one tired just thinking about the schedule, but we do what needs to be done, and often travel so that you - or our clients - don’t have to.