Closing it out

CES is always a complete madhouse, with 140,000 people showing up and wandering 3 million square feet of convention center space. Goliaths like Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, and others dominate the landscape with advertising in the airport, on top of the cabs, covering entire sides of hotels. CES exhibits are now spread across 3-4 convention and expo facilities throughout the city. Everyone is pitching some product or service and competing for a limited amount of mindshare from the press, buyers, dealers, and trade reps who flock to this show. Interviews are given, meetings are held, and everyone's voice gets pretty gravelly after talking with visitors from 9 AM to 6 PM four days in a row.

It can be a tough place to work, filled with distractions in other booths, not to mention the allure (occasionally seamy though it may be) of Las Vegas. "In many ways, CES is too big. It's like holding meetings in Disney World," Ian remarked today. "People come with every intention of having serious meetings and in the end, they just want to go on the rides."

In spite of the challenges, the show went well for KVH and we actually did manage to have those serious meetings. We'll be in the post-show follow-up and assessment period for some time, seeing where else we show up in the press, which of the prospective dealers we met actually sign on to sell TracVision, and how well we can keep the momentum generated with our reps, distributors, and dealers going into the year and our national sales efforts.

In many ways, our position now at CES is reminiscent of how things have also changed over the years at the METS show in Amsterdam. "People are taking us extremely seriously at CES," Ian observed. "We're part of the 12V industry fabric, part of the mix of core companies for dealers, reps, and people looking to get into the business. That's a satisfying feeling."

And not at all a bad way to wrap up CES and kick off 2007.

The KVH team celebrates a successful show