This is the first of our “bonus” issues in 2015, #49. Since we started back in 1994, we have always said that we produce “a minimum of 48 issues per year” which was to allow staff to have some time off during the year and also to allow us a couple of weeks during the year during to be at major industry events when we just couldn’t create a complete issue because the whole team was out and about. In 1994/5, that meant Comdex and CeBIT, while now it means CES and IFA. We’re coming to a period when our normal weekly rhythm will be interrupted by CES.
We’ll publish issue #51 on 24th December, a day early. We would have liked to have missed issue #52 on the 31st of January, to allow staff a break, but the overload from CES will mean no regular issue on the 8th Jan. If we don’t produce an issue on the 31st, it would be three weeks between issues and that’s simply too long. As I have said hundreds of times to the team on the newsletter over the years, “We produce ‘news’, not ‘olds'”. We’ve also found, over the years, that if we plan a long break over the year end, there is always a big industry story that breaks just after we close. Display Daily will be on the website every day except Christmas Day (25th Dec) and New Year’s Day.
Actually, we have produced 56 issues so far this year, as we have also produced complete “extra” special issues for CES, ISE, MWC, IFA, SID, Infcomm and IBC. We have had significant attendance at 35 or so events over the year to report back to you on what was being said and done. We’d like to cover more, in a wider range of geographies, but time and cost make it hard to cover everything we’d like to.
We’re in the middle of our CES planning. Last year was the first time that we had the full Display Monitor team and also the Display Central team working together and we learned a lot about the different approaches we had. The report we created had a huge amount of content, but we thought it was simply too big (it was over 50,000 words!). This year, we plan to be better structured to cover everything we need to, without, we hope, overloading you! There will be five of us there to cover all the topics. Even with this size of team, with huge experience, we know we won’t be able to catch everything, but we’ll do our best. Much of the time will be spent off the show floor in suites and hotels talking to companies in the supply chain.
There are a lot of events away from the show floor, from the press conferences before the show, to “Showstoppers” and other evening events which give us a chance to talk to small companies and start ups that may not be on the show floor. Some of the big companies, such as HP, will also be at the those events and often we get a better chance to talk to the display specialists.
However, the show floor remains important. Last year, we got a heads up on the Samsung outdoor LED acquisition (the Yesco deal was confirmed in March) at the show. This was not much to do with “Consumer Electronics”, but the real opportunity is to get “face time” with people in the industry.
If you want to contact us about a meeting at the show, send a mail to [email protected] and we’ll get the person allocated to your topic to get in touch.
Bob
