CES isn’t for you and I. It’s for investors and investees to meet.
Getting to attend CES was a dream come true. It’s the sort of dream come true where when it does come true you kind of end up going “what was the big deal?” CES is not like a Makerfair or Rep Rap festival. Heck, it’s not even like a ComicCon. While the “C” in CES may stand for “Consumer”, it is not an event for consumers. It’s an event for industry professionals, and they’re not afraid to tell you that when you apply for a ticket. I’m actually surprised they let me in. But they did, and now I’ve been to CES.
The thing is the majority of booths are there to raise capital for their projects or parts suppliers trying to get their parts into bigger company’s stuff. However, those bigger suppliers are there too, showing stuff off at their boots, so how much success are they actually having? Well, it must be more than none, because CES is still going strong and packed.
But the appeal for me was minimal. Besides testing out my recording rig, and getting to know Dom from the OC Makerfaire who acted as my cameraman, this video was about the only thing I could get from this event that was worth it.
There were two other 3D printer manufacturers that I will not name by name. But I already know both of those companies are less consumer focused and more investor focused. So of course they had booths at CES and they were fishing for investors. If that doesn’t prove my point, I don’t know what does.
Everyone at the Creality booth on the other hand seemed to echo my thought that CES just wasn’t matching what they were there for. I hope they got good coverage, and that’s well for them. But they weren’t looking for investors. They wanted to tell consumers what they had coming. And that what they did.
Besides the tech on display in this video, there was some new tech being used to make this video. In particular the the wireless lav mics and steadycam used to get some of the Broll. This was a field test, and it overall went very well. In fact I might get rid of my previous sound setup in favor of this since it automatically syncs the audio and video, and I don’t have to sync it up in post any more.
