CES Confessions: Trash, Booth Babes, Motorola and the Media Business
Posted in: Miscellaneous, motorola, Today's Chili, videoCES isn’t all about the gadgets and the deals. Sometimes, it’s about the booth babes — and the recycling.
At the show last week, Wired.com’s video team interviewed four people for their unusual perspectives on the enormous electronics tradeshow, which brought an estimated 140,000 people to Las Vegas for a weeklong download of gadget news and wheeling and dealing.
Above, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens points out just how wasteful a tradeshow like CES is. Not once, he says, did he see a recycling bin, and tradeshow goons even made him give up the water bottle he was trying to keep for reuse.
Besides conspicuous consumption and waste, another aspect of CES is the booth babes: Attractive, scantily-clad women hired to hawk a company’s wares. The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal looked into the business and found that, yes, there are companies you can call up if you want, say, to hire a dozen Penthouse models who can talk about gadgets.
We interviewed Wired magazine publisher Howard Mittman on the rising importance of CES to the media industry. With the proliferation of tech-based media distribution platforms like the internet and the iPad, CES is turning into a must-attend show for people in publishing now too. And business is pretty good, according to Mittman.
Finally, one of the biggest stories of the show was the comeback of Motorola, a company that many left for dead a couple years ago. Wired’s Fred Vogelstein, who was at CES working on a magazine story, talks about the Android-powered return of Moto.
Videos: Annaliza Savage (producer), John Ross (camera), Michael Lennon and Fernando Cardoso (editing)
