Last week more than 175,000 techies, journalists, programmers, entrepreneurs, innovators, tinkerers and technology fundis flooded Las Vegas to attend the 50th CES trade show, an annual showcase and conference focused on consumer technology. It is largest of the major annual global tech expos (which include Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and IFA in Berlin), and is exciting, fascinating, aspirational and eye-opening. But it is also overwhelming and frantic from an attendee’s perspective, though there must be an army of organisers and a sophisticated eventing team behind the scenes. This year around 3,800 exhibitors were spread across 2.6mft² of rabbit warren-like exhibition space in multiple venues. Besides the slogan-shirt wearing tech press and tie-and-suited company reps, there are drones, robots, electric bikes, virtual reality gamers and autonomous and concept cars to navigate around. Most of the cool stuff is oversubscribed — so you have to throw some elbows to get within ey...

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