Virtual CES Was As Surreal As We All Suspected It Would Be - WIRED

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At first it was just this; the mild inconveniences of attending a multi-day virtual event, the musings on what we’ve learned about online conferences during the coronavirus pandemic.

In July 2020, the Consumer Technology Association (which runs CES) pulled the plug on any kind of in-person event for January 2021 and started planning an online event instead.

(I’d really, really like to be together again next year.).

But as this week wore on, as I watched online keynote sessions and marketing videos promising sharp visions of the future, the value of an all-virtual CES actually became less clear.

And while most of the press conferences, keynote sessions, and panels referenced the global pandemic—how could you not—the rest of the event played out as though a deadly attack on the US Capitol hadn’t just happened last week?

“Walking” the virtual show floor at Pepcom—a product demo event for the media that occurs alongside CES—involved clicking on a digital quilt of company logos one by one, a far cry from the usual booth-browsing and buffet-grazing that happens at the in-person event?

At a virtual CES, that’s a virtual impossibility.

Several tech companies I emailed or spoke to in the days leading up to the event told me they just weren’t participating this year.

During AMD’s keynote, chief executive Lisa Su was joined by scientists who explained how extra teraflops of AMD compute power are helping them research infectious diseases like Covid-19.

The organization stressed that by being virtual, it would be much more accessible to people around the globe this year.

But I really, really would like to be together again next year.