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Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, senior writer Jonathan Strickland from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot Com. I am still recovering from a cold,

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Speaker 1: but every day I'm getting a little bit better, so

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Speaker 1: I'll probably only get super raspy. I don't know a

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Speaker 1: dozen times in this episode, and today's topic comes to

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Speaker 1: us courtesy of a little listener mail. This message is

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Speaker 1: from Alex, and Alex said, I really enjoy listening to

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Speaker 1: your episodes on c e S and also listening to

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Speaker 1: the shows that you broadcast every year from CS and

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Speaker 1: it got me to thinking about two decades ago, there

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Speaker 1: was a popular trade show called Calm Dex, which is

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Speaker 1: not around anymore. I've always wondered what happened to Comdex

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Speaker 1: and why it failed as a trade show. I know

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Speaker 1: that some famous things happened at Colm Deck. The blue

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Speaker 1: screen of death coming up on Bill Gates during a

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Speaker 1: Windows demonstration comes to mind. Thanks for making such a

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Speaker 1: great show. Well, thank you Alex for those kind words

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Speaker 1: and for the suggestion. Guys, remember you can always write

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Speaker 1: me to make suggestions for show topics or guests. I

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Speaker 1: should have on the show, or even if you just

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Speaker 1: want to say hi. The email address you can use

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Speaker 1: is tech stuff at house stuffworks dot com. I'll mention

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Speaker 1: that again at the end of the show, but I

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Speaker 1: know some of you tune out before I get to that,

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Speaker 1: So that's what you can use as an email if

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Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me. Now, let's

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Speaker 1: talk about Condex and its impact on the text industry.

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Speaker 1: I can't just jump right onto Condex though, I actually

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Speaker 1: have to go back a little bit, and and I

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Speaker 1: also have to admit this was a surprisingly challenging topic.

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Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot written about Condex as a whole,

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Speaker 1: apart from some articles in computer industry magazines from the

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Speaker 1: time that usually focused on either an upcoming show, like

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Speaker 1: you know, you might read an article in a magazine

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Speaker 1: from seven about Condex eighty seven being around the corner,

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Speaker 1: or you might see an article that is talking about

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Speaker 1: just a show that just ended. Kind of similar to

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Speaker 1: how people cover c e s right, there will be

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Speaker 1: an article that says, oh, hey, CS is over here,

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Speaker 1: what the big trends were, But you don't really find

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Speaker 1: a whole lot of stuff about the life and death

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Speaker 1: of the show as a whole. You have to find

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Speaker 1: bits and pieces and then end up putting it all

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Speaker 1: together and forming it into a meaningful narrative. So this

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Speaker 1: episode is really the result of hours of research. I

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Speaker 1: had to piece everything together myself. So typically for every

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Speaker 1: hour of podcasts that I produce, it takes about eight

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Speaker 1: hours of research. That's typical. This one was way more

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Speaker 1: than that. It had to be at least twenty hours

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Speaker 1: of research, maybe more in order to get all of this.

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Speaker 1: But that's enough stalling. Let's talk about condex. Uh. So,

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Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy, which is, by the way, many

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Speaker 1: years before Condex actually officially began, there was a group

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Speaker 1: of entrepreneurs based out of Needham, Massachusetts, and they included

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Speaker 1: Robert Bob Lively and Milton Burns, and they created a

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Speaker 1: magazine covering the world of computers and data communications. And

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Speaker 1: the name of that publication was the Data com User,

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Speaker 1: and data com was one word and two ms at

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Speaker 1: the end of calm. Uh This was before the era

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Speaker 1: of the personal computer. It was even before the era

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Speaker 1: that you would be able to purchase a kit and

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Speaker 1: make your own personal computer. This was the era of

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Speaker 1: many computers and micro computers that were only meant for

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Speaker 1: business or research purposes, so you didn't really see them

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Speaker 1: in the home. But they were able to create a

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Speaker 1: successful magazine, and two years after they launched it, the

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Speaker 1: publishers partnered with a a different person of future casino

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Speaker 1: magnate Sheldon Gary Addlson to launch a new trade show

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Speaker 1: that they were calling the Interface Conference and Exposition. Now

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Speaker 1: Edelson is or Addlson is an interesting person, someone of

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Speaker 1: great influence both in Las Vegas and in politics. He

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Speaker 1: would eventually go on to build one of the premium

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Speaker 1: casinos on the Strip, the Venetian. Anyway, after several successful

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Speaker 1: years of running the Interface Conference and Exposition, the group

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Speaker 1: saw another opportunity. So it's nineteen seventy nine. The computer

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Speaker 1: industry was starting to gain some traction, with the home

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Speaker 1: PC market mostly stuck in the world of hobbyists and

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Speaker 1: early adopters. By seventy nine, it was starting to slowly

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Speaker 1: emerge from that market, but it wasn't yet to the

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Speaker 1: point where computers were becoming household objects. Uh. It was

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Speaker 1: fairly rare to run into homes that had one. They

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Speaker 1: were expensive, and there just weren't a whole lot out there.

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Speaker 1: You're talking about early Apple computers. You're talking about the

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Speaker 1: Commodore sixty four, the Tandy, that kind of stuff. More companies, though,

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Speaker 1: we're really looking into incorporating computers into the workplace. So

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Speaker 1: the Interface Group organized a new event, and this was

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Speaker 1: called the Computer Dealers Exhibition, which was later shortened to

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Speaker 1: the name Comdex. Now, that nineteen show was modest by

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Speaker 1: later standards, and modest is kind of overstating it. It

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Speaker 1: was tiny compared to the show when it reached its peak.

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Speaker 1: It took place in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas,

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Speaker 1: and that was the MGM Grand at the time. The

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Speaker 1: MGM Grand of today is not the same building as

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Speaker 1: the one from nineteen two, totally different places. Approximately four

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Speaker 1: thousand people attended the show, with about a hundred fifty

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Speaker 1: seven exhibitors present. Now, in those days only industry representatives

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Speaker 1: could attend, so you had to be inside the computer

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Speaker 1: industry in order to uh to be considered for attendance,

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Speaker 1: so general public was not allowed to go into the show.

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Speaker 1: It's very similar to the way C E S is run,

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Speaker 1: and for many years E three ran that way. Although

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Speaker 1: E three seen which is you know, we're I'm recording

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Speaker 1: this in seventeen is the first time in several years

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Speaker 1: that the show is going to be open to the

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Speaker 1: general public um, assuming that you were able to get

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Speaker 1: a badge in time. I'm gonna be at E three

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Speaker 1: this year, so that will be interesting. I can't wait

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Speaker 1: to see how it's different from the years past that

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Speaker 1: I have attended when it was industry only anyway, context

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Speaker 1: when it started only allowed industry members and and it

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Speaker 1: really didn't look at any of the personal computer stuff

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Speaker 1: at all because it end that was such a young market.

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Speaker 1: It was really looking at the business applications for computers.

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Speaker 1: So if you visit Las Vegas and you go to

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Speaker 1: the MGM Grand, like I said, that's not the same

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Speaker 1: casino as the one that hosted the first Condex. If

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Speaker 1: you want to visit the building where the first Condex

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Speaker 1: took place, you actually have to go to Bally's because

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Speaker 1: that's what the old MGM Grand turned into. So I'll

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Speaker 1: walk through Bally's. Casino is also a walk through computer

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Speaker 1: history in a way, and they really did focus on

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Speaker 1: many computers which were named Many, but we're honestly pretty

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Speaker 1: huge machines to to be fair, the original computers that

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Speaker 1: came out. Those were the ones that took up like

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Speaker 1: an entire room or sometimes the floor of a building like.

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Speaker 1: They were huge, huge machines. Those first computers, the ones

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Speaker 1: that date all the way back to like the forties

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Speaker 1: and fifties, But the many computers of the seventies were

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Speaker 1: still pretty massive machines. And again they were meant for

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Speaker 1: corporate use or manufacturing or things like that. They weren't

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Speaker 1: meant to be on your table at home. Um so

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Speaker 1: their industrial computers. Almost all the interactions at CONDEX were

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Speaker 1: all about business to business, with computer manufacturers courting big

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Speaker 1: corporations like insurance companies and law firms. So really, if

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Speaker 1: you might represent, say a computer manufacturer, and what you're

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Speaker 1: trying to do is get that representative from that big

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Speaker 1: insurance company to come see your stuff and say, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to put in an order

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Speaker 1: for X number of machines for us to use at

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Speaker 1: our corporate office. That was kind of the purpose for CONDEX.

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Speaker 1: Uh So it wasn't the sort of convention that the

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Speaker 1: average computer junkie would even want to attend that first COMDEX.

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Speaker 1: If you're a big computer nerd, you probably still would

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Speaker 1: not be too keen on that first Condex because it

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Speaker 1: just it was geared towards a different type of person.

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Speaker 1: It's more for business now. Exhibitors also attended shows like

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Speaker 1: Condex for another reason, not just to connect with potential customers,

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Speaker 1: They also wanted to see what the competition was up to.

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Speaker 1: Keep in mind, these trade shows allowed companies to show

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Speaker 1: off stuff that was in development, stuff that had not

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Speaker 1: yet hit the market. That meant that if you were

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Speaker 1: a competitor, you might get a look at someone's products

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Speaker 1: before they actually hit store shelves, and if you are able,

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Speaker 1: you might be able to suss out how those products

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Speaker 1: are working and figure out your own version of that

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Speaker 1: same product. It's not quite the same thing as copying

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Speaker 1: someone else. It might involve some reverse engineering a little

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Speaker 1: ethically questionable, but it's certainly was something that happened all

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Speaker 1: the time. If a competitor's computers incorporated a new feature

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Speaker 1: that you saw customers were really finding to be compelling,

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Speaker 1: you might go back to your team and say, hey,

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Speaker 1: competitor X has this new peripheral and people are going

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Speaker 1: gaga over it. We've got to create something equal to

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Speaker 1: or better than that for our products. So it's really

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Speaker 1: just a fuel for competition. And just like ce S

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Speaker 1: gives rise to certain trends each year, so did CONDEX.

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Speaker 1: So another reason why companies would attend is to see

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Speaker 1: what trends are starting to come up and should there

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Speaker 1: be uh, some that that the company needs to get

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Speaker 1: involved in, they could end up dedicating some resources to

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Speaker 1: it and then become a player in that space. The

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Speaker 1: worst thing in the world would be to be left

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Speaker 1: behind and become obsolete and see your company's business failed

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Speaker 1: because you weren't able to capitalize on an emerging trend.

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Speaker 1: So some companies would send people out there just to see,

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Speaker 1: all right, well what's big this year and what do

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Speaker 1: we need to pay attention to? So it really was

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Speaker 1: all about business now. The event was was a success,

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Speaker 1: and the group planned a second event for nineteen eighty

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Speaker 1: and this one took place in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

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Speaker 1: It had outgrown the MGM Grand, but a few attendees

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Speaker 1: were staying at the MGM Grand. That's you know, just

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Speaker 1: that was the place where they had booked a room, uh,

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Speaker 1: but the show had already outgrown the conference rooms there.

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Speaker 1: The new venue boasted twenty five thousand square feet of

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Speaker 1: exhibition space and more than seven thousand people attended the show,

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Speaker 1: so they nearly doubled in size. Now, that was the

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Speaker 1: first year for the show to use Comdex as a name,

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Speaker 1: and it was also a tragic year. Uh, something really

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Speaker 1: disastrous happened that year. On the very last day of

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Speaker 1: the Comdex conference, a fire broke out in the MGM

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Speaker 1: Grand overnight and it was a serious fire, and more

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Speaker 1: than eighty people died, most of them from smoke inhalation

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Speaker 1: because the smoke went up into the rooms and a

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Speaker 1: lot of people were asleep and they never woke up.

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Speaker 1: Out of those eight people, eight of them were attending Comdex,

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Speaker 1: and the tragedy marks the worst disaster in Nevada history

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Speaker 1: and the third worst hotel fire in US history. The

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Speaker 1: cause of the fire was ultimately traced to an electrical

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Speaker 1: ground fault in a wall socket. They had a nearby

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Speaker 1: cooling unit for a pastry display case that had a

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Speaker 1: pair of copper pipes that were exposed that the insulation

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Speaker 1: had worn down. The copper pipes had been vibrating at times,

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Speaker 1: and that vibration had caused the pipes to rub together

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Speaker 1: and the insulation protecting the pipes worn away, which meant

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Speaker 1: that they could rub against each other, and this eventually

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Speaker 1: caused the short, the electrical short, which then caused a fire.

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Speaker 1: The fire spread very quickly and it was a huge

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Speaker 1: story both in Las Vegas and in the computer industry. Now,

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Speaker 1: despite this tragedy, the conference continued and grew. UH I

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Speaker 1: was on that last day of the conference. The following

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Speaker 1: year it was even bigger. You would actually see Condex

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Speaker 1: expanded two shows in that year. So in the springtime

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Speaker 1: they the organization launched a Comdex show in New York.

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Speaker 1: The fall show stayed in Las Vegas. So they were

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Speaker 1: splitting up uh to two shows a year, with one

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Speaker 1: on the East Coast and one in Las Vegas. UH.

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Speaker 1: The New York show was a big success. Um. It

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Speaker 1: was more than twice as big as the first Condex

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Speaker 1: show in Vegas. Had eleven thousand attendees and two thirty

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Speaker 1: seven exhibitors. That Vegas show happened in the fall, and

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Speaker 1: this was huge business, not just for the exhibitors and

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Speaker 1: the attending professionals, but also for the organizers themselves. They

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Speaker 1: were making a huge amount of profit. At its peak,

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Speaker 1: Condex could command fifty nine dollars per square foot of

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Speaker 1: exhibit space, and when it was the biggest trade show around,

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Speaker 1: there was more than one point three million square feet available,

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Speaker 1: and CONDEX staffers were really really pushing for companies to

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Speaker 1: end up leasing that space, so they were making buckos

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Speaker 1: of dollars serious cash just so they a company can

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Speaker 1: rent some carpeted floor. Um. Yeah, if you want to

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Speaker 1: read some vitriol about CONDEX, just do some searches about

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Speaker 1: how much money the organizers were making back in these days,

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Speaker 1: and and how a lot of the exhibitors felt that

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Speaker 1: they were being almost like extorted in order to rent

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Speaker 1: larger and larger spaces year over year, like they were

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Speaker 1: being pressured by staffers who were acting like sale osman

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Speaker 1: to rent more space each successful year. Um. It's one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons why some companies said that they ultimately

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Speaker 1: abandoned the show. Well, back in the show was still

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Speaker 1: growing just as the computer industry was growing and holding

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Speaker 1: two shows ended up working out with the Spring Show

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Speaker 1: in New York and the Fall Show in Las Vegas.

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Speaker 1: So in nineteen eight two they expanded again and this

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Speaker 1: time there were three shows. The Spring event occurred in

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Speaker 1: Atlantic City, aka the Las Vegas of the East Coast,

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Speaker 1: and the Fall show happened in Las Vegas, but there

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Speaker 1: was a third show that happened in Europe and it

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Speaker 1: took place in Amsterdam. That marked the beginning of Condex

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Speaker 1: expanding beyond the United States. Now that trend would continue

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Speaker 1: and snowball over the following years. So you start looking

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Speaker 1: at the number of shows Condex was holding year over year,

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Speaker 1: and it kept on increasing. In two thousand two, there

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Speaker 1: were eighteen comdat shows scheduled throughout that year, eighteen different

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Speaker 1: events across the globe in two thousand two. Now, one

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Speaker 1: of those, the one that was scheduled for Mexico City,

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Speaker 1: ended up getting canceled, but that still means there were

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Speaker 1: seventeen shows in two thousand two. I mean that's think

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Speaker 1: about how how many resources you would have to dedicate

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Speaker 1: to hold those that many events around the world. Alright,

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Speaker 1: but back to the nineteen eighties, So after those first

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Speaker 1: few years when everyone was concentrating on many computers and

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Speaker 1: business to business type stuff, personal computers began to play

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Speaker 1: a role in shows because they were starting to take off.

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Speaker 1: People were starting to purchase personal computers at a larger rate.

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Speaker 1: It was going beyond the hobbyists and beyond the early adopter,

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Speaker 1: and so it became part of comdex history. He started

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Speaker 1: seeing computers like the Apple to e and the first

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Speaker 1: IBM compatible computers. First you saw the IBM computers, and

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Speaker 1: then wordly after that you saw the IBM clones that

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Speaker 1: we're making their way to market. And you also had

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Speaker 1: other computers like the Commodore sixty four, the Tandy computer,

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Speaker 1: and the Amiga line of computers which originally came from

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Speaker 1: Commodore as well. And one of these days I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: have to do a full show about Tandy, I think,

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Speaker 1: because it's hard to believe that a company that started

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Speaker 1: off as a leather goods company got into the personal

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Speaker 1: computer business. And for that matter, I should probably talk

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Speaker 1: about IBM compatibles and clones too, as that was a big,

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Speaker 1: big deal early on in the personal computer age and

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons why IBM got out of the

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Speaker 1: consumer computer market entirely for many years. But the important thing, uh,

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Speaker 1: the important thing to remember in this part of the

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Speaker 1: Condex story is that these companies were becoming important enough

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Speaker 1: to warrant a spot on the show floor. By Condex

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Speaker 1: started holding a show in Atlanta as the city where

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Speaker 1: I am in. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, So I remember

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Speaker 1: Condex talked about. I was a kid in the eighties,

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Speaker 1: and um, I never attended a Condex, but I remember

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Speaker 1: people talking about them, and the show in Atlanta would

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Speaker 1: continue yearly until nineteen and at that point, Comdex began

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Speaker 1: to alternate between Atlanta and Chicago every year. So I

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Speaker 1: probably would have been pretty bored if I had gone

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Speaker 1: to one of the comdex is in Atlanta. I mean,

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Speaker 1: these shows were huge, and there were lots of booths

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Speaker 1: and everything, but again it was mostly about like productivity

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Speaker 1: machines and software, and not really the kind of stuff

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Speaker 1: I was interested in, which was namely computer games. He

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Speaker 1: didn't really see a whole lot of that Condex because

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Speaker 1: that's just not what the focus of the show was about. Also,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen three, I Love This Bill Gates gave his

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Speaker 1: first speech at a Comdex in nineteen eighty three, and

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Speaker 1: that would become a regular event over future shows, and

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Speaker 1: Gates would end up getting larger audiences every year. He

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Speaker 1: would command a bigger room every year. Obviously became a

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Speaker 1: much more important event in future comdex is, but back

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Speaker 1: in three it was rather modest in comparison, so much

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Speaker 1: so that the projectionist for Bill Gates's presentation was his

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Speaker 1: own father. I just think that's kind of a charming

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Speaker 1: little bit of information. Well, I've got more to say

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Speaker 1: about what happened to comdex in the nineteen eighties, but

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Speaker 1: before I get into that, let's take a quick break

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Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All Right, So, a couple of

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Speaker 1: big events happened in the early nineteen eighties that rippled

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Speaker 1: through comdex. For one thing, the Macintosh debuted in nine four,

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Speaker 1: and that's when the graphics user interface or Gooey, became

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Speaker 1: big in home personal computers. The wind the Windows system

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Speaker 1: Microsoft Windows also made a big splash around that same time,

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Speaker 1: and Microsoft and Apple had worked together developing a Gooey.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't exactly you might hear stories about, oh well,

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Speaker 1: Windows was just copying the mac os. It's not entirely true. Actually,

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Speaker 1: the two companies were working together to develop Gooey's And

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Speaker 1: to be fair, the graphic user interface wasn't developed out

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Speaker 1: of Apple or Microsoft. The graphic user interface originated as

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Speaker 1: a project out of Xerox Park but that's another story

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Speaker 1: for another time. The graphics user interface, however, was changing

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Speaker 1: computers because it was seen as a much more intuitive,

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Speaker 1: easy to understand system than command line systems. So in

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Speaker 1: the old days, if you want to run a program

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Speaker 1: on your computer, you had to type in run in

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Speaker 1: the program name, and then the computer would know to

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Speaker 1: execute that command and start that program. You might have

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Speaker 1: some programs that had an auto startup based upon the

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Speaker 1: disk that you were using, and that would make things

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Speaker 1: a little more smooth. But until the graphics user interface

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Speaker 1: came along, you couldn't just click on an icon and

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Speaker 1: have have something start. You actually had to type stuff in,

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Speaker 1: and it wasn't exactly user friendly for people who weren't

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Speaker 1: already interested in computers, so it was sort of a

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Speaker 1: barrier to entry. The graphic user interface lowered that barrier,

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Speaker 1: and that's really when we started seeing personal computers take off,

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Speaker 1: not just for homes but in schools and all sorts

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Speaker 1: of places. So the Macintosh and the Windows system were

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Speaker 1: really important, and they dominated the show floor by everyone

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Speaker 1: was talking about Windows based systems and graphic user interfaces.

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Speaker 1: And it's funny because if you look back on these

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Speaker 1: early condex shows, you can see the debut of stuff

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Speaker 1: that we all take for granted now, stuff that you

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Speaker 1: know well of course that exists. Sometimes we're looking at

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Speaker 1: debuts from the stuff that's completely obsolete at this point.

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Speaker 1: So if you are able to find videos from that

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Speaker 1: era and you watch them, it's almost comical to see

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Speaker 1: them debut because it's ancient history now in the in

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Speaker 1: the computer world, one of the resources I used when

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Speaker 1: researching this show was an episode of The Computer Chronicles

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Speaker 1: from so At the beginning of that episode, the CEO

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Speaker 1: of Digital Research talked about how applications had suddenly become important.

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Speaker 1: So he was referring to programs like desktop publishing software

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Speaker 1: or spreadsheet management programs, things like that, and that they

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Speaker 1: were taking center stage because they were taking advantage of

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Speaker 1: this graphic user interface. It's really similar in a way

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Speaker 1: to how smartphone apps have become a major focus in

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Speaker 1: the tech industry today. The hardware still important, but a

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Speaker 1: lot more intention is going towards the software running on

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Speaker 1: top of the hardware. Well. Comdex was also where companies

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Speaker 1: could show off new products like laser printers, which in

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Speaker 1: the ease were super super new and exciting, or computer

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Speaker 1: peripher roles or computer systems and software packages. And because

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Speaker 1: the industry was heating up, the show just kept getting

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Speaker 1: larger and more grandiose every year. And it wasn't long

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Speaker 1: before companies began employing young women to entice people into booths.

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Speaker 1: And I saw one journalist's account of an early nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighties condex that dismissively referred to these women as demo dollies.

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Speaker 1: Now at c S you tend to hear these women

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Speaker 1: being referred to as booth babes, and I just like

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Speaker 1: to take a moment to address this because it bugs me.

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Speaker 1: So as I get older, I get more uncomfortable with

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Speaker 1: these terms, and that's because they ignore the fact that

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Speaker 1: these women are human beings. Many of them may be

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Speaker 1: hired because of their appearance. You know. It might be

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Speaker 1: that they have a modeling agency and a company hires

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Speaker 1: them because of their profile and the modeling agency, and

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Speaker 1: so it's completely based on their appearance. But it doesn't

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Speaker 1: change the fact that we're talking about actual people here.

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Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of companies using sex appeal to

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Speaker 1: get people to pay attention to their stuff, particularly if

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Speaker 1: we're talking about products that have nothing to do with

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Speaker 1: being sexy in the first place, but the women and

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Speaker 1: men too, because we see male models also being pulled

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Speaker 1: in for this duty, especially for things like um, wearables

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Speaker 1: and sports uh type of technology. At places like CS

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Speaker 1: we see both women and men who are you know,

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Speaker 1: chiseled from marble showing these off. But that makes sense.

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Speaker 1: You understand, right all right, that this person is fit

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Speaker 1: and the product is promising to help you get fit,

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Speaker 1: So you see the connection there. It's a little more

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Speaker 1: tough if you're like, this is a case for a

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Speaker 1: smartphone and this woman wearing barely anything is holding the case,

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Speaker 1: it's a little harder to justify. Uh. I don't hold

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Speaker 1: it against the models. They're doing a job. They were

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Speaker 1: hired to do a job, and that's what they're doing.

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Speaker 1: And I also realized that my opinions are just my

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Speaker 1: own and that I'm probably being a bit too old fashioned.

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Speaker 1: But my main point is just to remember these are people,

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Speaker 1: not just a walking, talking display. So I hate terms

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Speaker 1: like booth babes or demo dollies, which I think is

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Speaker 1: even somehow worse than booth babes um because it is

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Speaker 1: so dismissive. It's it's treating a person like an object.

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Speaker 1: It truly is objectification and I don't care for that.

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Speaker 1: So old man lecture is over. But seriously, demo dollies

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Speaker 1: come on anyway. By the mid nighties, companies creating IBM

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Speaker 1: compatible machines had pretty much run IBM out of the

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Speaker 1: consumer PC business. The clones of IBM s machines were

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Speaker 1: perfectly legal as long as the company's making them could

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Speaker 1: demonstrate that they didn't steal IBMS approach but rather reverse

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Speaker 1: engineered it, which seems like a pretty fine detail, but

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Speaker 1: it's one that made the production of IBM clones completely legal.

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Speaker 1: More on that if I ever do a full episode

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Speaker 1: about IBM compatible computers now. Watching the Computer Chronicles also

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Speaker 1: reminded me how the industry at that time was dominated

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Speaker 1: by dudes. You know, in the nineteen eighties, if you

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Speaker 1: looked at the show floor for Condex, men outnumbered women

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Speaker 1: by an enormous percentage. Apart from the women who were

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Speaker 1: hired to lure people into booths, you hardly saw any

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Speaker 1: females on the floor at all. But as the industry matured,

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Speaker 1: we saw more women taking roles in the industry, including

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Speaker 1: leadership roles. But I'm pretty sure those early CONDEX shows

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Speaker 1: saw really long lines at the men's room and like

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Speaker 1: almost completely empty women's restrooms, so and it seeing juxtaposition

432
00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:04,879
Speaker 1: and other compared to other arenas. The same thing was

433
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:07,560
Speaker 1: true of Consumer Electronics Show and in fact, I would

434
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:10,679
Speaker 1: argue it's it's still largely true. We're seeing more and

435
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:15,520
Speaker 1: more UH women on the show floor at ce s,

436
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 1: both in leadership positions and attendees that kind of thing,

437
00:27:21,480 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 1: but I think it's still far more men than women.

438
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: But but the early days of CONDEX, it was ridiculous

439
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 1: that imbalance. One of the most amusing elements of the

440
00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:37,879
Speaker 1: Computer Chronicles episode I watched was the segment dedicated to

441
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 1: portable computers. So back in the nineteen eighties this was

442
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 1: six Those devices were huge, largely because they had to

443
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:50,200
Speaker 1: have five and a quarter inch floppy disk drives because

444
00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 1: that was the the main media of choice in the

445
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:58,959
Speaker 1: mid eighties. The laptops, even the light ones, weighed somewhere

446
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,800
Speaker 1: around twelve pounds or more, so they were hefty enough

447
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't want them on your lap for very long.

448
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:06,880
Speaker 1: You'd also probably chuckle at hearing some of the processor

449
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: speeds being UH promoted back in those days, here's something

450
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:16,600
Speaker 1: like this processor has sixteen mega hurts processor speed, and

451
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:20,920
Speaker 1: you know that's probably not gonna impress you very much today,

452
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:24,919
Speaker 1: but you know, a different time. Another interesting product that

453
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 1: was introduced and featured in that show was from Phillips.

454
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:31,320
Speaker 1: It was a data storage system that consisted of twenty

455
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: different disks arranged in a case. The discs were in cartridges,

456
00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 1: and a mechanical arm could go up or down the

457
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: rack of cartridges and retrieve or insert discs to access

458
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: the information on them. Now, each disc was twelve inches

459
00:28:47,360 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: in diameter, and each disc could hold two whole gigabytes

460
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: of information on it, which meant that the entire apparatus

461
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,280
Speaker 1: could hold forty gigabytes. So think about that for a moment.

462
00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:01,360
Speaker 1: They're smartphones right now that can more than three times

463
00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:03,680
Speaker 1: that amount of information, and those will fit in your pocket.

464
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:09,120
Speaker 1: So we've really come a long way since the nineteen eighties.

465
00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:11,960
Speaker 1: The six Condex show also had some of the earliest

466
00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 1: devices that we would put into the wearable category today.

467
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 1: Puma showed off a gadget that snapped onto their running

468
00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 1: shoes and it had a microprocessor inside of it that

469
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,479
Speaker 1: could detect whenever your foot made impact with the ground

470
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: and it acted as a step counter, So you could

471
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 1: use it on a run and you could do your run,

472
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: and then after you were done running, you would have

473
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 1: to go back home and you would have to use

474
00:29:38,360 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: a cable to hook the gadget up to your computer

475
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: and pull the data off of the device so that

476
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 1: you could look at it through the software running on

477
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: your computer. That would give you a visualization of the data,

478
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: and then you could see how far you ran and

479
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: how many calories you burned. It's not quite as easy

480
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,320
Speaker 1: as connecting everything via Bluetooth, which is typically how it

481
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 1: happens today, but it was a hint of what would

482
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: follow almost thirty years later. Other emerging technologies that began

483
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: to pop up at Comdex in the early to mid

484
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:14,440
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties included voice recognition, optical discs so CDs, and

485
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 1: things like that, three and a half inch floppy disks,

486
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:22,000
Speaker 1: and others, and we began to see the interesting seesaw

487
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:26,240
Speaker 1: relationship between hardware and software. So if you read articles

488
00:30:26,240 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties about Condex, you'll see journalists point

489
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:32,800
Speaker 1: out that these incredibly powerful computers that were hitting the

490
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: market didn't have any software that took advantage of all

491
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: that raw power, they'd say like, well, yeah, you can

492
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:43,200
Speaker 1: get the super fast machine, but what good is that.

493
00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:46,040
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no software that really takes advantage of

494
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: this machine's capabilities. We're never going to see that happened.

495
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:52,520
Speaker 1: I mean, it'll it'll run existing software faster, so if

496
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: you've got like a huge spreadsheet, it won't take as

497
00:30:54,680 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 1: long re read to load. But other than that, I mean,

498
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: why would you need all that power? Now, it's kind

499
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: of funny to think that a three six processor computer

500
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: from the mid nineteen eighties was thought to be more

501
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:11,360
Speaker 1: powerful than anything you would ever need, because a three

502
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: six computer compared to today's smartphones would see clunk, clunky,

503
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:19,720
Speaker 1: and slow in comparison. Since those days, we've seen a

504
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 1: lot more tech journalists agree to what is called Worth's law,

505
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 1: which is named after Nicholas Worth, who observed that software

506
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: speed was decreasing at a rate faster than hardware speed

507
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:35,720
Speaker 1: was increasing. So, in other words, software is getting bloated

508
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: and requires more resources to run faster than we're seeing

509
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 1: improvements in those resources. So year over year, it feels

510
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 1: like computers are going slower rather than faster. It's not

511
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 1: that the computers are less powerful than they were before.

512
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 1: It's that the software requires more power than the previous

513
00:31:56,000 --> 00:32:01,720
Speaker 1: generations software. And that's because we get bloat software bloat

514
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: over the course of many versions of the same program.

515
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:10,000
Speaker 1: So take take a word processor program. Well, every successive

516
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: version of that word processor program is likely to be

517
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: larger and more resource hungry than the version before, because

518
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:23,480
Speaker 1: a company has to start including more and more features

519
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: to convince you to upgrade, to buy the newest version. Otherwise,

520
00:32:28,320 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: you would just buy one version and you'd stick with

521
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 1: it until you, you know, until it just literally could

522
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:36,120
Speaker 1: not measure up to what you needed it to do.

523
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:38,360
Speaker 1: I mean, why would I need to buy a new

524
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: word processor program if I've got one that works just fine.

525
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,280
Speaker 1: So to convince me to buy a new one, companies

526
00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: are going to add more and more features. Well. As

527
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: software gets more complex, it becomes less efficient and therefore

528
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: it requires more power to run. And even to this day,

529
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 1: there's still a temptation to declare a machine that has

530
00:33:01,760 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: a screaming fast processor and cavernous storage capacity is being

531
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:08,400
Speaker 1: more than what you are ever going to need. But

532
00:33:08,560 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 1: the more seasoned computer users among us know that eventually

533
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:16,440
Speaker 1: software is going to use up and maybe even exceed

534
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:22,200
Speaker 1: that hardware's capabilities. So if you build it, the software

535
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:24,960
Speaker 1: will fill it. It's kind of like if you build it,

536
00:33:25,000 --> 00:33:29,040
Speaker 1: they will come. Now. The show in Vegas in nineteen

537
00:33:29,080 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: eight six was just one of seven. The other six

538
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:38,240
Speaker 1: shows happened in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Amsterdam, Nice, and Sydney.

539
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:41,760
Speaker 1: And the show in nineteen eighty six in Vegas lasted

540
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:46,360
Speaker 1: five days. That was the longest conference up to that point.

541
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: So things were still on the rise. Everything was still

542
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:51,800
Speaker 1: growing every year. More money was being poured into the show,

543
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,640
Speaker 1: and each show meant that there was more square footage

544
00:33:54,680 --> 00:33:57,720
Speaker 1: to least two companies, and the organizers were making some

545
00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: serious bank in those days. Meanwhile, exhibitors were enjoying the

546
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:03,600
Speaker 1: benefits of connecting with customers and getting an eye on

547
00:34:03,640 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 1: what the competition was up to, and a lot of

548
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,879
Speaker 1: ideas were launched at Condex, not all of them successfully.

549
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:12,360
Speaker 1: There were plenty of examples of products that never went anywhere,

550
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,640
Speaker 1: and vaporware became a common word. Vaporware, by the way,

551
00:34:15,680 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 1: is when you announce a product that never actually comes

552
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: to market, it just remains vapor. It's the kaiser So's

553
00:34:22,680 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: of the technological world. Now some Condex shows also became vaporware.

554
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:33,760
Speaker 1: In nineteen seven and in nineteen eighty eight, the planned

555
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 1: Condex event in Tokyo was postponed, essentially canceled. It never

556
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:42,319
Speaker 1: really happened. The nine event for Paris was canceled out

557
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: right Now, things were not dire, not by a long shot,

558
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:48,480
Speaker 1: but there were some growing pains as the organizers kept

559
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 1: trying to increase the show's reach. Sometimes they did it

560
00:34:52,120 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: faster than they could actually support, and typically the reason

561
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 1: these shows would get canceled is because they weren't. The

562
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 1: show organizers weren't able to sell out enough space on

563
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: the show floor to justify holding the trade show. So

564
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: they couldn't get enough vendors to agree to come to

565
00:35:10,239 --> 00:35:14,359
Speaker 1: a show, they'd postponed it or cancel it rather than

566
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:18,240
Speaker 1: lose money on throwing a show with a small number

567
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: of exhibitors. By the late nineteen eighties, Condex was looking

568
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:26,760
Speaker 1: to grow some more, so it changed its attendance policy

569
00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:29,760
Speaker 1: and started to sell it admission to the general public,

570
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: so for the first time, people unaffiliated with the industry

571
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:35,840
Speaker 1: or people who were not in the media could actually

572
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 1: come to the show and no big surprise here. Attendance

573
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:44,680
Speaker 1: numbers exploded as a result. Now, this was not necessarily

574
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:48,640
Speaker 1: welcomed by all the other attendees. Some people were complaining

575
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:50,960
Speaker 1: that it was becoming too difficult to navigate the floor

576
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:52,720
Speaker 1: because it was just there were just too many people.

577
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:55,399
Speaker 1: There're too many bodies in the way. And other people

578
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:57,719
Speaker 1: were worried that the show would turn into an enormous

579
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:02,440
Speaker 1: marketplace with the general public purchasing products directly from manufacturers

580
00:36:02,520 --> 00:36:07,040
Speaker 1: rather than retailers. You know, like, why bother packing this

581
00:36:07,160 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: device back up and shipping it back to your headquarters.

582
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: I'll just buy it off of you right here, even

583
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,840
Speaker 1: though it's not scheduled to launch for another three months.

584
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: You also heard a lot of people say the show

585
00:36:18,600 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 1: was starting to lose its focus. It was it was

586
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:24,360
Speaker 1: starting to incorporate too many things outside of the core

587
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:29,279
Speaker 1: computer and computer peripheral industry, and as a result, there

588
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: were a lot of people worried that the show was

589
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:35,319
Speaker 1: starting to spiral out of control. Now, the early nine

590
00:36:35,680 --> 00:36:39,640
Speaker 1: nineties saw the rise of a new, very important player

591
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:43,120
Speaker 1: in the computer space, and that is the Internet. While

592
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:45,799
Speaker 1: the mainstream public was still getting a handle on what

593
00:36:45,920 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: the Internet was back In the early es, Condex began

594
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: to feature more exhibitors, promising the information super Highway would

595
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 1: change everything, and in many ways they were right, though

596
00:36:57,640 --> 00:36:59,840
Speaker 1: not all of their predictions would turn out to be accurate.

597
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:02,839
Speaker 1: For one thing, in the early nine nineties, no one

598
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: really had an idea of how the Internet could become

599
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: a massive tool for commerce. It was more like a

600
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: point of contact for people. So companies might have a website,

601
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 1: but it was meant to give information about a company,

602
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:20,760
Speaker 1: or to allow a potential customer or an existing customer

603
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: to contact the company. But there wasn't a whole lot

604
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:26,600
Speaker 1: beyond that in those early days, especially since you know,

605
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 1: the Worldwide Web didn't really debut until so before that.

606
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:35,919
Speaker 1: You're just talking about stuff like email and some other

607
00:37:36,560 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 1: functions that were mainly used in the academic world, and

608
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:43,759
Speaker 1: we're just barely getting a foothold in the corporate and

609
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 1: then public world. Now. Over the next several years, more

610
00:37:48,640 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 1: exhibitors would show off systems designed to make accessing the

611
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 1: Internet more intuitive and seamless, all the way from operating

612
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 1: systems to web browsers. In early news broke that a

613
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:04,080
Speaker 1: suitor to Comdex would be taking over the show, and

614
00:38:04,120 --> 00:38:08,360
Speaker 1: that suitor was a Japanese software company called soft Bank.

615
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:12,920
Speaker 1: The company made an eight hundred million dollar deal with

616
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,880
Speaker 1: the Interface Group to acquire the trade show. Now in

617
00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: nineteen four, SoftBank had already purchased a publishing, exposition and

618
00:38:22,600 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: conference division from the company Ziff Davis. They had tried

619
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 1: to buy Ziff Davis outright, but z if Davis refused

620
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 1: and then instead settled on buying this division within Stiff Davis.

621
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:37,600
Speaker 1: So as If Davis spins Zala division sells it to SoftBank.

622
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: This division was an events planning division for publishing expositions.

623
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 1: Then SoftBank goes and buys condex from the Interface Group

624
00:38:48,560 --> 00:38:52,280
Speaker 1: for eight hundred million dollars. Now, these two purchases made

625
00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:56,000
Speaker 1: SoftBank the largest name in the trade show game, and

626
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:59,239
Speaker 1: it also gave some prestige to the CEO of SoftBank,

627
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:03,279
Speaker 1: who is Masa Yoshi's son, who was sometimes called the

628
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: Bill Gates of Japan, and his story is really interesting too.

629
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: Son had overcome poverty and also social stigma to become

630
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: a successful businessman in Japan. He was the son of

631
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:17,320
Speaker 1: two Korean immigrants, and in Japan at the time, Koreans

632
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 1: were sometimes the victims of racial prejudice. So his story

633
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:22,800
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. Maybe I'll do an episode about him sometime.

634
00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:30,680
Speaker 1: At this point, Comdex was enormous. The show in Vegas

635
00:39:30,719 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 1: had almost two hundred thousand people in attendance. That's a

636
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: huge jump from that four thousand from nineteen seventy nine.

637
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind they are also opened up the

638
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: doors to the general public, so part of that growth

639
00:39:43,160 --> 00:39:45,920
Speaker 1: was just from people curious to learn more about the

640
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: latest computers, but they had no connection to the industry itself. Now,

641
00:39:50,200 --> 00:39:52,880
Speaker 1: along with the growth in attendance was a growth of

642
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:57,040
Speaker 1: complaints among exhibitors. Some companies were protesting what they considered

643
00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:02,239
Speaker 1: to be unfair fees and rental rates. But even though

644
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,480
Speaker 1: they felt that perhaps things were becoming a little unfair,

645
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 1: most companies also felt that the show was too important

646
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:12,319
Speaker 1: to skip. They couldn't skip out on it, or else

647
00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:14,959
Speaker 1: they would be left behind by their competitors, so they

648
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,239
Speaker 1: would show up and they would pay. There had been

649
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:21,359
Speaker 1: talks of launching a competitor show, like a bunch of

650
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:24,400
Speaker 1: groups saying, you know what, forget this, We're gonna go

651
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 1: out and make our own trade show. But they hadn't

652
00:40:27,160 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 1: really gone far beyond just some big talk. Now, in

653
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:35,439
Speaker 1: the next section, I'm going to really concentrate on how

654
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:38,759
Speaker 1: the show got to its largest point and then what

655
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: happened to make it disappear over the next few years.

656
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:44,919
Speaker 1: But before I get into that, let's take another quick

657
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. All right, So it's Condex

658
00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:02,479
Speaker 1: hits its peak. It gets the largest it will ever

659
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 1: get in. The number of exhibitors was more than two thousand,

660
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty and they were taking up one

661
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:15,040
Speaker 1: point three five million square feet of space on the

662
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: show floor. In the primary Vegas show of the year,

663
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: the number of attendees was about two hundred forty thousand.

664
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: I mean a huge number of people, like a quarter

665
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: of a million people almost at Condex Las Vegas. This

666
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 1: was a monster of a show, but it also marked

667
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 1: the beginning of the decline of Condex. Exhibitors were complaining

668
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:44,440
Speaker 1: even more about predatory practices of Condex staffers, pressuring companies

669
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,239
Speaker 1: to invest in larger booths year over year. They were saying, well,

670
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 1: we want to be part of the show, but every

671
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:54,600
Speaker 1: year we're making the arrangements. Everyone's pressuring us to make

672
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:58,440
Speaker 1: our booth bigger than the year before, which means we

673
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 1: have to spend more money in or to be part

674
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:04,359
Speaker 1: of this show. And it's getting ridiculous. It got so

675
00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 1: ridiculous for some companies that began to drop out, including

676
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:13,359
Speaker 1: big names. IBM withdrew from Condex because of these practices,

677
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: and according to a CNN Money report from two thousand three,

678
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:23,759
Speaker 1: Condex became a quote magnet for dumb money end quote. Now,

679
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: what they meant by that is that if you participated

680
00:42:27,239 --> 00:42:30,880
Speaker 1: in Condex year over year, that was just a recipe

681
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: of diminishing returns. You were going to see fewer and

682
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: fewer benefits of being part of the show, and ultimately

683
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 1: it would become a drain on resources, meaning you're losing

684
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:44,120
Speaker 1: more money attending the show than you're making out of

685
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 1: business because of the show. So more exhibitors were starting

686
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: to drop out following they were saying, well, I'm spending money,

687
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:58,160
Speaker 1: but I don't see the return on investment. This is

688
00:42:58,200 --> 00:43:01,720
Speaker 1: like putting a big time commercial out on a channel

689
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:05,960
Speaker 1: that no one is watching. What's the point? Now? Behind

690
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,840
Speaker 1: the scenes, in a series of moves so complicated, I

691
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: don't even understand them, SoftBank reorganized its divisions and departments

692
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: So it took the division that owned Condex and that

693
00:43:19,360 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 1: publishing conference I talked about before. It was essentially known

694
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 1: as z d Events at the time, and transformed this

695
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:31,640
Speaker 1: into a new entity, a publicly traded entity called Key

696
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 1: three Media. That's key the numeral three and media all

697
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: is one word. And this was a holding company. It

698
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: was just existed to hold these assets. That's that's all

699
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 1: it did. Now soft Bank held about half of the

700
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 1: ownership of Key three Media, but eventually it would spin

701
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 1: it off completely. Now that happened after SoftBank tried to

702
00:43:56,040 --> 00:43:59,839
Speaker 1: auction off the events division. So why was it trying

703
00:43:59,880 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: to sell something the company had only purchased a couple

704
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:07,240
Speaker 1: of years before. Well, perhaps organizing and running the events

705
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:10,480
Speaker 1: was too far outside the wheelhouse of the software corporation.

706
00:44:10,840 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: The acquisition of Condex and Ziff Davis's publishing conference didn't

707
00:44:14,560 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 1: necessarily include the people with the knowledge and experience of

708
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 1: organizing those events. At any rate, the auction did not

709
00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 1: result in any satisfactory authors. Apparently, the largest offer on

710
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:29,279
Speaker 1: the table was for six D forty million dollars, which

711
00:44:29,360 --> 00:44:32,520
Speaker 1: is way less than the eight million SoftBank paid for

712
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: Condex alone. Never mind the Ziff Davis deal, so Key

713
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 1: three Media would eventually become an independent spinoff and the

714
00:44:40,239 --> 00:44:43,839
Speaker 1: sole owner of Condex now. The head of Key three

715
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 1: Media was a guy named Fred Rosen, and Rosen had

716
00:44:48,040 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: made a fortune growing and then selling ticket Master. Boo

717
00:44:53,280 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: ticket Master. That's my own personal uh bias coming through.

718
00:44:58,239 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 1: I have an issue with Ticketmaster, many issues with Ticketmaster.

719
00:45:02,760 --> 00:45:04,480
Speaker 1: I should do an episode about them, but it will

720
00:45:04,480 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 1: be the most unbiased, unforgiving episode of tech stuff ever,

721
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:10,400
Speaker 1: So maybe I should just keep my trap shut. Anyway,

722
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,279
Speaker 1: Rosen reportedly ran Key three as if it were a

723
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:17,640
Speaker 1: massive corporation rather than an events production company. He moved

724
00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:20,279
Speaker 1: the headquarters to an expensive part of Los Angeles, not

725
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: too far from his own mansion, and he would end

726
00:45:23,520 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 1: up taking company trips on a private jet across the world.

727
00:45:26,719 --> 00:45:29,719
Speaker 1: His salary was one and a half million dollars in

728
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 1: two thousand one. That's a big salary for a CEO,

729
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:36,319
Speaker 1: especially considering most CEOs get the majority of their compensation

730
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 1: and benefits as opposed to a direct salary. A million

731
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:42,080
Speaker 1: and a half and two thousand one is no chump change.

732
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 1: Former employees said that his managerial style was incredibly confrontational

733
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: and off putting so much so that he was driving

734
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 1: away staffers who had been working in the trade show

735
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:56,359
Speaker 1: industry for decades, which meant that as a result, Key

736
00:45:56,480 --> 00:46:01,000
Speaker 1: three was depleting its company's talent pool. You had fewer

737
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:05,880
Speaker 1: and fewer people around who knew how to handle trade shows.

738
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 1: So it was a mess. To put it lightly. Now,

739
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:15,239
Speaker 1: this takes us to and this was the year that

740
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 1: featured that infamous blue screen of death during a demonstration

741
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:23,160
Speaker 1: of an early build of Windows. You heard our listener

742
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:27,279
Speaker 1: Alex referred to this earlier. So what happened, well, Bill

743
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:31,279
Speaker 1: Gates and Chris capo Sella were on stage during the

744
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:35,000
Speaker 1: keynote event to talk about Windows Night, which had not

745
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 1: yet launched. It was still in development, it had actually

746
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:42,240
Speaker 1: been delayed, and Capsella was trying to show how Windows

747
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:45,719
Speaker 1: ninety eight could download drivers. You know, drivers are these

748
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 1: components that are needed so for software and hardware to

749
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:52,760
Speaker 1: work with the operating system, and he was explaining how

750
00:46:52,800 --> 00:46:55,879
Speaker 1: seamless this operation was when the computer crashed and went

751
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:59,200
Speaker 1: to the blue screen of death, at which point Bill

752
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:03,400
Speaker 1: Gates started uckling and Capacella was like doing a little

753
00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: bit of a shuffle. He was very quickly trying to

754
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: switch away from the monitor screen, and it could have

755
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:12,520
Speaker 1: been an embarrassing disaster, but I think they actually handled

756
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 1: the problem really well with humor. So the audience started laughing,

757
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:19,879
Speaker 1: and Capacella, who was responding to the audiences laughter at

758
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:23,759
Speaker 1: the blue screen of death, said moving right along in

759
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:28,160
Speaker 1: a very self deprecating way, like he wasn't angry. He

760
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 1: seemed a little a little chagrined, but not not completely

761
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:35,759
Speaker 1: thrown off. And then Bill Gates said this must be

762
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 1: why we're not shipping windows yet, to which Capacella said, absolutely, absolutely.

763
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:45,080
Speaker 1: So it was a moment that reminded everyone that sometimes

764
00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:48,280
Speaker 1: stuff just goes wrong. And I actually like watching this clip.

765
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:50,960
Speaker 1: I I was afraid to watch it. I never watched

766
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:53,520
Speaker 1: it at the time. And I tend to feel a

767
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:55,720
Speaker 1: lot of empathy for people who are giving a public

768
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 1: presentation because there are enormous pressures on you when you

769
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 1: are giving a live speech in front of a big

770
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:05,279
Speaker 1: crowd of people. Keep in mind, we're talking Condex when

771
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:10,400
Speaker 1: the attendance is like two hundred thousand plus people. You

772
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:13,440
Speaker 1: could have thousands of people in that audience all focusing

773
00:48:13,480 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 1: on you and something goes wrong. I feel nothing but

774
00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:19,320
Speaker 1: empathy because I've been in those kind of situations and

775
00:48:19,400 --> 00:48:22,560
Speaker 1: a much smaller scale and it feels like torture. But

776
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 1: I liked watching this clip because it didn't feel awful.

777
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:29,560
Speaker 1: It felt like they handled this pretty well as it

778
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:33,360
Speaker 1: feels actually pretty natural. So for one thing, it's not

779
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:35,719
Speaker 1: a presentation that fools you into thinking of product is

780
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 1: completely flawless. If you've ever been to any product demonstration

781
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:45,920
Speaker 1: where it's clear everything has been prerecorded and rehearsed so

782
00:48:45,960 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 1: that nothing goes wrong, it doesn't feel genuine, and you

783
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:52,279
Speaker 1: might even feel when you get your hands on the

784
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: real thing that you were given a misrepresentation of what

785
00:48:56,040 --> 00:48:59,160
Speaker 1: it was all about. Seeing something kind of fail and

786
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 1: people acknowledge it and move on it was a little refreshing.

787
00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 1: So it's just a kind of a funny moment, and

788
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:09,280
Speaker 1: something that Microsoft presentations frequently had that is funny moments,

789
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: not failures. And some of those funny moments were intentional,

790
00:49:12,040 --> 00:49:15,920
Speaker 1: and some of them we're not intentional. Developers Developers, Developers

791
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:21,400
Speaker 1: Developers was also the first year to see a major

792
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:25,400
Speaker 1: decline in attendance. So I said two hundred thousand, but

793
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 1: actually it was fewer than that. At that point. This

794
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:29,879
Speaker 1: was the beginning of the end for Comdex, though at

795
00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:31,840
Speaker 1: the time no one could see that. It did just

796
00:49:31,880 --> 00:49:34,400
Speaker 1: appear to be a blip in the growth, and the

797
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:37,560
Speaker 1: following year saw another dip, and the number of exhibitors

798
00:49:37,680 --> 00:49:42,280
Speaker 1: in two thousand or rather was one thousand, nine eleven,

799
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: so more than two thousand, four hundred. In nine seven

800
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 1: and nine eleven, we start seeing fewer exhibitors showing up.

801
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:55,360
Speaker 1: More people are irritated with the way Comdex is running things,

802
00:49:55,600 --> 00:49:58,360
Speaker 1: or rather the way Key three Media is running things,

803
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:01,080
Speaker 1: and are not coming back. Now. There was a little

804
00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:03,120
Speaker 1: bit of a rally in two thousand a few more

805
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:06,520
Speaker 1: exhibitors signed up, mostly new companies, but that was not

806
00:50:06,600 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 1: to last. Also in Condex, organizers shook things up by

807
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 1: changing the requirements for mass media, and a lot of

808
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:19,680
Speaker 1: major outlets that had been covering context since the beginning

809
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:24,000
Speaker 1: found themselves turned away, and that really shook things up.

810
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:27,520
Speaker 1: I mean, you had big, big names and mass media

811
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:29,600
Speaker 1: told that they were not going to be allowed to

812
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:33,839
Speaker 1: attend Comdex, and that did not help the organization at all.

813
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: I mean, making sure that you um, you alienate media

814
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:42,400
Speaker 1: is a good way to have some pretty negative coverage

815
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 1: about your organization. And in two thousand and two thousand one,

816
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: there was another problem. This was outside of Condex. This

817
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 1: was a huge problem that had global implications, and I'm

818
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 1: talking about the dot com bubble burst. So the dot

819
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:02,880
Speaker 1: com bubble, that's when you had all these web based

820
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:08,320
Speaker 1: companies popping up, getting huge amounts of investment capital, whether

821
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 1: it was private investment or the company had gone public

822
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:15,000
Speaker 1: very early. The value of the company was inflated beyond

823
00:51:15,080 --> 00:51:19,319
Speaker 1: what it could actually do. And then ultimately many of

824
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:23,000
Speaker 1: these companies failed to show any real value and the bubble,

825
00:51:23,160 --> 00:51:28,560
Speaker 1: this investment bubble burst. Dozens of companies went under, and

826
00:51:28,719 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 1: companies in the computer industry in general suffered, even if

827
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: they weren't directly tied to dot com, because they were

828
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: in the computer industry, they were hit pretty hard because

829
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:40,200
Speaker 1: there was a ripple effect that came outward from the

830
00:51:40,239 --> 00:51:43,440
Speaker 1: dot com companies to all the other computer companies that were,

831
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:46,759
Speaker 1: you know, kind of in that same pool, even though

832
00:51:46,800 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 1: they weren't necessarily themselves and dot com company. Well, that

833
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 1: meant that that ripple effect continued to hit Condex. And

834
00:51:56,000 --> 00:52:01,440
Speaker 1: another event also ended up really setting Condex back, and

835
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:04,400
Speaker 1: that was the terrorist attack on September eleven, two thousand

836
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:07,759
Speaker 1: one in the United States that affected trade shows because

837
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:11,759
Speaker 1: it ended up affecting international travel. It's scaled back international

838
00:52:11,760 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 1: travel to to a huge degree in the wake of

839
00:52:14,960 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: those attacks, completely understandably. I mean, there's there's there's nothing

840
00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:23,640
Speaker 1: else to say about that. But it did affect the

841
00:52:23,719 --> 00:52:28,239
Speaker 1: trade shows at a time when Condex was already having problems.

842
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: So the Las Vegas Condex show in two thousand one

843
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:35,399
Speaker 1: had a hundred twenty five thousand attendees, and that's still

844
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:38,640
Speaker 1: a large number of people, you know, hundred twenty five thousand,

845
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 1: but still very short of that two forty thousand the

846
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 1: show had at its peak. In two thousand two, Key

847
00:52:47,200 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: three Media was in dire straits and not the band.

848
00:52:51,560 --> 00:52:54,240
Speaker 1: With three days to go before the Las Vegas Trade

849
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:58,400
Speaker 1: Show opened, the company announced in its quarterly earning statement

850
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:02,200
Speaker 1: that it might have to or Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection

851
00:53:02,640 --> 00:53:05,719
Speaker 1: if it could not raise more capital, or sell the

852
00:53:05,760 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 1: company off or find a merger partner. Key three Media's

853
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,799
Speaker 1: revenue had plummeted in two thousand two, so in two

854
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 1: thousand one, the third quarter revenues were at fifty one

855
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 1: and a half million. In two thousand two, third quarter

856
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:21,839
Speaker 1: revenues were down to thirty eight point four million. That's

857
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:24,279
Speaker 1: a big drop over the course of the full year.

858
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:28,440
Speaker 1: The company had lost nearly three hundred million dollars. In

859
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:30,800
Speaker 1: two thousand one, it was in the black and it

860
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:35,240
Speaker 1: made a profit of fourteen point one million. It's a

861
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:39,320
Speaker 1: small profit relatively speaking, but the loss of three hundred

862
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:43,480
Speaker 1: million that's a huge, huge downturn. Things were looking pretty awful.

863
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:48,360
Speaker 1: On top of that, the company had an upcoming interest

864
00:53:48,400 --> 00:53:50,719
Speaker 1: payment on a debt it owed, and no one was

865
00:53:50,760 --> 00:53:53,399
Speaker 1: really sure if they the company would actually be able

866
00:53:53,440 --> 00:53:56,720
Speaker 1: to sign the check to pay off that interest payment,

867
00:53:57,400 --> 00:53:59,239
Speaker 1: which is why they were looking at the possibility of

868
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:02,760
Speaker 1: entering Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. Shares of Key three Media

869
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:05,800
Speaker 1: were down to a measly one point four since per share.

870
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 1: It's pretty ugly, folks now. In February two thousand three,

871
00:54:10,040 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 1: the Key three Media filed for Chapter eleven protection. When

872
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:17,640
Speaker 1: it finally emerged from Chapter eleven, so they were able

873
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:21,360
Speaker 1: to get their act together and come out of Chapter

874
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:25,719
Speaker 1: eleven bankruptcy protection. They also rebranded themselves. They were no

875
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 1: longer Key three Media. Now they were called Media Live,

876
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 1: and there was some hope that this new brand would

877
00:54:33,080 --> 00:54:35,920
Speaker 1: be able to recapture the glory days of Condexes in

878
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:38,520
Speaker 1: the past, but it was not meant to be. The

879
00:54:38,600 --> 00:54:44,000
Speaker 1: two thousand three show drew only fifty thousand attendees. Fifty thousand,

880
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:46,319
Speaker 1: still a lot of people, but not compared to two

881
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:51,399
Speaker 1: In two thousand four, in a move that shocked very

882
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:55,840
Speaker 1: few people, Condex Las Vegas was canceled. The struggles of

883
00:54:55,920 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 1: Media Alive were well known. They were pretty public. People

884
00:54:59,480 --> 00:55:02,360
Speaker 1: knew that the company was in trouble. Attendance had dropped

885
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:06,280
Speaker 1: significantly over the past few years, so many large companies

886
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 1: had pulled out the show, expressing their exasperation of dealing

887
00:55:11,200 --> 00:55:14,719
Speaker 1: with the policies and high pressure sales tactics of the organizers.

888
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:19,719
Speaker 1: There were still some hope along Media Live lines that

889
00:55:19,840 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 1: two thousand five would be different than they would be

890
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:23,920
Speaker 1: able to come back in two thousand five and two

891
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:26,920
Speaker 1: thousand four would just be a year off. But in

892
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 1: two thousand five, all of the company's planned condex events

893
00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:35,400
Speaker 1: were canceled except for one, so it was supposed to

894
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:38,200
Speaker 1: happen in Las Vegas but didn't. The only Condex event

895
00:55:38,239 --> 00:55:41,239
Speaker 1: to happen in that year was in Greece in Athens,

896
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:45,759
Speaker 1: but all the other ones were canceled. Analysts said that

897
00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:49,040
Speaker 1: the implosion of Condex came about due to a mix

898
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:54,920
Speaker 1: of mismanagement, depletion of talent, bad marketing choices, and also

899
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:58,319
Speaker 1: just that exhibitors weren't willing to play ball anymore. So

900
00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:01,319
Speaker 1: the problem was that they couldn't had enough companies to

901
00:56:01,400 --> 00:56:04,120
Speaker 1: agree to be part of the show to have a show.

902
00:56:05,120 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 1: It's kind of like throwing a huge party advertised as

903
00:56:07,680 --> 00:56:10,960
Speaker 1: a star studded event, but the only celebrities who show

904
00:56:11,000 --> 00:56:12,440
Speaker 1: up are a couple of folks from one of the

905
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:17,400
Speaker 1: later seasons of MTVS The real world doesn't really work.

906
00:56:18,120 --> 00:56:21,880
Speaker 1: You can't really fuel celebrity party that way. No offense

907
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 1: to anyone who's ever been on MTVS the real world.

908
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: It didn't help that shows like the Consumer Electronics Show,

909
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 1: now known just as c e S, had become more popular.

910
00:56:32,600 --> 00:56:34,799
Speaker 1: Some of the big names that had been regulars at

911
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 1: comdex had withdrawn, and now we're attending c e S instead.

912
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:44,719
Speaker 1: Comdex would see a bit of a revival, a strange

913
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:49,359
Speaker 1: revival in two thousand ten. So it had gone dead

914
00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 1: between two thousand four and two thousand and ten. But

915
00:56:51,600 --> 00:56:56,640
Speaker 1: in two thousand and ten we saw Condex Virtual. So

916
00:56:56,680 --> 00:56:58,960
Speaker 1: instead of a physical trade show that you would go

917
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:01,799
Speaker 1: and attend for drink, thousands of people walking around the

918
00:57:01,840 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: convention center, Condex Virtual was a website you would go

919
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:07,799
Speaker 1: to and it's simulated a trade show. You could watch

920
00:57:07,840 --> 00:57:12,319
Speaker 1: keynote speeches, and you could virtually visit vendor booths. And

921
00:57:12,440 --> 00:57:14,919
Speaker 1: it showed up again in two thousand eleven and one

922
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,440
Speaker 1: more time in two thousand twelve, and then it faded away.

923
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 1: If you were to go to the Condex Virtual website today,

924
00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: you would get an under construction page, which seems charmingly

925
00:57:25,600 --> 00:57:29,640
Speaker 1: out of date if you ask me. And that's the

926
00:57:29,840 --> 00:57:33,960
Speaker 1: story of Condex from its birth to its death. Trade

927
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:36,760
Speaker 1: shows still exist. Some of them are as large or

928
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:39,960
Speaker 1: larger than Condex was at its height. Others are a

929
00:57:39,960 --> 00:57:42,960
Speaker 1: bit more modest, and we're seeing some companies like Apple

930
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:46,640
Speaker 1: and Google concentrate on holding their own events rather than

931
00:57:46,840 --> 00:57:50,000
Speaker 1: abiding by an annual trade show schedule. So instead of

932
00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:54,280
Speaker 1: saying we're gonna hold off on announcing something until someone

933
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:58,240
Speaker 1: else's schedule lines up, they say, no, we'll hold our

934
00:57:58,280 --> 00:58:01,040
Speaker 1: own events and we don't. That way, we don't get

935
00:58:01,040 --> 00:58:05,040
Speaker 1: lost in the shuffle. I hope you enjoyed this episode,

936
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 1: Thanks again to Alex for suggesting it. If you have

937
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: a show idea you'd like me to cover, please let

938
00:58:10,040 --> 00:58:12,640
Speaker 1: me know. You can send me an email at tech

939
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me

940
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:19,280
Speaker 1: a line on Twitter or Facebook. The show's handle is

941
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 1: tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you

942
00:58:22,720 --> 00:58:31,520
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this and thousands of

943
00:58:31,560 --> 00:58:43,560
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.