WEBVTT - The Story of Comdex 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:13.680 stuff dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.200 I'm your host, senior writer Jonathan Strickland from how Stuff 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.480 works dot Com. I am still recovering from a cold, 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:22.560 but every day I'm getting a little bit better, so 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.639 I'll probably only get super raspy. I don't know a 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.880 dozen times in this episode, and today's topic comes to 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:35.839 us courtesy of a little listener mail. This message is 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.479 from Alex, and Alex said, I really enjoy listening to 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.159 your episodes on c e S and also listening to 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:46.000 the shows that you broadcast every year from CS and 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.280 it got me to thinking about two decades ago, there 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.600 was a popular trade show called Calm Dex, which is 0:00:52.640 --> 0:00:55.680 not around anymore. I've always wondered what happened to Comdex 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:57.920 and why it failed as a trade show. I know 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.680 that some famous things happened at Colm Deck. The blue 0:01:00.680 --> 0:01:03.000 screen of death coming up on Bill Gates during a 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.800 Windows demonstration comes to mind. Thanks for making such a 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:10.160 great show. Well, thank you Alex for those kind words 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.839 and for the suggestion. Guys, remember you can always write 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.880 me to make suggestions for show topics or guests. I 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:18.800 should have on the show, or even if you just 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:21.200 want to say hi. The email address you can use 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.120 is tech stuff at house stuffworks dot com. I'll mention 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:25.560 that again at the end of the show, but I 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:27.480 know some of you tune out before I get to that, 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.280 So that's what you can use as an email if 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:32.600 you want to get in touch with me. Now, let's 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:36.880 talk about Condex and its impact on the text industry. 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.839 I can't just jump right onto Condex though, I actually 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:43.000 have to go back a little bit, and and I 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.640 also have to admit this was a surprisingly challenging topic. 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:51.200 There's not a whole lot written about Condex as a whole, 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:54.600 apart from some articles in computer industry magazines from the 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.760 time that usually focused on either an upcoming show, like 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:01.840 you know, you might read an article in a magazine 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.480 from seven about Condex eighty seven being around the corner, 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:09.080 or you might see an article that is talking about 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:11.560 just a show that just ended. Kind of similar to 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:14.600 how people cover c e s right, there will be 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.240 an article that says, oh, hey, CS is over here, 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:20.959 what the big trends were, But you don't really find 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.080 a whole lot of stuff about the life and death 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:26.240 of the show as a whole. You have to find 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.560 bits and pieces and then end up putting it all 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:34.480 together and forming it into a meaningful narrative. So this 0:02:34.520 --> 0:02:37.960 episode is really the result of hours of research. I 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:42.480 had to piece everything together myself. So typically for every 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:46.320 hour of podcasts that I produce, it takes about eight 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:51.280 hours of research. That's typical. This one was way more 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.680 than that. It had to be at least twenty hours 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:56.280 of research, maybe more in order to get all of this. 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:00.800 But that's enough stalling. Let's talk about condex. Uh. So, 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:05.639 back in nineteen seventy, which is, by the way, many 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:10.080 years before Condex actually officially began, there was a group 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:15.280 of entrepreneurs based out of Needham, Massachusetts, and they included 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:20.560 Robert Bob Lively and Milton Burns, and they created a 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.400 magazine covering the world of computers and data communications. And 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.480 the name of that publication was the Data com User, 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:31.000 and data com was one word and two ms at 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.400 the end of calm. Uh This was before the era 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.320 of the personal computer. It was even before the era 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:39.840 that you would be able to purchase a kit and 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.040 make your own personal computer. This was the era of 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:47.000 many computers and micro computers that were only meant for 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.400 business or research purposes, so you didn't really see them 0:03:50.400 --> 0:03:53.600 in the home. But they were able to create a 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:56.960 successful magazine, and two years after they launched it, the 0:03:57.040 --> 0:04:00.920 publishers partnered with a a different person of future casino 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:06.520 magnate Sheldon Gary Addlson to launch a new trade show 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:11.840 that they were calling the Interface Conference and Exposition. Now 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.800 Edelson is or Addlson is an interesting person, someone of 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:21.960 great influence both in Las Vegas and in politics. He 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.279 would eventually go on to build one of the premium 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:28.599 casinos on the Strip, the Venetian. Anyway, after several successful 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.280 years of running the Interface Conference and Exposition, the group 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:38.920 saw another opportunity. So it's nineteen seventy nine. The computer 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.920 industry was starting to gain some traction, with the home 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:46.000 PC market mostly stuck in the world of hobbyists and 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.520 early adopters. By seventy nine, it was starting to slowly 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:53.320 emerge from that market, but it wasn't yet to the 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:57.360 point where computers were becoming household objects. Uh. It was 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.480 fairly rare to run into homes that had one. They 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.479 were expensive, and there just weren't a whole lot out there. 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:07.839 You're talking about early Apple computers. You're talking about the 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:13.240 Commodore sixty four, the Tandy, that kind of stuff. More companies, though, 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:18.400 we're really looking into incorporating computers into the workplace. So 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:22.159 the Interface Group organized a new event, and this was 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:26.560 called the Computer Dealers Exhibition, which was later shortened to 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:32.719 the name Comdex. Now, that nineteen show was modest by 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.680 later standards, and modest is kind of overstating it. It 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.520 was tiny compared to the show when it reached its peak. 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:44.880 It took place in the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:49.520 and that was the MGM Grand at the time. The 0:05:49.600 --> 0:05:52.360 MGM Grand of today is not the same building as 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:57.279 the one from nineteen two, totally different places. Approximately four 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.760 thousand people attended the show, with about a hundred fifty 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:06.280 seven exhibitors present. Now, in those days only industry representatives 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:10.240 could attend, so you had to be inside the computer 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:15.560 industry in order to uh to be considered for attendance, 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.680 so general public was not allowed to go into the show. 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:21.680 It's very similar to the way C E S is run, 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:25.680 and for many years E three ran that way. Although 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.320 E three seen which is you know, we're I'm recording 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:33.839 this in seventeen is the first time in several years 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:35.200 that the show is going to be open to the 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.839 general public um, assuming that you were able to get 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.000 a badge in time. I'm gonna be at E three 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.240 this year, so that will be interesting. I can't wait 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:48.039 to see how it's different from the years past that 0:06:48.120 --> 0:06:52.080 I have attended when it was industry only anyway, context 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:56.359 when it started only allowed industry members and and it 0:06:56.440 --> 0:06:59.239 really didn't look at any of the personal computer stuff 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:02.200 at all because it end that was such a young market. 0:07:02.320 --> 0:07:05.960 It was really looking at the business applications for computers. 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:10.400 So if you visit Las Vegas and you go to 0:07:10.440 --> 0:07:13.160 the MGM Grand, like I said, that's not the same 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:17.240 casino as the one that hosted the first Condex. If 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:19.760 you want to visit the building where the first Condex 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.520 took place, you actually have to go to Bally's because 0:07:23.560 --> 0:07:27.960 that's what the old MGM Grand turned into. So I'll 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:31.560 walk through Bally's. Casino is also a walk through computer 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:35.120 history in a way, and they really did focus on 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:40.240 many computers which were named Many, but we're honestly pretty 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:44.440 huge machines to to be fair, the original computers that 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.040 came out. Those were the ones that took up like 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:50.640 an entire room or sometimes the floor of a building like. 0:07:50.680 --> 0:07:54.640 They were huge, huge machines. Those first computers, the ones 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.040 that date all the way back to like the forties 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:01.280 and fifties, But the many computers of the seventies were 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:04.520 still pretty massive machines. And again they were meant for 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:08.880 corporate use or manufacturing or things like that. They weren't 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:13.440 meant to be on your table at home. Um so 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:18.840 their industrial computers. Almost all the interactions at CONDEX were 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:22.960 all about business to business, with computer manufacturers courting big 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:28.480 corporations like insurance companies and law firms. So really, if 0:08:28.640 --> 0:08:33.319 you might represent, say a computer manufacturer, and what you're 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.600 trying to do is get that representative from that big 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.320 insurance company to come see your stuff and say, yeah, 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:40.800 you know what, I'm going to put in an order 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:44.319 for X number of machines for us to use at 0:08:44.320 --> 0:08:48.200 our corporate office. That was kind of the purpose for CONDEX. 0:08:49.880 --> 0:08:52.000 Uh So it wasn't the sort of convention that the 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:56.120 average computer junkie would even want to attend that first COMDEX. 0:08:56.200 --> 0:08:59.679 If you're a big computer nerd, you probably still would 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.319 not be too keen on that first Condex because it 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:06.600 just it was geared towards a different type of person. 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:14.280 It's more for business now. Exhibitors also attended shows like 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:18.640 Condex for another reason, not just to connect with potential customers, 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.000 They also wanted to see what the competition was up to. 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.760 Keep in mind, these trade shows allowed companies to show 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.360 off stuff that was in development, stuff that had not 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:32.880 yet hit the market. That meant that if you were 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:35.640 a competitor, you might get a look at someone's products 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:40.120 before they actually hit store shelves, and if you are able, 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:43.640 you might be able to suss out how those products 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.320 are working and figure out your own version of that 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:50.240 same product. It's not quite the same thing as copying 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:54.160 someone else. It might involve some reverse engineering a little 0:09:54.200 --> 0:09:57.040 ethically questionable, but it's certainly was something that happened all 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.520 the time. If a competitor's computers incorporated a new feature 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:04.920 that you saw customers were really finding to be compelling, 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:07.560 you might go back to your team and say, hey, 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:11.920 competitor X has this new peripheral and people are going 0:10:12.040 --> 0:10:15.680 gaga over it. We've got to create something equal to 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:19.880 or better than that for our products. So it's really 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.760 just a fuel for competition. And just like ce S 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:27.120 gives rise to certain trends each year, so did CONDEX. 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.480 So another reason why companies would attend is to see 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:33.600 what trends are starting to come up and should there 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:37.120 be uh, some that that the company needs to get 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.040 involved in, they could end up dedicating some resources to 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:44.120 it and then become a player in that space. The 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:46.000 worst thing in the world would be to be left 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:49.760 behind and become obsolete and see your company's business failed 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:53.280 because you weren't able to capitalize on an emerging trend. 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:56.520 So some companies would send people out there just to see, 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:58.760 all right, well what's big this year and what do 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:01.600 we need to pay attention to? So it really was 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:07.280 all about business now. The event was was a success, 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.520 and the group planned a second event for nineteen eighty 0:11:12.120 --> 0:11:14.960 and this one took place in the Las Vegas Convention Center. 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:19.800 It had outgrown the MGM Grand, but a few attendees 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:22.800 were staying at the MGM Grand. That's you know, just 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:26.320 that was the place where they had booked a room, uh, 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:28.760 but the show had already outgrown the conference rooms there. 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.400 The new venue boasted twenty five thousand square feet of 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.120 exhibition space and more than seven thousand people attended the show, 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:39.600 so they nearly doubled in size. Now, that was the 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:43.000 first year for the show to use Comdex as a name, 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:47.160 and it was also a tragic year. Uh, something really 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:52.400 disastrous happened that year. On the very last day of 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:56.680 the Comdex conference, a fire broke out in the MGM 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:00.480 Grand overnight and it was a serious fire, and more 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:04.280 than eighty people died, most of them from smoke inhalation 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:07.120 because the smoke went up into the rooms and a 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.360 lot of people were asleep and they never woke up. 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.760 Out of those eight people, eight of them were attending Comdex, 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:17.360 and the tragedy marks the worst disaster in Nevada history 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:21.719 and the third worst hotel fire in US history. The 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:25.160 cause of the fire was ultimately traced to an electrical 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:28.280 ground fault in a wall socket. They had a nearby 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:31.880 cooling unit for a pastry display case that had a 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:36.360 pair of copper pipes that were exposed that the insulation 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:40.559 had worn down. The copper pipes had been vibrating at times, 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.360 and that vibration had caused the pipes to rub together 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:48.640 and the insulation protecting the pipes worn away, which meant 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:52.360 that they could rub against each other, and this eventually 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.880 caused the short, the electrical short, which then caused a fire. 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:00.000 The fire spread very quickly and it was a huge 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:05.079 story both in Las Vegas and in the computer industry. Now, 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:09.400 despite this tragedy, the conference continued and grew. UH I 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:11.480 was on that last day of the conference. The following 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:14.760 year it was even bigger. You would actually see Condex 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:19.520 expanded two shows in that year. So in the springtime 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:24.000 they the organization launched a Comdex show in New York. 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:29.360 The fall show stayed in Las Vegas. So they were 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.120 splitting up uh to two shows a year, with one 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:35.800 on the East Coast and one in Las Vegas. UH. 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:39.920 The New York show was a big success. Um. It 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:42.680 was more than twice as big as the first Condex 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:46.200 show in Vegas. Had eleven thousand attendees and two thirty 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:50.360 seven exhibitors. That Vegas show happened in the fall, and 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:54.679 this was huge business, not just for the exhibitors and 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:58.400 the attending professionals, but also for the organizers themselves. They 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:01.839 were making a huge amount of profit. At its peak, 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:07.120 Condex could command fifty nine dollars per square foot of 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.480 exhibit space, and when it was the biggest trade show around, 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:15.120 there was more than one point three million square feet available, 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:21.880 and CONDEX staffers were really really pushing for companies to 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:26.960 end up leasing that space, so they were making buckos 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.520 of dollars serious cash just so they a company can 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:36.320 rent some carpeted floor. Um. Yeah, if you want to 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:41.680 read some vitriol about CONDEX, just do some searches about 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:45.120 how much money the organizers were making back in these days, 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.440 and and how a lot of the exhibitors felt that 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:53.520 they were being almost like extorted in order to rent 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:56.960 larger and larger spaces year over year, like they were 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.320 being pressured by staffers who were acting like sale osman 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:07.120 to rent more space each successful year. Um. It's one 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.080 of the reasons why some companies said that they ultimately 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:15.280 abandoned the show. Well, back in the show was still 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:18.800 growing just as the computer industry was growing and holding 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.120 two shows ended up working out with the Spring Show 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:23.240 in New York and the Fall Show in Las Vegas. 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.280 So in nineteen eight two they expanded again and this 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:29.960 time there were three shows. The Spring event occurred in 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.880 Atlantic City, aka the Las Vegas of the East Coast, 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.320 and the Fall show happened in Las Vegas, but there 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:39.840 was a third show that happened in Europe and it 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:43.280 took place in Amsterdam. That marked the beginning of Condex 0:15:43.320 --> 0:15:47.200 expanding beyond the United States. Now that trend would continue 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.400 and snowball over the following years. So you start looking 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.440 at the number of shows Condex was holding year over year, 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:58.120 and it kept on increasing. In two thousand two, there 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:04.800 were eighteen comdat shows scheduled throughout that year, eighteen different 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:09.600 events across the globe in two thousand two. Now, one 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:12.280 of those, the one that was scheduled for Mexico City, 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.560 ended up getting canceled, but that still means there were 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:20.080 seventeen shows in two thousand two. I mean that's think 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:22.800 about how how many resources you would have to dedicate 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:26.800 to hold those that many events around the world. Alright, 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:30.480 but back to the nineteen eighties, So after those first 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.800 few years when everyone was concentrating on many computers and 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:37.000 business to business type stuff, personal computers began to play 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:40.680 a role in shows because they were starting to take off. 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:44.440 People were starting to purchase personal computers at a larger rate. 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:47.800 It was going beyond the hobbyists and beyond the early adopter, 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:51.920 and so it became part of comdex history. He started 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:54.800 seeing computers like the Apple to e and the first 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:59.600 IBM compatible computers. First you saw the IBM computers, and 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.000 then wordly after that you saw the IBM clones that 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:04.920 we're making their way to market. And you also had 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.800 other computers like the Commodore sixty four, the Tandy computer, 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:12.119 and the Amiga line of computers which originally came from 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.600 Commodore as well. And one of these days I'm gonna 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:16.720 have to do a full show about Tandy, I think, 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.199 because it's hard to believe that a company that started 0:17:19.240 --> 0:17:21.800 off as a leather goods company got into the personal 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.240 computer business. And for that matter, I should probably talk 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:29.280 about IBM compatibles and clones too, as that was a big, 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.399 big deal early on in the personal computer age and 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:34.920 one of the reasons why IBM got out of the 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:41.520 consumer computer market entirely for many years. But the important thing, uh, 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:43.080 the important thing to remember in this part of the 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:46.040 Condex story is that these companies were becoming important enough 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:52.000 to warrant a spot on the show floor. By Condex 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:55.680 started holding a show in Atlanta as the city where 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:59.119 I am in. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia, So I remember 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:02.600 Condex talked about. I was a kid in the eighties, 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:06.600 and um, I never attended a Condex, but I remember 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:09.720 people talking about them, and the show in Atlanta would 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:15.320 continue yearly until nineteen and at that point, Comdex began 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:20.879 to alternate between Atlanta and Chicago every year. So I 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:22.840 probably would have been pretty bored if I had gone 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:24.880 to one of the comdex is in Atlanta. I mean, 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.760 these shows were huge, and there were lots of booths 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:31.920 and everything, but again it was mostly about like productivity 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:34.359 machines and software, and not really the kind of stuff 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:37.399 I was interested in, which was namely computer games. He 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:39.720 didn't really see a whole lot of that Condex because 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:43.280 that's just not what the focus of the show was about. Also, 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.840 in nineteen three, I Love This Bill Gates gave his 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:50.720 first speech at a Comdex in nineteen eighty three, and 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.879 that would become a regular event over future shows, and 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:57.560 Gates would end up getting larger audiences every year. He 0:18:57.560 --> 0:19:00.879 would command a bigger room every year. Obviously became a 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.440 much more important event in future comdex is, but back 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:08.480 in three it was rather modest in comparison, so much 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:13.159 so that the projectionist for Bill Gates's presentation was his 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.240 own father. I just think that's kind of a charming 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.840 little bit of information. Well, I've got more to say 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.600 about what happened to comdex in the nineteen eighties, but 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.320 before I get into that, let's take a quick break 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:36.520 to thank our sponsor. All Right, So, a couple of 0:19:36.520 --> 0:19:39.920 big events happened in the early nineteen eighties that rippled 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:45.399 through comdex. For one thing, the Macintosh debuted in nine four, 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.439 and that's when the graphics user interface or Gooey, became 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.679 big in home personal computers. The wind the Windows system 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.280 Microsoft Windows also made a big splash around that same time, 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:01.280 and Microsoft and Apple had worked together developing a Gooey. 0:20:01.320 --> 0:20:04.480 It wasn't exactly you might hear stories about, oh well, 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:08.720 Windows was just copying the mac os. It's not entirely true. Actually, 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:11.679 the two companies were working together to develop Gooey's And 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.480 to be fair, the graphic user interface wasn't developed out 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:19.600 of Apple or Microsoft. The graphic user interface originated as 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:23.560 a project out of Xerox Park but that's another story 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:29.080 for another time. The graphics user interface, however, was changing 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:32.920 computers because it was seen as a much more intuitive, 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:39.600 easy to understand system than command line systems. So in 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.000 the old days, if you want to run a program 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:45.280 on your computer, you had to type in run in 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:48.119 the program name, and then the computer would know to 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:52.240 execute that command and start that program. You might have 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:55.840 some programs that had an auto startup based upon the 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:59.000 disk that you were using, and that would make things 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:03.120 a little more smooth. But until the graphics user interface 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:05.400 came along, you couldn't just click on an icon and 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:09.159 have have something start. You actually had to type stuff in, 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:12.440 and it wasn't exactly user friendly for people who weren't 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.919 already interested in computers, so it was sort of a 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.720 barrier to entry. The graphic user interface lowered that barrier, 0:21:19.800 --> 0:21:23.240 and that's really when we started seeing personal computers take off, 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:27.040 not just for homes but in schools and all sorts 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:32.480 of places. So the Macintosh and the Windows system were 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:36.560 really important, and they dominated the show floor by everyone 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:40.320 was talking about Windows based systems and graphic user interfaces. 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:43.879 And it's funny because if you look back on these 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.600 early condex shows, you can see the debut of stuff 0:21:47.640 --> 0:21:50.359 that we all take for granted now, stuff that you 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:53.000 know well of course that exists. Sometimes we're looking at 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:55.720 debuts from the stuff that's completely obsolete at this point. 0:21:56.240 --> 0:22:00.159 So if you are able to find videos from that 0:22:00.280 --> 0:22:04.440 era and you watch them, it's almost comical to see 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:09.119 them debut because it's ancient history now in the in 0:22:09.160 --> 0:22:12.360 the computer world, one of the resources I used when 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:16.320 researching this show was an episode of The Computer Chronicles 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:21.120 from so At the beginning of that episode, the CEO 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:25.600 of Digital Research talked about how applications had suddenly become important. 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:29.480 So he was referring to programs like desktop publishing software 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:34.360 or spreadsheet management programs, things like that, and that they 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:37.000 were taking center stage because they were taking advantage of 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:40.600 this graphic user interface. It's really similar in a way 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:44.119 to how smartphone apps have become a major focus in 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:47.600 the tech industry today. The hardware still important, but a 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:50.679 lot more intention is going towards the software running on 0:22:50.880 --> 0:22:55.800 top of the hardware. Well. Comdex was also where companies 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:59.680 could show off new products like laser printers, which in 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:03.520 the ease were super super new and exciting, or computer 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:07.560 peripher roles or computer systems and software packages. And because 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:09.920 the industry was heating up, the show just kept getting 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:13.200 larger and more grandiose every year. And it wasn't long 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:18.240 before companies began employing young women to entice people into booths. 0:23:18.960 --> 0:23:22.960 And I saw one journalist's account of an early nineteen 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:28.639 eighties condex that dismissively referred to these women as demo dollies. 0:23:29.720 --> 0:23:33.800 Now at c S you tend to hear these women 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:37.080 being referred to as booth babes, and I just like 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:40.120 to take a moment to address this because it bugs me. 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:45.640 So as I get older, I get more uncomfortable with 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:49.000 these terms, and that's because they ignore the fact that 0:23:49.080 --> 0:23:52.840 these women are human beings. Many of them may be 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:55.600 hired because of their appearance. You know. It might be 0:23:55.720 --> 0:23:59.080 that they have a modeling agency and a company hires 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:02.800 them because of their profile and the modeling agency, and 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:05.399 so it's completely based on their appearance. But it doesn't 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:08.760 change the fact that we're talking about actual people here. 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:12.240 I'm not a fan of companies using sex appeal to 0:24:12.320 --> 0:24:15.439 get people to pay attention to their stuff, particularly if 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:17.479 we're talking about products that have nothing to do with 0:24:17.560 --> 0:24:20.919 being sexy in the first place, but the women and 0:24:21.280 --> 0:24:25.439 men too, because we see male models also being pulled 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:29.440 in for this duty, especially for things like um, wearables 0:24:29.480 --> 0:24:34.160 and sports uh type of technology. At places like CS 0:24:34.240 --> 0:24:36.760 we see both women and men who are you know, 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:40.639 chiseled from marble showing these off. But that makes sense. 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:44.119 You understand, right all right, that this person is fit 0:24:44.640 --> 0:24:47.600 and the product is promising to help you get fit, 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:50.719 So you see the connection there. It's a little more 0:24:50.760 --> 0:24:54.760 tough if you're like, this is a case for a 0:24:54.840 --> 0:24:59.000 smartphone and this woman wearing barely anything is holding the case, 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:03.720 it's a little harder to justify. Uh. I don't hold 0:25:03.760 --> 0:25:06.040 it against the models. They're doing a job. They were 0:25:06.119 --> 0:25:07.800 hired to do a job, and that's what they're doing. 0:25:07.960 --> 0:25:11.040 And I also realized that my opinions are just my 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:14.720 own and that I'm probably being a bit too old fashioned. 0:25:14.720 --> 0:25:17.800 But my main point is just to remember these are people, 0:25:18.240 --> 0:25:22.399 not just a walking, talking display. So I hate terms 0:25:22.440 --> 0:25:25.280 like booth babes or demo dollies, which I think is 0:25:25.320 --> 0:25:29.679 even somehow worse than booth babes um because it is 0:25:29.680 --> 0:25:34.240 so dismissive. It's it's treating a person like an object. 0:25:34.680 --> 0:25:37.440 It truly is objectification and I don't care for that. 0:25:38.160 --> 0:25:42.320 So old man lecture is over. But seriously, demo dollies 0:25:42.440 --> 0:25:48.400 come on anyway. By the mid nighties, companies creating IBM 0:25:48.440 --> 0:25:51.399 compatible machines had pretty much run IBM out of the 0:25:51.440 --> 0:25:54.720 consumer PC business. The clones of IBM s machines were 0:25:54.720 --> 0:25:58.000 perfectly legal as long as the company's making them could 0:25:58.040 --> 0:26:02.240 demonstrate that they didn't steal IBMS approach but rather reverse 0:26:02.359 --> 0:26:05.760 engineered it, which seems like a pretty fine detail, but 0:26:05.800 --> 0:26:08.959 it's one that made the production of IBM clones completely legal. 0:26:09.880 --> 0:26:12.520 More on that if I ever do a full episode 0:26:12.600 --> 0:26:17.680 about IBM compatible computers now. Watching the Computer Chronicles also 0:26:17.760 --> 0:26:21.560 reminded me how the industry at that time was dominated 0:26:21.600 --> 0:26:24.600 by dudes. You know, in the nineteen eighties, if you 0:26:24.640 --> 0:26:30.000 looked at the show floor for Condex, men outnumbered women 0:26:30.800 --> 0:26:36.080 by an enormous percentage. Apart from the women who were 0:26:36.160 --> 0:26:39.840 hired to lure people into booths, you hardly saw any 0:26:39.880 --> 0:26:43.880 females on the floor at all. But as the industry matured, 0:26:44.160 --> 0:26:47.840 we saw more women taking roles in the industry, including 0:26:47.960 --> 0:26:52.160 leadership roles. But I'm pretty sure those early CONDEX shows 0:26:52.160 --> 0:26:54.919 saw really long lines at the men's room and like 0:26:55.480 --> 0:27:01.240 almost completely empty women's restrooms, so and it seeing juxtaposition 0:27:01.320 --> 0:27:04.879 and other compared to other arenas. The same thing was 0:27:04.920 --> 0:27:07.560 true of Consumer Electronics Show and in fact, I would 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:10.679 argue it's it's still largely true. We're seeing more and 0:27:10.720 --> 0:27:15.520 more UH women on the show floor at ce s, 0:27:16.040 --> 0:27:21.000 both in leadership positions and attendees that kind of thing, 0:27:21.480 --> 0:27:25.240 but I think it's still far more men than women. 0:27:25.359 --> 0:27:30.280 But but the early days of CONDEX, it was ridiculous 0:27:30.320 --> 0:27:34.720 that imbalance. One of the most amusing elements of the 0:27:34.760 --> 0:27:37.879 Computer Chronicles episode I watched was the segment dedicated to 0:27:38.200 --> 0:27:42.960 portable computers. So back in the nineteen eighties this was 0:27:43.680 --> 0:27:47.320 six Those devices were huge, largely because they had to 0:27:47.359 --> 0:27:50.200 have five and a quarter inch floppy disk drives because 0:27:50.240 --> 0:27:54.040 that was the the main media of choice in the 0:27:54.119 --> 0:27:58.959 mid eighties. The laptops, even the light ones, weighed somewhere 0:27:59.000 --> 0:28:01.800 around twelve pounds or more, so they were hefty enough 0:28:01.840 --> 0:28:03.760 that you wouldn't want them on your lap for very long. 0:28:04.400 --> 0:28:06.880 You'd also probably chuckle at hearing some of the processor 0:28:06.960 --> 0:28:11.800 speeds being UH promoted back in those days, here's something 0:28:11.920 --> 0:28:16.600 like this processor has sixteen mega hurts processor speed, and 0:28:16.600 --> 0:28:20.920 you know that's probably not gonna impress you very much today, 0:28:20.960 --> 0:28:24.919 but you know, a different time. Another interesting product that 0:28:25.000 --> 0:28:27.800 was introduced and featured in that show was from Phillips. 0:28:28.080 --> 0:28:31.320 It was a data storage system that consisted of twenty 0:28:31.520 --> 0:28:36.000 different disks arranged in a case. The discs were in cartridges, 0:28:36.600 --> 0:28:39.760 and a mechanical arm could go up or down the 0:28:40.000 --> 0:28:44.120 rack of cartridges and retrieve or insert discs to access 0:28:44.160 --> 0:28:47.320 the information on them. Now, each disc was twelve inches 0:28:47.360 --> 0:28:50.880 in diameter, and each disc could hold two whole gigabytes 0:28:51.000 --> 0:28:54.880 of information on it, which meant that the entire apparatus 0:28:54.920 --> 0:28:58.280 could hold forty gigabytes. So think about that for a moment. 0:28:58.320 --> 0:29:01.360 They're smartphones right now that can more than three times 0:29:01.360 --> 0:29:03.680 that amount of information, and those will fit in your pocket. 0:29:04.280 --> 0:29:09.120 So we've really come a long way since the nineteen eighties. 0:29:08.360 --> 0:29:11.960 The six Condex show also had some of the earliest 0:29:11.960 --> 0:29:15.680 devices that we would put into the wearable category today. 0:29:16.200 --> 0:29:20.440 Puma showed off a gadget that snapped onto their running 0:29:20.440 --> 0:29:23.920 shoes and it had a microprocessor inside of it that 0:29:24.040 --> 0:29:27.479 could detect whenever your foot made impact with the ground 0:29:27.560 --> 0:29:30.920 and it acted as a step counter, So you could 0:29:31.080 --> 0:29:33.960 use it on a run and you could do your run, 0:29:34.000 --> 0:29:35.960 and then after you were done running, you would have 0:29:36.000 --> 0:29:38.320 to go back home and you would have to use 0:29:38.360 --> 0:29:41.880 a cable to hook the gadget up to your computer 0:29:42.080 --> 0:29:44.880 and pull the data off of the device so that 0:29:44.960 --> 0:29:48.120 you could look at it through the software running on 0:29:48.160 --> 0:29:51.040 your computer. That would give you a visualization of the data, 0:29:51.160 --> 0:29:53.640 and then you could see how far you ran and 0:29:53.640 --> 0:29:56.520 how many calories you burned. It's not quite as easy 0:29:56.560 --> 0:29:59.320 as connecting everything via Bluetooth, which is typically how it 0:29:59.360 --> 0:30:01.720 happens today, but it was a hint of what would 0:30:01.720 --> 0:30:07.080 follow almost thirty years later. Other emerging technologies that began 0:30:07.120 --> 0:30:09.360 to pop up at Comdex in the early to mid 0:30:09.400 --> 0:30:14.440 nineteen eighties included voice recognition, optical discs so CDs, and 0:30:14.480 --> 0:30:17.480 things like that, three and a half inch floppy disks, 0:30:17.640 --> 0:30:22.000 and others, and we began to see the interesting seesaw 0:30:22.160 --> 0:30:26.240 relationship between hardware and software. So if you read articles 0:30:26.240 --> 0:30:29.200 from the nineteen eighties about Condex, you'll see journalists point 0:30:29.240 --> 0:30:32.800 out that these incredibly powerful computers that were hitting the 0:30:32.880 --> 0:30:37.200 market didn't have any software that took advantage of all 0:30:37.200 --> 0:30:40.280 that raw power, they'd say like, well, yeah, you can 0:30:40.360 --> 0:30:43.200 get the super fast machine, but what good is that. 0:30:43.280 --> 0:30:46.040 I mean, there's no software that really takes advantage of 0:30:46.040 --> 0:30:48.600 this machine's capabilities. We're never going to see that happened. 0:30:48.640 --> 0:30:52.520 I mean, it'll it'll run existing software faster, so if 0:30:52.520 --> 0:30:54.640 you've got like a huge spreadsheet, it won't take as 0:30:54.680 --> 0:30:57.680 long re read to load. But other than that, I mean, 0:30:57.880 --> 0:31:02.000 why would you need all that power? Now, it's kind 0:31:02.000 --> 0:31:05.760 of funny to think that a three six processor computer 0:31:05.880 --> 0:31:07.800 from the mid nineteen eighties was thought to be more 0:31:07.800 --> 0:31:11.360 powerful than anything you would ever need, because a three 0:31:11.680 --> 0:31:15.360 six computer compared to today's smartphones would see clunk, clunky, 0:31:15.400 --> 0:31:19.720 and slow in comparison. Since those days, we've seen a 0:31:19.720 --> 0:31:23.240 lot more tech journalists agree to what is called Worth's law, 0:31:23.560 --> 0:31:27.080 which is named after Nicholas Worth, who observed that software 0:31:27.120 --> 0:31:31.200 speed was decreasing at a rate faster than hardware speed 0:31:31.280 --> 0:31:35.720 was increasing. So, in other words, software is getting bloated 0:31:35.880 --> 0:31:39.800 and requires more resources to run faster than we're seeing 0:31:39.840 --> 0:31:44.640 improvements in those resources. So year over year, it feels 0:31:44.680 --> 0:31:49.000 like computers are going slower rather than faster. It's not 0:31:49.040 --> 0:31:51.720 that the computers are less powerful than they were before. 0:31:51.800 --> 0:31:55.920 It's that the software requires more power than the previous 0:31:56.000 --> 0:32:01.720 generations software. And that's because we get bloat software bloat 0:32:02.120 --> 0:32:04.720 over the course of many versions of the same program. 0:32:04.800 --> 0:32:10.000 So take take a word processor program. Well, every successive 0:32:10.840 --> 0:32:14.280 version of that word processor program is likely to be 0:32:14.480 --> 0:32:20.160 larger and more resource hungry than the version before, because 0:32:20.480 --> 0:32:23.480 a company has to start including more and more features 0:32:23.800 --> 0:32:28.040 to convince you to upgrade, to buy the newest version. Otherwise, 0:32:28.320 --> 0:32:30.520 you would just buy one version and you'd stick with 0:32:30.560 --> 0:32:33.640 it until you, you know, until it just literally could 0:32:33.720 --> 0:32:36.120 not measure up to what you needed it to do. 0:32:36.640 --> 0:32:38.360 I mean, why would I need to buy a new 0:32:38.360 --> 0:32:41.640 word processor program if I've got one that works just fine. 0:32:42.440 --> 0:32:45.280 So to convince me to buy a new one, companies 0:32:45.320 --> 0:32:47.680 are going to add more and more features. Well. As 0:32:47.840 --> 0:32:52.640 software gets more complex, it becomes less efficient and therefore 0:32:52.680 --> 0:32:58.840 it requires more power to run. And even to this day, 0:32:58.880 --> 0:33:01.720 there's still a temptation to declare a machine that has 0:33:01.760 --> 0:33:06.040 a screaming fast processor and cavernous storage capacity is being 0:33:06.040 --> 0:33:08.400 more than what you are ever going to need. But 0:33:08.560 --> 0:33:12.240 the more seasoned computer users among us know that eventually 0:33:12.280 --> 0:33:16.440 software is going to use up and maybe even exceed 0:33:16.480 --> 0:33:22.200 that hardware's capabilities. So if you build it, the software 0:33:22.280 --> 0:33:24.960 will fill it. It's kind of like if you build it, 0:33:25.000 --> 0:33:29.040 they will come. Now. The show in Vegas in nineteen 0:33:29.080 --> 0:33:32.160 eight six was just one of seven. The other six 0:33:32.200 --> 0:33:38.240 shows happened in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Amsterdam, Nice, and Sydney. 0:33:38.480 --> 0:33:41.760 And the show in nineteen eighty six in Vegas lasted 0:33:42.000 --> 0:33:46.360 five days. That was the longest conference up to that point. 0:33:46.880 --> 0:33:48.960 So things were still on the rise. Everything was still 0:33:48.960 --> 0:33:51.800 growing every year. More money was being poured into the show, 0:33:51.880 --> 0:33:54.640 and each show meant that there was more square footage 0:33:54.680 --> 0:33:57.720 to least two companies, and the organizers were making some 0:33:57.840 --> 0:34:01.240 serious bank in those days. Meanwhile, exhibitors were enjoying the 0:34:01.280 --> 0:34:03.600 benefits of connecting with customers and getting an eye on 0:34:03.640 --> 0:34:06.040 what the competition was up to, and a lot of 0:34:06.080 --> 0:34:08.879 ideas were launched at Condex, not all of them successfully. 0:34:08.920 --> 0:34:12.360 There were plenty of examples of products that never went anywhere, 0:34:12.440 --> 0:34:15.640 and vaporware became a common word. Vaporware, by the way, 0:34:15.680 --> 0:34:18.360 is when you announce a product that never actually comes 0:34:18.400 --> 0:34:22.440 to market, it just remains vapor. It's the kaiser So's 0:34:22.680 --> 0:34:29.600 of the technological world. Now some Condex shows also became vaporware. 0:34:30.040 --> 0:34:33.760 In nineteen seven and in nineteen eighty eight, the planned 0:34:33.920 --> 0:34:38.359 Condex event in Tokyo was postponed, essentially canceled. It never 0:34:38.400 --> 0:34:42.319 really happened. The nine event for Paris was canceled out 0:34:42.400 --> 0:34:46.040 right Now, things were not dire, not by a long shot, 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:48.480 but there were some growing pains as the organizers kept 0:34:48.520 --> 0:34:52.040 trying to increase the show's reach. Sometimes they did it 0:34:52.120 --> 0:34:55.920 faster than they could actually support, and typically the reason 0:34:56.000 --> 0:34:59.680 these shows would get canceled is because they weren't. The 0:34:59.719 --> 0:35:03.560 show organizers weren't able to sell out enough space on 0:35:03.600 --> 0:35:07.799 the show floor to justify holding the trade show. So 0:35:07.880 --> 0:35:10.160 they couldn't get enough vendors to agree to come to 0:35:10.239 --> 0:35:14.359 a show, they'd postponed it or cancel it rather than 0:35:14.480 --> 0:35:18.240 lose money on throwing a show with a small number 0:35:18.280 --> 0:35:23.120 of exhibitors. By the late nineteen eighties, Condex was looking 0:35:23.160 --> 0:35:26.760 to grow some more, so it changed its attendance policy 0:35:27.120 --> 0:35:29.760 and started to sell it admission to the general public, 0:35:30.160 --> 0:35:33.160 so for the first time, people unaffiliated with the industry 0:35:33.520 --> 0:35:35.840 or people who were not in the media could actually 0:35:35.920 --> 0:35:40.400 come to the show and no big surprise here. Attendance 0:35:40.480 --> 0:35:44.680 numbers exploded as a result. Now, this was not necessarily 0:35:44.680 --> 0:35:48.640 welcomed by all the other attendees. Some people were complaining 0:35:48.640 --> 0:35:50.960 that it was becoming too difficult to navigate the floor 0:35:51.000 --> 0:35:52.720 because it was just there were just too many people. 0:35:52.719 --> 0:35:55.399 There're too many bodies in the way. And other people 0:35:55.440 --> 0:35:57.719 were worried that the show would turn into an enormous 0:35:57.760 --> 0:36:02.440 marketplace with the general public purchasing products directly from manufacturers 0:36:02.520 --> 0:36:07.040 rather than retailers. You know, like, why bother packing this 0:36:07.160 --> 0:36:09.719 device back up and shipping it back to your headquarters. 0:36:09.760 --> 0:36:12.160 I'll just buy it off of you right here, even 0:36:12.160 --> 0:36:14.840 though it's not scheduled to launch for another three months. 0:36:16.320 --> 0:36:18.560 You also heard a lot of people say the show 0:36:18.600 --> 0:36:20.719 was starting to lose its focus. It was it was 0:36:20.760 --> 0:36:24.360 starting to incorporate too many things outside of the core 0:36:24.920 --> 0:36:29.279 computer and computer peripheral industry, and as a result, there 0:36:29.320 --> 0:36:31.160 were a lot of people worried that the show was 0:36:31.160 --> 0:36:35.319 starting to spiral out of control. Now, the early nine 0:36:35.680 --> 0:36:39.640 nineties saw the rise of a new, very important player 0:36:39.719 --> 0:36:43.120 in the computer space, and that is the Internet. While 0:36:43.120 --> 0:36:45.799 the mainstream public was still getting a handle on what 0:36:45.920 --> 0:36:50.080 the Internet was back In the early es, Condex began 0:36:50.120 --> 0:36:53.640 to feature more exhibitors, promising the information super Highway would 0:36:53.719 --> 0:36:57.040 change everything, and in many ways they were right, though 0:36:57.640 --> 0:36:59.840 not all of their predictions would turn out to be accurate. 0:37:00.719 --> 0:37:02.839 For one thing, in the early nine nineties, no one 0:37:02.960 --> 0:37:05.480 really had an idea of how the Internet could become 0:37:05.520 --> 0:37:09.120 a massive tool for commerce. It was more like a 0:37:09.440 --> 0:37:13.480 point of contact for people. So companies might have a website, 0:37:13.480 --> 0:37:16.560 but it was meant to give information about a company, 0:37:16.719 --> 0:37:20.760 or to allow a potential customer or an existing customer 0:37:20.800 --> 0:37:23.960 to contact the company. But there wasn't a whole lot 0:37:24.000 --> 0:37:26.600 beyond that in those early days, especially since you know, 0:37:26.680 --> 0:37:32.640 the Worldwide Web didn't really debut until so before that. 0:37:32.680 --> 0:37:35.919 You're just talking about stuff like email and some other 0:37:36.560 --> 0:37:39.680 functions that were mainly used in the academic world, and 0:37:39.719 --> 0:37:43.759 we're just barely getting a foothold in the corporate and 0:37:43.800 --> 0:37:48.640 then public world. Now. Over the next several years, more 0:37:48.640 --> 0:37:51.520 exhibitors would show off systems designed to make accessing the 0:37:51.520 --> 0:37:54.960 Internet more intuitive and seamless, all the way from operating 0:37:55.000 --> 0:37:59.759 systems to web browsers. In early news broke that a 0:38:00.000 --> 0:38:04.080 suitor to Comdex would be taking over the show, and 0:38:04.120 --> 0:38:08.360 that suitor was a Japanese software company called soft Bank. 0:38:09.120 --> 0:38:12.920 The company made an eight hundred million dollar deal with 0:38:13.000 --> 0:38:16.880 the Interface Group to acquire the trade show. Now in 0:38:17.000 --> 0:38:22.480 nineteen four, SoftBank had already purchased a publishing, exposition and 0:38:22.600 --> 0:38:26.680 conference division from the company Ziff Davis. They had tried 0:38:26.719 --> 0:38:29.640 to buy Ziff Davis outright, but z if Davis refused 0:38:29.920 --> 0:38:34.160 and then instead settled on buying this division within Stiff Davis. 0:38:34.200 --> 0:38:37.600 So as If Davis spins Zala division sells it to SoftBank. 0:38:37.960 --> 0:38:43.040 This division was an events planning division for publishing expositions. 0:38:44.480 --> 0:38:48.560 Then SoftBank goes and buys condex from the Interface Group 0:38:48.560 --> 0:38:52.280 for eight hundred million dollars. Now, these two purchases made 0:38:52.600 --> 0:38:56.000 SoftBank the largest name in the trade show game, and 0:38:56.000 --> 0:38:59.239 it also gave some prestige to the CEO of SoftBank, 0:38:59.360 --> 0:39:03.279 who is Masa Yoshi's son, who was sometimes called the 0:39:03.360 --> 0:39:07.200 Bill Gates of Japan, and his story is really interesting too. 0:39:07.280 --> 0:39:11.000 Son had overcome poverty and also social stigma to become 0:39:11.000 --> 0:39:13.880 a successful businessman in Japan. He was the son of 0:39:13.920 --> 0:39:17.320 two Korean immigrants, and in Japan at the time, Koreans 0:39:17.320 --> 0:39:20.040 were sometimes the victims of racial prejudice. So his story 0:39:20.120 --> 0:39:22.800 is pretty interesting. Maybe I'll do an episode about him sometime. 0:39:24.960 --> 0:39:30.680 At this point, Comdex was enormous. The show in Vegas 0:39:30.719 --> 0:39:34.400 had almost two hundred thousand people in attendance. That's a 0:39:34.560 --> 0:39:38.160 huge jump from that four thousand from nineteen seventy nine. 0:39:38.239 --> 0:39:40.640 Now keep in mind they are also opened up the 0:39:40.640 --> 0:39:43.080 doors to the general public, so part of that growth 0:39:43.160 --> 0:39:45.920 was just from people curious to learn more about the 0:39:46.000 --> 0:39:50.200 latest computers, but they had no connection to the industry itself. Now, 0:39:50.200 --> 0:39:52.880 along with the growth in attendance was a growth of 0:39:52.920 --> 0:39:57.040 complaints among exhibitors. Some companies were protesting what they considered 0:39:57.080 --> 0:40:02.239 to be unfair fees and rental rates. But even though 0:40:02.280 --> 0:40:05.480 they felt that perhaps things were becoming a little unfair, 0:40:06.160 --> 0:40:09.200 most companies also felt that the show was too important 0:40:09.239 --> 0:40:12.319 to skip. They couldn't skip out on it, or else 0:40:12.360 --> 0:40:14.959 they would be left behind by their competitors, so they 0:40:15.000 --> 0:40:18.239 would show up and they would pay. There had been 0:40:18.280 --> 0:40:21.359 talks of launching a competitor show, like a bunch of 0:40:21.400 --> 0:40:24.400 groups saying, you know what, forget this, We're gonna go 0:40:24.480 --> 0:40:27.080 out and make our own trade show. But they hadn't 0:40:27.160 --> 0:40:31.680 really gone far beyond just some big talk. Now, in 0:40:31.719 --> 0:40:35.439 the next section, I'm going to really concentrate on how 0:40:35.520 --> 0:40:38.759 the show got to its largest point and then what 0:40:38.960 --> 0:40:42.000 happened to make it disappear over the next few years. 0:40:42.040 --> 0:40:44.919 But before I get into that, let's take another quick 0:40:44.960 --> 0:40:59.080 break to thank our sponsor. All right, So it's Condex 0:40:59.560 --> 0:41:02.479 hits its peak. It gets the largest it will ever 0:41:02.640 --> 0:41:09.080 get in. The number of exhibitors was more than two thousand, 0:41:09.120 --> 0:41:12.080 four hundred and eighty and they were taking up one 0:41:12.080 --> 0:41:15.040 point three five million square feet of space on the 0:41:15.040 --> 0:41:18.520 show floor. In the primary Vegas show of the year, 0:41:19.360 --> 0:41:23.120 the number of attendees was about two hundred forty thousand. 0:41:23.200 --> 0:41:26.560 I mean a huge number of people, like a quarter 0:41:26.640 --> 0:41:32.120 of a million people almost at Condex Las Vegas. This 0:41:32.200 --> 0:41:34.400 was a monster of a show, but it also marked 0:41:34.400 --> 0:41:39.920 the beginning of the decline of Condex. Exhibitors were complaining 0:41:40.080 --> 0:41:44.440 even more about predatory practices of Condex staffers, pressuring companies 0:41:44.440 --> 0:41:47.239 to invest in larger booths year over year. They were saying, well, 0:41:48.440 --> 0:41:50.960 we want to be part of the show, but every 0:41:51.040 --> 0:41:54.600 year we're making the arrangements. Everyone's pressuring us to make 0:41:54.640 --> 0:41:58.440 our booth bigger than the year before, which means we 0:41:58.480 --> 0:42:00.719 have to spend more money in or to be part 0:42:00.760 --> 0:42:04.359 of this show. And it's getting ridiculous. It got so 0:42:04.480 --> 0:42:07.360 ridiculous for some companies that began to drop out, including 0:42:07.400 --> 0:42:13.359 big names. IBM withdrew from Condex because of these practices, 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:17.640 and according to a CNN Money report from two thousand three, 0:42:17.680 --> 0:42:23.759 Condex became a quote magnet for dumb money end quote. Now, 0:42:23.800 --> 0:42:27.080 what they meant by that is that if you participated 0:42:27.239 --> 0:42:30.880 in Condex year over year, that was just a recipe 0:42:31.000 --> 0:42:34.480 of diminishing returns. You were going to see fewer and 0:42:34.520 --> 0:42:37.480 fewer benefits of being part of the show, and ultimately 0:42:37.840 --> 0:42:40.920 it would become a drain on resources, meaning you're losing 0:42:40.960 --> 0:42:44.120 more money attending the show than you're making out of 0:42:44.120 --> 0:42:48.400 business because of the show. So more exhibitors were starting 0:42:48.440 --> 0:42:55.440 to drop out following they were saying, well, I'm spending money, 0:42:55.480 --> 0:42:58.160 but I don't see the return on investment. This is 0:42:58.200 --> 0:43:01.720 like putting a big time commercial out on a channel 0:43:01.760 --> 0:43:05.960 that no one is watching. What's the point? Now? Behind 0:43:06.000 --> 0:43:08.840 the scenes, in a series of moves so complicated, I 0:43:08.880 --> 0:43:14.960 don't even understand them, SoftBank reorganized its divisions and departments 0:43:15.440 --> 0:43:19.160 So it took the division that owned Condex and that 0:43:19.360 --> 0:43:23.200 publishing conference I talked about before. It was essentially known 0:43:23.239 --> 0:43:26.719 as z d Events at the time, and transformed this 0:43:26.880 --> 0:43:31.640 into a new entity, a publicly traded entity called Key 0:43:31.840 --> 0:43:36.960 three Media. That's key the numeral three and media all 0:43:37.080 --> 0:43:40.080 is one word. And this was a holding company. It 0:43:40.160 --> 0:43:43.680 was just existed to hold these assets. That's that's all 0:43:43.719 --> 0:43:47.480 it did. Now soft Bank held about half of the 0:43:47.520 --> 0:43:51.160 ownership of Key three Media, but eventually it would spin 0:43:51.239 --> 0:43:55.880 it off completely. Now that happened after SoftBank tried to 0:43:56.040 --> 0:43:59.839 auction off the events division. So why was it trying 0:43:59.880 --> 0:44:02.960 to sell something the company had only purchased a couple 0:44:03.000 --> 0:44:07.240 of years before. Well, perhaps organizing and running the events 0:44:07.280 --> 0:44:10.480 was too far outside the wheelhouse of the software corporation. 0:44:10.840 --> 0:44:14.520 The acquisition of Condex and Ziff Davis's publishing conference didn't 0:44:14.560 --> 0:44:17.799 necessarily include the people with the knowledge and experience of 0:44:17.920 --> 0:44:22.200 organizing those events. At any rate, the auction did not 0:44:22.360 --> 0:44:26.279 result in any satisfactory authors. Apparently, the largest offer on 0:44:26.360 --> 0:44:29.279 the table was for six D forty million dollars, which 0:44:29.360 --> 0:44:32.520 is way less than the eight million SoftBank paid for 0:44:32.600 --> 0:44:36.440 Condex alone. Never mind the Ziff Davis deal, so Key 0:44:36.480 --> 0:44:40.200 three Media would eventually become an independent spinoff and the 0:44:40.239 --> 0:44:43.839 sole owner of Condex now. The head of Key three 0:44:43.880 --> 0:44:48.000 Media was a guy named Fred Rosen, and Rosen had 0:44:48.040 --> 0:44:53.200 made a fortune growing and then selling ticket Master. Boo 0:44:53.280 --> 0:44:58.000 ticket Master. That's my own personal uh bias coming through. 0:44:58.239 --> 0:45:01.319 I have an issue with Ticketmaster, many issues with Ticketmaster. 0:45:02.760 --> 0:45:04.480 I should do an episode about them, but it will 0:45:04.480 --> 0:45:08.040 be the most unbiased, unforgiving episode of tech stuff ever, 0:45:08.080 --> 0:45:10.400 So maybe I should just keep my trap shut. Anyway, 0:45:10.480 --> 0:45:13.279 Rosen reportedly ran Key three as if it were a 0:45:13.320 --> 0:45:17.640 massive corporation rather than an events production company. He moved 0:45:17.680 --> 0:45:20.279 the headquarters to an expensive part of Los Angeles, not 0:45:20.400 --> 0:45:23.400 too far from his own mansion, and he would end 0:45:23.520 --> 0:45:26.680 up taking company trips on a private jet across the world. 0:45:26.719 --> 0:45:29.719 His salary was one and a half million dollars in 0:45:29.760 --> 0:45:32.600 two thousand one. That's a big salary for a CEO, 0:45:32.760 --> 0:45:36.319 especially considering most CEOs get the majority of their compensation 0:45:36.400 --> 0:45:40.000 and benefits as opposed to a direct salary. A million 0:45:40.040 --> 0:45:42.080 and a half and two thousand one is no chump change. 0:45:42.760 --> 0:45:47.560 Former employees said that his managerial style was incredibly confrontational 0:45:47.600 --> 0:45:50.040 and off putting so much so that he was driving 0:45:50.080 --> 0:45:52.680 away staffers who had been working in the trade show 0:45:52.680 --> 0:45:56.359 industry for decades, which meant that as a result, Key 0:45:56.480 --> 0:46:01.000 three was depleting its company's talent pool. You had fewer 0:46:01.000 --> 0:46:05.880 and fewer people around who knew how to handle trade shows. 0:46:06.480 --> 0:46:12.080 So it was a mess. To put it lightly. Now, 0:46:12.239 --> 0:46:15.239 this takes us to and this was the year that 0:46:15.320 --> 0:46:18.960 featured that infamous blue screen of death during a demonstration 0:46:19.000 --> 0:46:23.160 of an early build of Windows. You heard our listener 0:46:23.239 --> 0:46:27.279 Alex referred to this earlier. So what happened, well, Bill 0:46:27.360 --> 0:46:31.279 Gates and Chris capo Sella were on stage during the 0:46:31.440 --> 0:46:35.000 keynote event to talk about Windows Night, which had not 0:46:35.080 --> 0:46:38.160 yet launched. It was still in development, it had actually 0:46:38.160 --> 0:46:42.240 been delayed, and Capsella was trying to show how Windows 0:46:42.320 --> 0:46:45.719 ninety eight could download drivers. You know, drivers are these 0:46:45.719 --> 0:46:48.719 components that are needed so for software and hardware to 0:46:48.760 --> 0:46:52.760 work with the operating system, and he was explaining how 0:46:52.800 --> 0:46:55.879 seamless this operation was when the computer crashed and went 0:46:55.920 --> 0:46:59.200 to the blue screen of death, at which point Bill 0:46:59.239 --> 0:47:03.400 Gates started uckling and Capacella was like doing a little 0:47:03.400 --> 0:47:05.520 bit of a shuffle. He was very quickly trying to 0:47:05.600 --> 0:47:08.680 switch away from the monitor screen, and it could have 0:47:08.719 --> 0:47:12.520 been an embarrassing disaster, but I think they actually handled 0:47:12.560 --> 0:47:16.680 the problem really well with humor. So the audience started laughing, 0:47:16.800 --> 0:47:19.879 and Capacella, who was responding to the audiences laughter at 0:47:19.920 --> 0:47:23.759 the blue screen of death, said moving right along in 0:47:23.760 --> 0:47:28.160 a very self deprecating way, like he wasn't angry. He 0:47:28.560 --> 0:47:32.680 seemed a little a little chagrined, but not not completely 0:47:32.680 --> 0:47:35.759 thrown off. And then Bill Gates said this must be 0:47:35.800 --> 0:47:42.480 why we're not shipping windows yet, to which Capacella said, absolutely, absolutely. 0:47:42.800 --> 0:47:45.080 So it was a moment that reminded everyone that sometimes 0:47:45.080 --> 0:47:48.280 stuff just goes wrong. And I actually like watching this clip. 0:47:48.360 --> 0:47:50.960 I I was afraid to watch it. I never watched 0:47:50.960 --> 0:47:53.520 it at the time. And I tend to feel a 0:47:53.560 --> 0:47:55.720 lot of empathy for people who are giving a public 0:47:55.760 --> 0:47:59.520 presentation because there are enormous pressures on you when you 0:47:59.560 --> 0:48:01.680 are giving a live speech in front of a big 0:48:01.719 --> 0:48:05.279 crowd of people. Keep in mind, we're talking Condex when 0:48:05.360 --> 0:48:10.400 the attendance is like two hundred thousand plus people. You 0:48:10.400 --> 0:48:13.440 could have thousands of people in that audience all focusing 0:48:13.480 --> 0:48:16.480 on you and something goes wrong. I feel nothing but 0:48:16.560 --> 0:48:19.320 empathy because I've been in those kind of situations and 0:48:19.400 --> 0:48:22.560 a much smaller scale and it feels like torture. But 0:48:22.640 --> 0:48:25.960 I liked watching this clip because it didn't feel awful. 0:48:26.440 --> 0:48:29.560 It felt like they handled this pretty well as it 0:48:29.600 --> 0:48:33.360 feels actually pretty natural. So for one thing, it's not 0:48:33.400 --> 0:48:35.719 a presentation that fools you into thinking of product is 0:48:35.760 --> 0:48:40.640 completely flawless. If you've ever been to any product demonstration 0:48:40.719 --> 0:48:45.920 where it's clear everything has been prerecorded and rehearsed so 0:48:45.960 --> 0:48:50.400 that nothing goes wrong, it doesn't feel genuine, and you 0:48:50.480 --> 0:48:52.279 might even feel when you get your hands on the 0:48:52.320 --> 0:48:56.000 real thing that you were given a misrepresentation of what 0:48:56.040 --> 0:48:59.160 it was all about. Seeing something kind of fail and 0:48:59.160 --> 0:49:02.480 people acknowledge it and move on it was a little refreshing. 0:49:02.600 --> 0:49:05.080 So it's just a kind of a funny moment, and 0:49:05.200 --> 0:49:09.280 something that Microsoft presentations frequently had that is funny moments, 0:49:09.320 --> 0:49:12.040 not failures. And some of those funny moments were intentional, 0:49:12.040 --> 0:49:15.920 and some of them we're not intentional. Developers Developers, Developers 0:49:15.960 --> 0:49:21.400 Developers was also the first year to see a major 0:49:21.520 --> 0:49:25.400 decline in attendance. So I said two hundred thousand, but 0:49:25.440 --> 0:49:27.600 actually it was fewer than that. At that point. This 0:49:27.680 --> 0:49:29.879 was the beginning of the end for Comdex, though at 0:49:29.880 --> 0:49:31.840 the time no one could see that. It did just 0:49:31.880 --> 0:49:34.400 appear to be a blip in the growth, and the 0:49:34.440 --> 0:49:37.560 following year saw another dip, and the number of exhibitors 0:49:37.680 --> 0:49:42.280 in two thousand or rather was one thousand, nine eleven, 0:49:42.960 --> 0:49:46.080 so more than two thousand, four hundred. In nine seven 0:49:46.200 --> 0:49:50.400 and nine eleven, we start seeing fewer exhibitors showing up. 0:49:50.440 --> 0:49:55.360 More people are irritated with the way Comdex is running things, 0:49:55.600 --> 0:49:58.360 or rather the way Key three Media is running things, 0:49:58.800 --> 0:50:01.080 and are not coming back. Now. There was a little 0:50:01.120 --> 0:50:03.120 bit of a rally in two thousand a few more 0:50:03.160 --> 0:50:06.520 exhibitors signed up, mostly new companies, but that was not 0:50:06.600 --> 0:50:12.440 to last. Also in Condex, organizers shook things up by 0:50:12.520 --> 0:50:16.640 changing the requirements for mass media, and a lot of 0:50:16.680 --> 0:50:19.680 major outlets that had been covering context since the beginning 0:50:20.719 --> 0:50:24.000 found themselves turned away, and that really shook things up. 0:50:24.040 --> 0:50:27.520 I mean, you had big, big names and mass media 0:50:27.719 --> 0:50:29.600 told that they were not going to be allowed to 0:50:29.640 --> 0:50:33.839 attend Comdex, and that did not help the organization at all. 0:50:33.880 --> 0:50:38.920 I mean, making sure that you um, you alienate media 0:50:39.160 --> 0:50:42.400 is a good way to have some pretty negative coverage 0:50:42.560 --> 0:50:47.000 about your organization. And in two thousand and two thousand one, 0:50:47.360 --> 0:50:51.160 there was another problem. This was outside of Condex. This 0:50:51.280 --> 0:50:55.360 was a huge problem that had global implications, and I'm 0:50:55.400 --> 0:50:59.080 talking about the dot com bubble burst. So the dot 0:50:59.120 --> 0:51:02.880 com bubble, that's when you had all these web based 0:51:03.000 --> 0:51:08.320 companies popping up, getting huge amounts of investment capital, whether 0:51:08.400 --> 0:51:11.440 it was private investment or the company had gone public 0:51:11.560 --> 0:51:15.000 very early. The value of the company was inflated beyond 0:51:15.080 --> 0:51:19.319 what it could actually do. And then ultimately many of 0:51:19.360 --> 0:51:23.000 these companies failed to show any real value and the bubble, 0:51:23.160 --> 0:51:28.560 this investment bubble burst. Dozens of companies went under, and 0:51:28.719 --> 0:51:31.640 companies in the computer industry in general suffered, even if 0:51:31.680 --> 0:51:34.680 they weren't directly tied to dot com, because they were 0:51:34.719 --> 0:51:38.080 in the computer industry, they were hit pretty hard because 0:51:38.080 --> 0:51:40.200 there was a ripple effect that came outward from the 0:51:40.239 --> 0:51:43.440 dot com companies to all the other computer companies that were, 0:51:43.480 --> 0:51:46.759 you know, kind of in that same pool, even though 0:51:46.800 --> 0:51:51.160 they weren't necessarily themselves and dot com company. Well, that 0:51:51.200 --> 0:51:55.600 meant that that ripple effect continued to hit Condex. And 0:51:56.000 --> 0:52:01.440 another event also ended up really setting Condex back, and 0:52:01.520 --> 0:52:04.400 that was the terrorist attack on September eleven, two thousand 0:52:04.480 --> 0:52:07.759 one in the United States that affected trade shows because 0:52:07.800 --> 0:52:11.759 it ended up affecting international travel. It's scaled back international 0:52:11.760 --> 0:52:14.920 travel to to a huge degree in the wake of 0:52:14.960 --> 0:52:20.440 those attacks, completely understandably. I mean, there's there's there's nothing 0:52:20.640 --> 0:52:23.640 else to say about that. But it did affect the 0:52:23.719 --> 0:52:28.239 trade shows at a time when Condex was already having problems. 0:52:29.400 --> 0:52:32.000 So the Las Vegas Condex show in two thousand one 0:52:32.040 --> 0:52:35.399 had a hundred twenty five thousand attendees, and that's still 0:52:35.440 --> 0:52:38.640 a large number of people, you know, hundred twenty five thousand, 0:52:38.719 --> 0:52:43.120 but still very short of that two forty thousand the 0:52:43.160 --> 0:52:47.120 show had at its peak. In two thousand two, Key 0:52:47.200 --> 0:52:51.160 three Media was in dire straits and not the band. 0:52:51.560 --> 0:52:54.240 With three days to go before the Las Vegas Trade 0:52:54.280 --> 0:52:58.400 Show opened, the company announced in its quarterly earning statement 0:52:58.480 --> 0:53:02.200 that it might have to or Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection 0:53:02.640 --> 0:53:05.719 if it could not raise more capital, or sell the 0:53:05.760 --> 0:53:09.440 company off or find a merger partner. Key three Media's 0:53:09.480 --> 0:53:12.799 revenue had plummeted in two thousand two, so in two 0:53:12.840 --> 0:53:15.799 thousand one, the third quarter revenues were at fifty one 0:53:15.840 --> 0:53:18.840 and a half million. In two thousand two, third quarter 0:53:18.960 --> 0:53:21.839 revenues were down to thirty eight point four million. That's 0:53:21.840 --> 0:53:24.279 a big drop over the course of the full year. 0:53:24.560 --> 0:53:28.440 The company had lost nearly three hundred million dollars. In 0:53:28.480 --> 0:53:30.800 two thousand one, it was in the black and it 0:53:30.920 --> 0:53:35.240 made a profit of fourteen point one million. It's a 0:53:35.320 --> 0:53:39.320 small profit relatively speaking, but the loss of three hundred 0:53:39.360 --> 0:53:43.480 million that's a huge, huge downturn. Things were looking pretty awful. 0:53:44.640 --> 0:53:48.360 On top of that, the company had an upcoming interest 0:53:48.400 --> 0:53:50.719 payment on a debt it owed, and no one was 0:53:50.760 --> 0:53:53.399 really sure if they the company would actually be able 0:53:53.440 --> 0:53:56.720 to sign the check to pay off that interest payment, 0:53:57.400 --> 0:53:59.239 which is why they were looking at the possibility of 0:53:59.360 --> 0:54:02.760 entering Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. Shares of Key three Media 0:54:02.800 --> 0:54:05.800 were down to a measly one point four since per share. 0:54:06.360 --> 0:54:10.000 It's pretty ugly, folks now. In February two thousand three, 0:54:10.040 --> 0:54:14.520 the Key three Media filed for Chapter eleven protection. When 0:54:14.560 --> 0:54:17.640 it finally emerged from Chapter eleven, so they were able 0:54:17.880 --> 0:54:21.360 to get their act together and come out of Chapter 0:54:21.400 --> 0:54:25.719 eleven bankruptcy protection. They also rebranded themselves. They were no 0:54:25.760 --> 0:54:29.080 longer Key three Media. Now they were called Media Live, 0:54:30.360 --> 0:54:33.080 and there was some hope that this new brand would 0:54:33.080 --> 0:54:35.920 be able to recapture the glory days of Condexes in 0:54:35.960 --> 0:54:38.520 the past, but it was not meant to be. The 0:54:38.600 --> 0:54:44.000 two thousand three show drew only fifty thousand attendees. Fifty thousand, 0:54:44.080 --> 0:54:46.319 still a lot of people, but not compared to two 0:54:48.400 --> 0:54:51.399 In two thousand four, in a move that shocked very 0:54:51.440 --> 0:54:55.840 few people, Condex Las Vegas was canceled. The struggles of 0:54:55.920 --> 0:54:59.120 Media Alive were well known. They were pretty public. People 0:54:59.480 --> 0:55:02.360 knew that the company was in trouble. Attendance had dropped 0:55:02.400 --> 0:55:06.280 significantly over the past few years, so many large companies 0:55:06.320 --> 0:55:11.160 had pulled out the show, expressing their exasperation of dealing 0:55:11.200 --> 0:55:14.719 with the policies and high pressure sales tactics of the organizers. 0:55:15.800 --> 0:55:19.719 There were still some hope along Media Live lines that 0:55:19.840 --> 0:55:21.880 two thousand five would be different than they would be 0:55:21.880 --> 0:55:23.920 able to come back in two thousand five and two 0:55:23.960 --> 0:55:26.920 thousand four would just be a year off. But in 0:55:27.000 --> 0:55:31.040 two thousand five, all of the company's planned condex events 0:55:31.480 --> 0:55:35.400 were canceled except for one, so it was supposed to 0:55:35.400 --> 0:55:38.200 happen in Las Vegas but didn't. The only Condex event 0:55:38.239 --> 0:55:41.239 to happen in that year was in Greece in Athens, 0:55:41.840 --> 0:55:45.759 but all the other ones were canceled. Analysts said that 0:55:45.800 --> 0:55:49.040 the implosion of Condex came about due to a mix 0:55:49.080 --> 0:55:54.920 of mismanagement, depletion of talent, bad marketing choices, and also 0:55:55.040 --> 0:55:58.319 just that exhibitors weren't willing to play ball anymore. So 0:55:58.440 --> 0:56:01.319 the problem was that they couldn't had enough companies to 0:56:01.400 --> 0:56:04.120 agree to be part of the show to have a show. 0:56:05.120 --> 0:56:07.640 It's kind of like throwing a huge party advertised as 0:56:07.680 --> 0:56:10.960 a star studded event, but the only celebrities who show 0:56:11.000 --> 0:56:12.440 up are a couple of folks from one of the 0:56:12.520 --> 0:56:17.400 later seasons of MTVS The real world doesn't really work. 0:56:18.120 --> 0:56:21.880 You can't really fuel celebrity party that way. No offense 0:56:21.880 --> 0:56:24.080 to anyone who's ever been on MTVS the real world. 0:56:25.560 --> 0:56:29.000 It didn't help that shows like the Consumer Electronics Show, 0:56:29.400 --> 0:56:32.480 now known just as c e S, had become more popular. 0:56:32.600 --> 0:56:34.799 Some of the big names that had been regulars at 0:56:34.840 --> 0:56:39.520 comdex had withdrawn, and now we're attending c e S instead. 0:56:41.080 --> 0:56:44.719 Comdex would see a bit of a revival, a strange 0:56:45.040 --> 0:56:49.359 revival in two thousand ten. So it had gone dead 0:56:49.440 --> 0:56:51.560 between two thousand four and two thousand and ten. But 0:56:51.600 --> 0:56:56.640 in two thousand and ten we saw Condex Virtual. So 0:56:56.680 --> 0:56:58.960 instead of a physical trade show that you would go 0:56:59.000 --> 0:57:01.799 and attend for drink, thousands of people walking around the 0:57:01.840 --> 0:57:05.480 convention center, Condex Virtual was a website you would go 0:57:05.560 --> 0:57:07.799 to and it's simulated a trade show. You could watch 0:57:07.840 --> 0:57:12.319 keynote speeches, and you could virtually visit vendor booths. And 0:57:12.440 --> 0:57:14.919 it showed up again in two thousand eleven and one 0:57:14.920 --> 0:57:18.440 more time in two thousand twelve, and then it faded away. 0:57:18.800 --> 0:57:22.000 If you were to go to the Condex Virtual website today, 0:57:22.080 --> 0:57:25.520 you would get an under construction page, which seems charmingly 0:57:25.600 --> 0:57:29.640 out of date if you ask me. And that's the 0:57:29.840 --> 0:57:33.960 story of Condex from its birth to its death. Trade 0:57:34.000 --> 0:57:36.760 shows still exist. Some of them are as large or 0:57:36.840 --> 0:57:39.960 larger than Condex was at its height. Others are a 0:57:39.960 --> 0:57:42.960 bit more modest, and we're seeing some companies like Apple 0:57:43.000 --> 0:57:46.640 and Google concentrate on holding their own events rather than 0:57:46.840 --> 0:57:50.000 abiding by an annual trade show schedule. So instead of 0:57:50.000 --> 0:57:54.280 saying we're gonna hold off on announcing something until someone 0:57:54.280 --> 0:57:58.240 else's schedule lines up, they say, no, we'll hold our 0:57:58.280 --> 0:58:01.040 own events and we don't. That way, we don't get 0:58:01.040 --> 0:58:05.040 lost in the shuffle. I hope you enjoyed this episode, 0:58:05.040 --> 0:58:07.640 Thanks again to Alex for suggesting it. If you have 0:58:07.800 --> 0:58:10.000 a show idea you'd like me to cover, please let 0:58:10.040 --> 0:58:12.640 me know. You can send me an email at tech 0:58:12.720 --> 0:58:16.160 stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me 0:58:16.200 --> 0:58:19.280 a line on Twitter or Facebook. The show's handle is 0:58:19.360 --> 0:58:22.640 tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you 0:58:22.720 --> 0:58:31.520 again really soon. For more on this and thousands of 0:58:31.560 --> 0:58:43.560 other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.