The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gary Shapiro, President/CEO of Consumer Technology Association on CES Show 2023

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

Gary Shapiro, President/CEO of Consumer Technology Association on CES Show 2023 CES.tech Gary Shapiro is an acclaimed author, lobbyist, and president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® which represents over 1,500 consumer technology companies and owns and produces the Consumer Electronics Show (CES)® — The Global Stage for Innovation. He has authored more than 800 opinion pieces highlighting the importance of innovation in the U.S. economy.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from the chrisvossshow.com, the chrisvossshow.com. Wow, I missed the ending on there. Wow, that's a rare one. Hey, folks, in a world gone mad,

in a world gone mad, one man can save humanity. And it's not me. I'm just your host, Chris Boss. But thanks for having me on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Guys, go to goodreads.com, fortune.chrisboss,

youtube.com, fortune.chrisboss, all our big LinkedIn groups and all the stuff we do on LinkedIn, the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 group. Make sure you get involved in all that crazy stuff. And we're going to be at this interesting thing they do every year in Vegas

called CES Show, the Consumer Electronics Show, and 2023. And, you know, weirdly, this guy showed up on our show today. His name is Gary Shapiro, and he's going to be talking to us about CES. But let me tell you a little bit more about him. Gary Shapiro is an acclaimed author, lobbyist, and president and CEO of the CTA, or what is otherwise known as the Consumer Technology Association. It represents over 1,500 here on the wiki page. There might be more.

Consumer Technology Companies and produces the consumer electronic show ces as it's known in las vegas and will be coming up in january of this year our next year actually you know we did they did this year but yeah we'll move on shapir is the author of the best-selling books ninja future secret success in the new world of innovation ninja innovation the 10 killer strategies in the world's most successful businesses, and the comeback, how innovation will restore America's, will restore, excuse me, the American dream. And he's been seen all over the world, and he's known as an influencer on LinkedIn, according

to his wiki page. Welcome to the show, Gary. How are you? Terrific, Chris. Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming. I should add, it's a pleasure to be your friend as well, my friend. You've been a terrific voice of support, advice, enthusiasm, and collegiality, and I love what you do. There you go. We love what you do too. If it wasn't for you, I don't know,

we wouldn't have anything to do in January. We'd just sit around and go, hey, whatever. So give us your plugs, wherever your dot, whatever you want people to go check out what you guys are doing there. Well, CES is the world's largest innovation event. We're expecting about our goal is 100,000 people. We have 2,500 exhibitors. The footprint is 50% larger than 2022. And it's showing next generation innovation that will solve some of the global challenges in the world. And it's the coolest, funnest, most exciting event. I'm in this job because I love it so much. Because CES to me is

like, it goes back thousands of years to the marketplaces of yore, where you go to the village and see the vendors having their competing fruits and vegetables and wares this is about technology and it's a global event you know one out of three of our people are from outside the united states that come so it's it's truly global companies approach it that way it's multicultural in many different ways by every definition and it allows different industries to get together in one venue and have the synergies and serendipity necessary to move our world forward. There you go. 2,400-plus exhibitors, 166 countries, territories, or regions represented,

188 top-tier media registered. Chris Foster, hopefully, is in that number. This is going to be exciting. And you guys are coming back from kind of a couple down years because of that COVID thing that was annoying everyone, I hear. Well, 2020 was a great event. 2021, we were pure digital. We were out of Redmond, Washington, Microsoft's headquarters. 2022, last January, we were in Las Vegas at CES.

But that was the Omicron spiking a million cases a day and it certainly uh had an impact but those that did show up were really really happy they did especially from around the world because they you know a lot of companies especially smaller companies rely upon this one event to make their year or make or break their year and they they count on meeting people, getting partners, customers, investors, media, big companies investing. And that's what the show is. It's getting people together to move forward. Now, this year, we're actually doing something different. You know, often reporters ask me, what's the theme of the show? And other than innovation, I never had a good answer. Now, it's not only innovation. It's about sustainability, but it's also about we have aligned ourselves with the United Nations.

They have a focus with another group, the World Academy of Science and Technology, focused on these rights or securities that every human should have. The right to healthcare, the right to clean air and clean water, the right to food and not be hungry, the right to personal security, the right to political and community involvement. These are rights that correspond with technologies that are at CES. And that's made all the difference. And you'll hear a lot of our speakers talking about them. A lot of exhibitors will be showing what they're doing. We've had innovations programs. We have workshops. And the point here is that in a time

of uncertainty for the world, we should know what direction we're going in. And although maybe not every country will agree, I think most people would agree they'd like to see these fundamental human rights for everybody. Definitely. I mean, and technology is the leader in everything nowadays. So, you know, and technically technology is supposed to make our lives better and make our things better. So having a purpose of, you know, making the world a better place

on top of the technology that brings us a good way, you know, unless I'm hitting someone over the head with my iPhone, then that's technology not used in a bad way. Judge says I can't do that anymore.

But I'll get the ankle bracelet off next week. But I'll come to you soon. You know, you make an excellent point. You may not realize you just made an excellent point. Having read something this weekend by an Axios columnist, this is maybe, you know, for a lot of new technology like cyber money and cyber currency

or TikTok or some of the things that Elon Musk is doing, maybe we should just ban them. And I'm like, no, you don't ban stuff. That's not what we do in this country. We almost never ban anything that's not defense related. It's serious national security issues.

What we do ban is very few products. And I can only come up with a few. One is products that turn your red light green. That's reserved for police and ambulances. Products that allow you to steal from your cable company, black boxes. Phone scanners so you listen to private conversations. And other than that, we might have some guidelines or rules or things like that, but we manage to say, hey, this is an area of innovation.

You don't go to government and ask for permission. You do stuff. But all the laws that apply to everything else apply to what you do. It's the behavior that should be illegal. You're hurting people. You know, from the advent of fire to the hammer to the ax to the printing press to the car and the airplane and even things like anesthesia or other things like the VCR or HDTV or anything. It's the behavior.

The Internet is another great example. Don't make the Internet illegal as some people try to do. You make the behavior illegal. You know, child porn is child porn and should be illegal no matter how you do it, that kind of thing, and that's the guideline that we'd like to see. Definitely, definitely. I mean, it seems like these humans, there are some humans that are up to some bad stuff

every now and then. They should just be taken care of, which usually we have laws for that. So let me ask you this. What's most exciting for you? What are you looking forward to the most? I mean, tell us. Don't worry about breaking anybody's feelings

if there's something. No, you know, we have a lot of cool new things at this CEF 2023. We have a whole focus on some unexpected technology which may be game changing um we have a whole area on marine technology showing some cool things in the in this since the electric boats using hydrofoil technology things like that which is really cool we have an open keynote from john agriculture. That ties into the food for everybody theme. They have tractors they're building.

They use the internet and artificial intelligence and cool algorithms, and they can go 24 hours a day and make sure the world is fed. We have a whole area called C-Space, which is focused on marketing and technology, new platforms and chief marketing officers from all sorts of companies around the world go. And obviously, smart home is still huge and big AR VR. We have a whole thing on Web 3.0, including the metaverse. We have some really, really cool areas of the show, which are just

really important. And of course, there's my favorite, which gives me just a great feeling is our startup area where we'll have some 1000 different startups from around the world, each, you know, giving their four days of opportunity to meet the partners, investors, retailers, suppliers, manufacturers, important media like you, who just, you know, notice them, give them some input, some publicity, some advice, that first investment, that first customer that makes all the difference. And that's just like why we exist in a sense. Innovation could come from anywhere in the world. It can come from a big company or a small company.

We're an American trade association, but we produce a global event. Our members are American, but we recognize that this is a global thing to move us forward in so many different ways. There you go. What's the basement called again where all the startups are at? My brain's going. It's in the Venetian at the bottom. Yeah. And you go into the Venetian, which used to be called the Sands.

Now it's all called the Venetian. And you go in there and you go to the left of that really big entrance and you just hang out at Eureka Park. Eureka Park. That's what I was trying to remember. Eureka. That was amazing. Eureka.

Let's put all the small startups together, and it'll be something. And what we see there is we see all these different countries, France, Netherlands, Israel, Italy, a new one from our first Africa one, the Congo. Oh, wow. We even have a Ukrainian delegation of startup exhibitors there. You know, we hope everyone will support them because they need our support. And give them a look over. So we have a ton of different ones that I haven't mentioned, even half of them. But there's many different country pavilions there as well.

There you go. Yeah, Rika Park. I don't know why I couldn't remember that. I know that by heart. And some of the best, coolest, innovative stuff is down there. And it's such a great place because a lot of small startups can't afford to do the big show, be on the main platforms. They can't afford the million-dollar big things like Samsung dogs or whatever.

And so it's a great place for them. Congratulations a year ago, you won the French Legion Honor Award. And I remember seeing you post about it. And then you were recently at the White House talking with, I think it was Macron when he visited the White House. Yeah. President Macron, when he was a minister, we got to know him in Paris, actually. And he asked about how French could become more entrepreneurial and innovative. And we have an event in Paris every year. And we gave him some good input and invited him to see us in Las Vegas. And he came as a minister and he thought it was the best thing in the world.

And he came back the next year with several hundred French exhibitors, most of them in Eureka Park. And France has continued that tradition. Meanwhile, he ran for president and created a new party and won. And last week, Thursday, when he was in the United States in Washington, D.C., for a visit, my wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to spend a little time with him for lunch and meet his wife and talk to him. And Vice President Calum Harris was there, as well as the Secretary of State, Anthony

Blinken. But some other really cool people like Henry Kissinger, who we spent some time with. Oh, Henry was there. 99 years old and sharp as a whip still and mobile, as well as everyone from the top person in NATO, the Supreme Commandant of the NATO forces to

famous senators and congressmen and head of airlines and FedEx. It was just an amazing collection of people. Even Spike Lee, who I had the good fortune to introduce to the head of NATO. So they were talking together as well as just introducing Henry Kissinger to some people and introducing the head of NASA was there. And I enjoyed introducing him to the head of United Airlines as well as the head of

FedEx so it was it was a fun group to be around and I felt like I was cool for the first time in my life oh come on you've been in a lot of great rooms and that'd be cool but no that's fun yeah it was fun we we tried to get Henry Kissinger on for his latest book and he's got a million books he had one I think last year the year before We tried desperately to get him on. They're like, dude, he's Henry Kissinger. He doesn't need you. So we're like, okay. So we got some love from Spain. Looks like live here. Maria, thanks. Good night. It was very interesting to hear your speech on the topic. Thanks for such a useful info from Spain. So there we go. We got some Spain in there. So companies that want to maybe work with CTA, how can they sign up or how can they get to know you better? What standards do they need to meet?

Was Maria talking about your speech or my speech? She might have been talking. She didn't really specify. She said, good night. I was very interested to hear your speech on the topic. Okay. Did you do a speech or did I do a speech? We had a global press event last week where we had several hundred press,

and we talked about some of the things going on at CES. Because there's a lot going on there, you know, and it's an opportunity to reach. We have several thousand press coming to the event that are signed up, and that's an important part of what we do is is the press is our megaphone to the world for all these companies you mentioned eureka park i do want to say that it we're dedicated to the small companies so what we do is we subsidize the participation of these true startups you know they do have to graduate after a couple years um but we we basically uh for a very small fee, they get, you know,

complete setup. They just have to bring themselves and their product and, you know, say something, saying what they're doing. And then they get that exposure to literally thousands of show attendees, which is so important on the start because, you know, we're a culture and a country that encourages innovation, that encourages people with good ideas to pursue them. And it's, it's, then we're also dedicated to the free market, which makes such a difference.

And what's more free market than a trade show. There you go. The best thing about a free market is that it inspires the human spirit and the human drive. I believe that's what, to me, that's the Genesis of real creativity and genius and making the world. Of course,

what CS is honoring this year, a better place, you know, and more human rights and humanity on that good stuff. That's what technology is. When I read Beacons of Leadership, your book, I was so struck by your varied experience as an entrepreneur doing different things, starting different businesses, going out and living the American dream in a way where now you have this megaphone to the world through the show and through your writings. And I follow you on Facebook and appreciate just the raw honesty you give. You're willing to expose yourself, your fears, your concerns, even your weight, and talk about real life issues that a lot of people have. They're just not capable of talking about. But to see someone who's doing it real i really appreciate it thanks man and i really appreciate you reading

the book uh you're the only one so there you go i've given it to all number of people thank you man i certainly appreciate it you know uh it's all about making a difference in this world and you know we're only here for a short period of time and the more we can make a difference. You've been doing this for so many years. Uh, how many years you've been with CTA now? It's a long,

I was a student in Washington, DC working for a firm. There was a consultant to the association in 1978. And, and I started working, they were a client. And then I was hired full time when when i graduated from the the firm and and got uh it worked there and it was almost full-time as an outside consultant so they

my predecessor jack wayman who started ces in 1967 realized he could send it save a ton of money by paying me directly rather than through the consulting company and and uh I was hired full-time in 1981. In 1991, I was put in charge. So it's been nine and 22, 31 years in charge of the whole thing, which is kind of nice. That is awesome. Well, I'm excited for this year because, you know, 2020 was an awesome year. And, like, within two months after that, COVID's like, here we are.

And then, you know, we had the virtual 21 21 and then 22 was kind of a halfsies. And so this year I feel like we're finally returning to normal. It's the big power back. Right. Yeah. I, you know, I hope so. I'm knocking wood here because you know, one thing COVID has taught us a lot. One is, you know, nothing is really certain. You got to appreciate what you have. And second is, you know, once in a thousand year, a hundred year things actually do happen and human resiliency is important. It's not, um, resiliency has become my favorite word even before COVID. I actually had wrote about it in my last book, I had a chapter on it, but resiliency is about adaptation quickly. You know, it's, it goes to what the famous geneticist said,

it's not the strongest, it's not the fastest, it's those who adopt the quickest. And so we've tried to adapt in many different ways quickly. You know, we called off the physical version of our first show seven months before the show, and my colleagues thought we were crazy because, oh, there could be a cure before then. We kind of knew there wouldn't be, and we wanted to give our customers an opportunity not to commit huge amounts of money to hotel rooms and exhibits and building exhibits. And also we adapted in what we've done. We went purely digital.

We went hybrid. Now we're still kind of hybrid. But we always have to make ourselves better and not take them for granted. And the other thing I think COVID has taught us is that we need each other as humans. Although I'm the paid cheerleader for the technology industry in the United States, I believe in human interaction. The five-fifths experience you get at a trade show, the joy of serendipity and discovery of things you didn't even know you didn't know,

or products or technologies or opportunities. You know, if anything has changed in the last five or 10 years, it's been the fact that different industries have to cooperate to produce things that make a difference in people's lives. And that's what's going on. A lot of what happens at CES are executives and top companies and small companies just trying to discover, meet each other, form relationships. In those relationships, it can happen over the Internet. But frankly, there's nothing like sharing a cup of coffee or a drink or a meal. We're talking to just somebody and discovering about who they are as people and figuring out whether you can trust them, whether or not you want to do business with them. Those are things that the computers haven't yet really figured out.

And that's why getting together in one space, it's also very green and very efficient. The average person at CES has 29 meetings. Wow. It would take three months of traveling around the world to have those meetings. So you get together everyone in one place at one time. And I don't care whether it's a big business event or a small one, we need those. One of the discussions I had with my friend in the airline industry was, you know, what's going on? And what's going on is that people want to travel.

They want to see each other. They want to form relationships. They want to do business. And that's what we're seeing come back as people are, I wouldn't say it's a post-COVID world, but we're learning how to live with COVID. Am I going to be able to shake hands with anybody this year? That's up to you. If I were the god of control, I would ban handshaking personally. Yeah, I saw that post. It's a transmission mechanism. There is a lot of it, even I noticed this in Washington,

fist bumping and elbows. But if someone wants, I can't even stop myself from shaking hands. I think it's better if you really like somebody to give them a hug personally, but maybe not everyone. What about making out? Can I make out with anybody at CU? That's a whole other subject, Chris. I'm not going to touch. What I will say we're doing is, in addition to some of the widening aisles, we're really focusing on ventilation and touch. And, you know, the ventilation has really improved remarkably in all the Las Vegas facilities. And we're opening

doors as much as we can. But we're also trying to go to a more touchless environment so people don't have to touch door handles and spread disease, because we know that's one of the ways it happens, whether it's in conference rooms or in opening convention center doors. I think we've probably taken the most ambitious step that any trade show has ever taken to go to that direct approach. You know, my wife is a doctor and certainly has been helping guide our COVID policies on this from the beginning. But we also have three doctors on our board as well as outside medical experts we use and i think there's a strong consensus emerging in the medical community that we could spend a little more time on hygiene and you know it's it's it's it's about some good practices whether it's hand sanitation which of course

we'll have around the show but also about ventilation things like that that we just keep learning about and five ten twenty years now we're to be a lot better and figure these things out. I mean, one of my petty annoyances is in the US, we've stopped building buildings that you can open windows for. And that's not helpful, honestly, especially in this COVID area.

My wife's parents were doctors in Poland and they have a very low infection rate there in surgery because they always keep their windows open. United States, not so. So I'm big on ventilation. Open air is good. Open air is good.

You know, the problem is those employees escape. You can't be having that now. But, again, so, hey, do you have to have a – you know how last year you had to have your card, your inoculation card for COVID? Do you have to have that this year, or is that out? That's a great question. No, you do not. We are recommending strongly that people be vaccinated. But at this point in medical history and time, the number of different type of vaccines globally, the ability of when you get it matters. If you got a vaccine two years ago,

maybe it's not the same power as one that was like three months ago. And the ability to keep track of that doesn't make sense. I think the trend is that people are making their own decisions on vaccines, nor are we requiring masking. We're suggesting that you respect people's masking decisions. If you want to wear a mask, you're more than welcome to. terms of testing we'll have tests available for covid um that's something that that you know people can or cannot do depending on how they're feeling we'll have different health protocols that are there but i think we've reached the stage us and just about every other event now where uh you know people are making their own decisions and it's about first of all whether they go to las vegas in the first place and get on an airplane

which is by the way airplanes have like hyper safe environments in terms of their ventilation. It's hospital quality. That's just a fact. And whether or not you go out to a bar or a casino or a restaurant, what you do and how you do it, those are decisions that each employer and individual will have to make on their own. And we recognize and want to respect the fact that for some people, they're just not ready and may never be ready for travel again. And that's why we have a digital edition of our show, which will be sent out to those that sign up. I think mid-December we go live with that. So you could start if you want to be digital only. But really, the point of the digital platform in part is for people to go to the show itself.

And that way they could experience the show, stay in touch with exhibitors, see a lot of the conferences after the show. That's one of the things we learned the last two years is that the digital platform is the greatest benefit to those journalists and others who want to track down somebody or a conference session that they missed. And not every conference session, since we have some of them, will be on that platform. Not every exhibitor chooses to be on the digital platform, but we expected a lot of both. And this is something which is going to evolve over time, not only for our event. I talked to my colleagues at other events, and everyone has different experiences. I mean, the biggest transition we made, which was difficult, was producing a purely physical event to go to a purely digital event. You know, the skill set

for those things are like very different. But again, we adapted quickly. We were able to shift and pivot our staff and it worked. But I, to be honest with you, it was not stress free, to put it mildly. And I think a lot of every trade show organization has gone through this. I take solace with my colleagues and we compare best practices and, you know, where we think things are going. I'm just excited because it feels like getting back to normal. You know, I love how you do the thing now where you can watch the CS show parts that

you miss for weeks on end up to, what is it? Two weeks or a month? That's interesting. So we, great point. We, we, interesting. So we, great point. We experimented in 2021, and then we extended it to a month at 2022. Now we're extending it to two months to the end of February.

Wow. Yes. Yeah. Because people want to tell you, I mean, it's a long tail we discovered. Yeah. And we have the content. The content is still pretty current. A lot of what people talk about, I mean, obviously over time, some of it gets dated.

But I think that content, you know, we're going to make it searchable as possible. And, you know, we'll keep getting it better every year, maybe longer. We'll see. We're still trying to figure it out. You know what would be cool is if you could go into like a metaverse or some sort of thing where you can see the booth layouts and basically walk the floor but i love it because there's so much i miss the cs like every year i go to cs and like i'm gonna see everything and then my legs go no you're not 10 chris mosses to see everything there would be we're driving 2500 exhibitors at this point and growing every day i there's not the hours in a day to see everything maybe i should

just try and run through it all like just don't even stop just like trying to run through every booth and uh you know i guess some smart person myself could tell you how many miles that would be uh but it'd be a lot yeah there you go well jeff sparrow says uh looking forward all that human interaction at cs this year chris foss drinks and ketchup after the show. I'm not committing to that in the show, Jeff. I'm not a fool. Jeff also thinks that we should get a booth for the Chris Voss show, the CES Makeout booth hosted by Chris

Voss. I'm not sure that that's going to get approved. But that's great for the comedy bit of the show. But it'll be wonderful to see you again, see the show and be back to the YouTube. No one wants to make up with Chris Voss. It's going to be the most,

there's going to be no money in that. I could charge a dollar and people would be just like, no, hard pass. Chris, I think maybe a dunking booth. A dunking booth? Now we're talking, you know? There you go. You know, and the long tale on the videos, man, I mean, we've actually had people watch the show and say, hey, can you introduce me to the founders because we want to invest in them.

And we've hooked up investors with people that were startups. And so that's just where the real magic happens. Like you say, you just never can know where it goes. So I appreciate you spending some of your important time with us, Gary. And it was good to see you again. If we ever meet one of these days, I need to give you a big old hug, man. Absolutely. We'll do that in Vegas.

And, Chris, I hope you have a happy and healthy holiday season. And, you know, you know Las Vegas better than anyone. But for your audience that hasn't registered, you can register on ces.tech. And if you're going to Las Vegas, prepare, plan, try to stay in like one area of facility because, you know, we have the big Venetian that used to be called the Sands and we have sea space with three hotels and we have the Las Vegas Convention Center, the new building.

There's a lot. And if you plan out, use our bus system, do all these great things because remember, buildings in Las Vegas are further than they appear. And drink lots of water because you get to hydrate there. You don't realize you're in a desert until it sneaks up on you. And don't drink hard on the first night. That's the one thing people do in Vegas. 20 years I've lived there.

One thing you do is they blow it out on the first night. Don't do that. Pace yourself. You're a good man. You're a good advice. There you go. Well, Gary, thanks for being on the show night. Don't do that. Pace yourself. You're the man. You're good advice. There you go. Well, Gary, thanks for being on the show. We really appreciate it and continued success and happy holidays, my friend, to you and your family. Thanks, Chris.

And the CTA family over there. They're always so wonderful to deal with. And then hopefully we'll get you for the next book I'm working on. We're still cooking it. So there you go. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to check out CES show 2023. Hope to see you there. Let us know if you're going. Also go to goodreads.com. go. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to check out CES show 2023. Hope to see you there. Let us know if you're going. Also go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, all those places we are on the internet. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.