The Woman Behind the World's Biggest Tech Show
The largest consumer tech show in North America isn't put on by robots. We sat down with the human woman who runs the International CES to get the deets on how it all comes together.
Consumer Electronics Association SVP Karen Chupka, whom we snapped Monday, looks relaxed for a woman who just closed her association's big four-day event in Vegas. The annual international trade event draws 150,000 people from all over the world, takes up over 2 million square feet of convention center space, generates 90% of CEA's $69M annual revenue, and brings $194M worth of visitor revenue to Vegas. She's been doing it for 24 years.
Karen, a Pittsburgh native, shows us one of many floor plans from this year's show. She joined the Arlington, Va.-based association in '89 to help with event registrations, and has 45 full-time people who spend 15 months planning the annual event. This year’s show was a little different in that there wasn’t one or two big technologies that created the most buzz. The buzz was around multiple innovations: wearable technology, 3D printing, driverless cars, and the Internet of things. What technology caught Karen's eye this year? Driverless cars and the new ultraHD TVs with 8 million megapixels.
