Showin' Off

It's taken a lot of hard work, but I think we have it nailed. After CES ‘98 I swore I'd NEVER do daily coverage of an audio show again. Too many late nights, too little food, and too few computers were our problem. And, at the end, a few of us were just too darn irritable.

That all changed at HI-FI '98, when we decided to take another swat at it. With multiple laptop computers and digital cameras on hand, easy access to the Internet, and a game plan from the word go, this coverage proved to be much easier—and better for everyone involved, including our readers.

But it didn't start off that way—in fact, after the first night, I thought we would be in for a repeat of Las Vegas. However, by the end of the first couple of days, we had it nailed. We figured out that parking ourselves right in the lobby was ideal. Having seen most of the show on the trade days, Doug Blackburn and I could simply edit text and pictures, and the rest of the team (Dave Duvall, Greg Weaver, John Upton, and Todd Warnke) could concentrate on running for all the details. And run they did! It worked beautifully, and we obtained coverage on almost every room that we wanted. In fact, it worked so efficiently that we even got a couple nights out on the town! Of course, we still have more coverage to come, so we're not quite done, but our writers are preparing it right now. Look for that to be online this month.

After HI-FI '98 I am convinced that the only way to cover an audio trade show is via Internet technology. Today I am not only anticipating CES '99, I am looking forward to it. In fact, we have new ideas, and we want our future show coverage to be even better than that for HI-FI '98. We're pretty sure we can create it all more easily too. Of course, we won't tell what these new ideas are in case our competition tries to duplicate them.

I believe that June was a ground-breaking time for audio and the Internet. Anyone who reads my columns knows that I whole-heartedly believe in the Internet as a superior source of information transfer, particularly compared to print. We’ve proven in the past that the Internet is at least equal to, if not a bit better than, a printed publication in many ways—and with our on-the-spot HI-FI ’98 coverage, the two don't even compare!

...Doug Schneider
das@sstage.com

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