A Great CES, Is A Prepared CES
CES 2024, the most powerful tech event in the world, is scheduled to take place from January 9-12 in Las Vegas. This event is a proving ground for breakthrough technologies and global innovators, where brands get business.
The event is expected to surpass the CES 2023 footprint and number of attendees, exhibitors, and global media. The anticipated numbers for CES 2024 include over 130,000 attendees, more than 1,000 startups within Eureka Park, and over 3,500 exhibitors. This article aims to help you prepare.
The 2024 Consumer Electronics Show arrives on the cusp of a monumental shift - the emergence of “Web3” and its sweeping decentralization of data, platforms, and entire economies.
Web3 aims to transfer power from big corporations back into the hands of everyday users. It utilizes advances like encrypted digital ledgers, virtual assets with proof of ownership, and new community-run organizational structures to challenge today’s tech paradigm led by centralized gatekeepers.
Many compare Web3’s rise with the early internet’s own trajectory. CES 2024 lands at the perfect moment to demonstrate bleeding edge innovations on the path from abstract theory toward mainstream reality across devices, services, and every business category imaginable.
The Metaverse Materializes
Fictional visions of interconnected virtual worlds from Ready Player One to The Matrix may soon look mundane compared to expansive “metaverse” environments built decentralizing principles of Web3.
Tech and gaming giants are funneling over $120 billion collectively to construct open, unified 3D layers for socializing, creating, working, and playing. These function as persistent parallel dimensions that anyone can help shape or explore via custom avatars.
Early metaverse platforms like The Sandbox and Cryptovoxels allow people to purchase virtual land uniquely mapped to them via blockchain, then build anything imaginable – from virtual stores and art galleries to theme parks visitors around the globe can explore. Brands like Adidas and Atari already operate branded zones in these worlds while individual designers sell digital fashion items and NFT artwork.
Expect CES 2024 to demonstrate the latest interoperable worlds, avatar editing tools, secure identity protocols, cryptocurrency integrations, and VR/AR headsets converging to construct this immersive evolution of today’s internet and apps. The metaverse allows unlimited imagination to transform digital environments that increasingly merge with physical reality too.
NFT Experiments to Watch
You’ve likely noticed “NFTs” entered headlines across sectors over the past year, selling for millions or dismissed as superficial fads by skeptics. But don’t let the hype around profile pictures obscure the immense practical potential of this technology.
NFTs utilize encryption and networked ledgers to irrefutably verify ownership and authenticity of 100% unique virtual items - assets like images, music, videos, or interactive experiences permanently linked to their creator. Smart contracts automatically pay scheduled royalties to artists for any secondary sales at any price on integrated marketplaces. No more centralized platforms controlling identity data or compensation.
Now envision NFTs as programmable keys unlocking membership benefits, community governance votes tallying proven contributions, redeemable rewards badges, metaverse land access, or lottery contestant status. Musicians issue limited edition interactive album art to superfans. Sports teams turn ticketholders into stakeholders guiding decisions. Automakers might integrate vehicle data logs with secure decentralized identity records allowing drivers to collect fractional token rewards redeemable for upgrades or maintenance through authorized partners.
The breadth of access, incentives, authentication, and automation NFTs introduce across digital and physical applications today only hints at their trillion-dollar potential as Web3 proliferates.
Community-First Platform Alternatives Emerge
Since the mid 2000’s, a handful of Big Tech corporations centralized much of the internet’s economic value while profiting enormously from user data. But Web3 solutions increasingly decentralize power using open blockchain protocols, encryption security, crowdsourced bargaining leverage, and community governance.
Creators can tap into decentralized funding pools from fans rather than surrendering ownership upfront for studio checks. Platform contributors manage policies and disputes transparently according to merit and objective metrics logged on blockchain instead of executives’ interests. Musicians, writers, coders build atop a shared creative common stack they co-own instead of walled gardens extracting value. Fans collectively fund passion projects directly for upside shared long-term compared to short-term shareholder profits.
CES 2024 promises glimpses of community-first social networks, creation hubs, information markets, and gaming environments guided “by the people, for the people” according to rules shaped bottom-up through collaboration and consensus rather than imposed top-down by distant authorities. Welcome to Web3.
User Experiences Drive Mainstream Adoption
For decentralized models to prevail rather than exist just for crypto insiders, Web3 solutions require far easier onboarding and mainstream appeal. Expect CES innovators to simplify convoluted adoption barriers like managing encryption keys or blockchain data behind beautifully intuitive interfaces usable by anyone.
Picture platforms, apps, sites, or devices with all Web3’s advantages in security, transparency, portability, and privacy while circumventing its innate complexity completely. Users enjoy experiences personalized for their interests rather than confronting arcane technical hurdles upfront – much like early websites abstracted away network infrastructure to unlock connectivity for mass audiences. Exhibits showcasing use cases like insurance claim processing with encrypted data inputs or gaming worlds where virtual assets retain real-world value should resonate widely.
Transforming Entertainment and Music
Industries like media and music are poised for revival thanks to Web3 models rewriting business approaches that shortchanged creators for decades. Expect CES demonstrations of blockchain-fueled entertainment innovation including platforms for artists to offer exclusive limited content directly to engaged fans in formats like serialized interactive stories, AR scavenger hunts in real-world venues, and dynamic NFT art galleries awarding generous royalties for secondary sales.
Independent artists access global niche audiences and fractional patronage unavailable through legacy studios while retaining full copyrights and realizing significantly higher revenue. Fans enjoy transparency around how funds get managed – even participating in collective project planning votes according to preset rules or incentives.
By eliminating unnecessary middlemen, Web3 paves the way for entertainment industry value chains easing friction through programmatic contracts designed to benefit audiences and talent most.
Revolutionizing Digital Healthcare
Web3 data security principles can likewise transform medical treatment with patient health records secured via blockchain yet accessible only through sophisticated encryption keys or multi-signature approvals. Exhibits at CES 2024 could demonstrate decentralized health apps allowing people to selectively share sensitive ultrasound scans, bloodwork results or genomic screening reports with chosen specialists for reliable second opinions.
Physicians gain access to more comprehensive patient history across care facilities without combing through reams of faxed paper records thanks to data integrity checks standard in blockchain networks. Distributed consensus mechanisms enhance reliability of critical device warnings for pacemakers or insulin pumps. And securely tokenized incentives redeemable for insurance discounts finally drive positive behavior changes like medication adherence or smoking cessation at scale.
By putting patients at the center of data control yet easing secure sharing across medical ecosystem partners only when appropriate, Web3 paves the way for preventative and personalized medicine while checking runaway system expense growth.
Transforming Automotive Ownership Models
Connectivity and autonomy may dominate futurist visions for vehicle transportation, but Web3 integrations promise equally profound impacts on ownership itself. Patents suggest automakers are considering tracking digital twins of purchased vehicles on blockchain ledgers with embedded telemetry delegation options. Drivers who share ride data with city planners might collect tokenized micropayment rewards redeemable for priority service, upgraded rentals or fractional ownership stakes in next-generation autonomous taxi fleets.
In licensed autonomy scenarios, distributed sensor networks logged immutably on blockchain ledgers trace responsibility across human drivers, remote operators, hardware vendors and municipal infrastructure owners according to usage and conditions precedent codified transparently in programmatic contracts triggered by IoT data flows. Expect driving experiences transformed by cryptographic assurance for accountability, earn-as-you-go perpetual lease upgrades by design, and community-governed next-generation mobility networks guided by driver needs rather than corporate profits or state bureaucracy.
Parking permits, toll transponders, recharging and customization profiles similarly sync and pay out automated incentives according to preset preferences thanks to interoperable Web3 vehicle wallet protocols on display at CES 2024.
Empowering Consumer Perspectives
But descriptions of Web3’s technological potential distract from its most profound impact: shifting power, trust and accountability in human relationships mediated by technology back towards ordinary people rather than distant authorities ruling by fiat.
Today’s walled garden business models coerce maximum consumer data extraction in exchange for accessing apps and services while denying accountability for the impacts enabled. Web3 solutions offer choice - allowing people to own, control access to, and get compensated for data they choose to provide selectively. Participation rests on authentic consent rather than coercion or deception.
By attending CES 2024, leaders across industries will witness living proof that decentralized technological transformation enabled by mathematical rules and shared facts presents a peaceful path to redistribute influence, creativity, accountability, and prosperity from concentrations of privileged insiders towards diverse participants connected peer-to-peer across geographic and social boundaries.
When designed thoughtfully with ethical principles and incentives aligned, emerging internet paradigms promise to secure human rights, enhance understanding across groups, and allow anyone to contribute ingenuity at scale like never before possible. The task for business now rests in stewarding that promise responsibly towards empowering more people with ownership, control, privacy and agency over technology built for their benefit rather than merely to extract their attention and data for unseen hands’ gain.
Welcome to the dawning era of people-powered technology. The decentralizing future glimpsed at CES 2024 won’t simply reshape products and services, but gradually transforms assumptions, social contracts, and entire civilizations thanks to paradigm-shifting scientific breakthroughs methodically built one block at a time.
In Closing…. Next Steps
This article has hopefully provided a useful highlight overview of the tech trends to watch in WEB 3 heading into CES 2024. To dive deeper into these innovations and develop strategies to leverage them, and to tailor your CES presence, book a FREE consultation with our CES specialist, Jan-Luc Blakborn (who will attend for the 26th time!)
BOOK HERE: https://calendly.com/jlb-mtg/ces-2024-prep
If expanding your business operations into the US market is one of your goals, our broader team’s expertise can be of assistance. Do not hesitate to schedule a free call to discuss your USA expansion plans and how best to develop an effective market entry strategy, tailored to your business, following a successful CES.
BOOK HERE: https://calendly.com/jlb-mtg/30min-usa-entry
Don’t forget! THE BEST CES IS A PREPARED CES!
See you at CES 2024 in Las Vegas!
(CES Prep) Maximum Ventures: https://www.maximumventures.net
(USA Entry) Van Holland Group: https://www.vanhollandgroup.com