Our team just finished a busy 4-day business trip. We attended both CES in Las Vegas and NRF's Big Show in NYC and boy, was it exhausting!

Quick summary:

• We acquired many great friends from different companies in consumer electronics and e-commerce/retail.
• Pretty much everybody whom we spoke to wanted to learn more about our 360-degree product imaging services and solutions.
• Judging by the increasing number of people attending these shows in 2010, it's clear that the economy is getting back on track.

Lessons learned:

• Our preparation for the shows was not great to say the least. WebRotate 360's brochure was done overnight, one day before leaving for Las Vegas. Luckily uprinting.com had a one-day service with an option for local pickup and guys there were pretty responsive to our needs. Next time we should plan better.
• NRF's show was a bit out of our league targeting primarily large brick and mortar businesses. Lots of POS hardware and Oracle/MS types selling their multi-tier e-commerce solutions. It was still pretty interesting to see what is going on in retail, how it's embracing the Internet, various social media aspects, authenticity, and the "green" theme. We really enjoyed the presentation by David Kepron (Retail Rescue: Seeking the Now) and were excited to see vendors like Placii (www.Placii.com) offering their immersive 3D solutions for virtual in-store experience, which at the end makes our efforts at WebRotate 360 increasingly more relevant to a larger audience.
• Two shows in 4 days across two coasts is a bit of an overkill for our small and very busy team :-)