You cannot help it. You work in, or are connected by air cargo to, the airline business.
     For many people, airlines depart from the familiar to explore places yet to be discovered.
     A new year affords a wonderful opportunity to consider why and how to spend the coming year.
     Today we are talking about industry trade shows with an interview with the U.S.-based Air Forwarders Association.
     We’ve been thinking a lot about it.
     After you run the gamut of two or three air cargo trade shows, around about May, the most oft-heard rationale for appearing at industry events is that they “are good for networking.”
     Granted, networking is important, but after a couple of times you cannot help but wonder if it’s the drinking time or if there is really anything more to say to the “usual suspects”?
     We suspected the truth could be found in a mix of both, and have embarked on checking out some new options for trade show attendance that might bring new opportunities to air cargo.
     Last week was the blockbuster Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas.
     We’ve just passed through the twinkling, always lovely, and sentimental holiday season, so having the Consumer Electronics Show in a place where the night is brighter than the day is a power surge for the senses, and quite a propos.
     The fact that so many commodities partially or entirely shipped by air cargo are in attendance makes CES an important, albeit overlooked, event for air cargo people ready to explore what could be a goldmine of future business.
     Consumer Electronics Show 2015 (CES), held January 6-9, was resplendent with high tech, air cargo-dependent consumer goods. Despite being held in the glittering fantasia of Las Vegas, Nevada, the majority of CES attendees originated from overseas, with big players Samsung, Sony, LG, and HTC leading the ranks. Air cargo should open their ears and eyes to the products promised at CES 2015—including where they will be produced and where they will be in demand—as these details directly relate to the future success of the air cargo industry.
     We recently wrote about Airbus’ 3-D printed jumbo jet, and it seems 3-D printing will be expanding beyond plastics. At CES 2015 the company Makerbot introduced new plastic filaments containing wood, metal, and stone pieces, which will herald new opportunities for makers and artists of all stripes to enlarge the world of 3-D printing. Voxel8, a new 3-D printer, takes the technology one step further by introducing the ability to print complete tech objects (as opposed to singular components that have to be pieced together). Voxel8 can essentially print the plastic body and metal circuitry of a drone, with all the wiring already printed inside.
     As I sit typing this, looking at plastic I’ve wrapped over a leaky AC unit that breathes bitterly cold air into my office, I long for Keen Home’s new smart vents, which fit over the vents in your home and “smartly” open and close to modulate the temperature in your home.
     But these are just some of the “small beans” products—niche technologies that added a little color to the event. The big dogs, the sharp-edged tech introductions that will be slicing through the tech world to serve up a brand new future, should really be on air cargo’s radar.
     Samsung held back on unveiling its Galaxy S6 phone, opting instead to reveal its SUHD television. From plastic printing to next gen TVs, 3-D knows no bounds in 2015. Not only will Samsung’s SUHD TV offer no-glasses-required 3-D, but it also boasts a 110-inch LCD screen with 8K resolution (forget 4K, which is only just now becoming affordable)—that’s about 16 million pixels, which is hard to even imagine. We can’t guarantee the whole thing won’t make you feel like you’re living in the movie Gravity, nauseous and a little punch-drunk, but hey, if Sandy Bullock can make it out alive, then maybe so can we. The problem will really lie in the availability of 8K-compatible programming. At the moment, with 4K only now becoming available and even remotely affordable, the question becomes whether 8K products will even be usable before the end of this decade. LG, Sharp, and Panasonic also introduced 8K prototypes, but only Panasonic addressed the issue of 4K programming with the introduction of a 2015 4K Blue-Ray player, which will be great if you can find a 4K Blue-Ray disc (you can’t). 4K was still a big player at CES 2015, and as it becomes more affordable, will become a tech innovation to pay special attention to as the next generation television system.
     Sony revealed its new “Walkman” portable music player, which I grew instantly excited about, thinking I could revive my dusty cassette mixtapes with a swanky new personal player system. Alas, Sony’s new Walkman is, like its Apple iPod contemporary, a digital music system—but better. The new Sony Walkman plays uncompressed, high-res audio files that supposedly surpass your average MP3 or CD. Bulkier and heavier than an iPod, the new Walkman is composed of aluminum alloy and sports a faux-leather back. But unlike the $20 Walkman I bought in 1988, the new Sony Walkman boasts a $1,200 pricetag, so unless you’re an avid audiophile, it might not be worth it.
     New smartphones from the big cell phone companies were conspicuously absent at CES 2015. While HTC introduced its Desire 826 and 320, it was companies like ASUS with its uber-affordable Zenfone 2 ($199) and Zenfone Zoom, Motorola-owner Lenovo with its A6000, and YEZZ with its Firefox OS-dependent phones that showed their wares, to name a few.
     The biggest thing to come out of CES 2015 was probably the myriad drone iterations. More than 100 different drones were present at the show, confirming that drones are one of the most rapidly growing consumer technologies of late. Drones have become so popular and ubiquitous among techies that they were even reserved a special “Unmanned Systems Marketplace” area at CES, where several companies could exhibit and fly their models undisturbed. There’s the Ghost Drone, which unlike most available drones can be operated solely via a smartphone app. Another drool-worthy device for millenials, the Nixie is a miniscule drone with flexible arms—it can be worn, bracelet style, and then thrown in the air to take selfies. There’s the FLYR1, which includes a detachable high-definition camera, can follow and pinpoint you by homing in on the pattern of your shirt, and stream what it records directly to your cellphone. And once again 3-D printing becomes a large and necessary factor, with some drones hoping to offer schematics and circuitry details to 3-D printer owners so that they can produce their own drones at home. Intel is also supplementing drone technology by offering depth-perceptive cameras that will sense obstacles and smartly configure the shortest route between points. With the FAA predicting that 7,500 drones will take to the skies by 2018, it’s high time the cargo industry looked up at their skymates. The real issue drones are facing is a very short battery life and an inability to carry more than about 55 pounds, but with technology moving at its current pace, those restrictions may be lifted by 2018.