Comdex tangles hotel phone exchanges

Wednesday, Nov. 18, 1998 | 11:28 a.m.

Thousands of Comdex attendees overloaded the phone systems of some Las Vegas hotels Tuesday when they all came up with the same idea at the same time -- check in with the office or home first thing in the morning.

The result was that people couldn't call in to affected properties. Callers got a fast busy signal, an indication an entire circuit is occupied.

Detra Page, a spokeswoman for the local phone company Sprint, said phone usage that morning was up 35 percent over an average Tuesday morning. She said the company expected in excess of 5 million calls during the Comdex convention and that it's common for usage to skyrocket during trade shows the magnitude of this event.

Among the affected hotels: the Las Vegas Hilton, the Flamingo Hilton and Harrah's.

An estimated 226,000 people were planning to attend the event, the largest trade show in North America and the biggest computer show in the world. Today figured to be another busy day for McCarran International Airport as the show reached its midpoint.

In past years, Wednesday has been a big transportation day because delegates who arrived for the beginning of the show are starting to leave and a new wave of attendees has begun arriving to be here for the duration of the event.

Trade show floors at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Sands Expo Center and the Las Vegas Hilton have been full and delegates have said the crowds have been about as heavy as they expected they would be, despite some defections by some traditionally large exhibitors.

IBM and Intel are among the companies that don't have booths on the trade show floors, but both companies are heavily represented at Comdex.

Since Apple has its own set of trade shows, it has been a non-player at Comdex for years. That has left the floor open to the PC-based systems and IBM machines traditionally show up for demonstrations for virtually every kind of software available.

Intel, the world's most successful chip maker, doesn't have a booth on the trade show floor, but its merchandising is everywhere -- especially on Tuesday, when the company's new chief executive officer, Craig Barrett, was center stage for a keynote address.

The presentation was far from a traditional keynote speech. Barrett served as a "guest" in a sendup of Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" late-night television show.

"Technically Incorrect" featured Maher in his host role with guests Barrett, Las Vegas comedian-magician Penn Jillette, television star Bill Nye, "the science guy," and futurist writer Esther Dyson.

Maher took a devil's advocate role on technological issues while Jillette, Nye, Dyson and Barrett debated whether e-commerce would supplant malls, whether e-mail brings people together through communication or separates them by isolating people with their computers and whether the Internet should be censored to keep pornography out of the hands of youths.

In the style of "Politically Incorrect," Maher and his panel were able to launch a few comedic barbs at some of the computer industry's institutions. Maher told the capacity crowd that Las Vegas really doesn't like Comdex because the techies who attend "are people who don't like girls and understand math."

He also needled delegates propensity for attending topless clubs, saying they've "discovered another use for silicon."

Barrett wondered aloud why it takes so long for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver a letter when they could convert to e-mail and make deliveries instantly. He made several pleas for government to stay out of the path of business.

While the Comdex crowd ate up the unusual keynote approach, Barrett was cringing on stage when the panel took a few potshots at Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Bill Gates and when Jillette let loose a few expletives.

Tuesday night, Comdex's biggest fund-raising event was staged at the MGM Grand Conference Center.

Attendees heard a concert by Grammy Award-winning Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers at the Micrografx Chili for Children Cook-Off, a benefit for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In addition to raising money, the event spotlights technology that improves methods to search for missing children. Last year, the cook-off event raised more than $3 million.