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Preparing for the world's biggest tech show (photos)

A successful CES requires days of on-site preparation and laborious booth installation by all the exhibitors. These photos from the Las Vegas Convention Center will give you a sense of the enormous teamwork and planning involved in staging one of the biggest trade shows around.

CNET Reviews staff
01_BehindTheScenesCES2012_Preparation.jpg
1 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
A successful CES requires days of on-site preparation and laborious booth installation by all the exhibitors. Take a look at this slideshow of images from the South and Central Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center to get a sense of the enormous teamwork and planning involved in staging one of the biggest trade shows around.

Ladders abound in the South Hall as crews construct elaborate structures and precisely aim lights.
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2 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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3 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Screens are being mounted and tested for many of the complex displays.
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4 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Apparently this is how stairs get carpeting... you learn something new every day!
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5 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
If I had a nickel for every square foot of carpet that gets laid down at CES I could probably buy a pretty fancy new flatscreen TV.
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6 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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7 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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8 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Very tall cherry-pickers are needed to get the workers up high enough to do their work safely.
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9 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Companies custom-design their booths just for CES, which means hiring assemblers to carefully putting together details like this signage.
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10 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
If you think figuring out multiple remote controls in your home theatre is annoying try hooking up one of these booth displays.
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11 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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12 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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13 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Las Vegas, like much of the country, has fallen on hard times in the past few years... walking around the floor seeing everybody focused on their tasks is great-- you can really sense the pride folks take in their work and most people had a happy smile for my camera.
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14 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Tools of the trade...
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15 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
This must be a heavy plant...
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16 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Key rule of marketing: make sure they see your logo. Again. And again. And again.
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17 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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18 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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19 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
The big booths are a bit stricter about letting people photograph before the show starts, so this is all I got before I was asked to move along. As always it'll be a big blue-lit masterpiece of a booth.
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20 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Dirty glasses?
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21 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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22 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
I've never seen so many small motorized carts in my life.
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23 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Forklifts too... soooo many forklifts.
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24 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
There's a lot of mess that gets made when opening up all these shipping containers full of display-stuff.
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25 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Many pieces like this platform have to be put together by a crew on site, they're too big to ship pre-fabricated.
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26 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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27 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Time to focus the team.
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28 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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29 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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30 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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31 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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32 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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33 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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34 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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35 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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36 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Each letter gets it's own lights installed and then the plexiglass goes on over it.
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37 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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38 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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39 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Someone's injecting a hint of the organic vibe into this vast sea of technology.
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40 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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41 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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42 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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43 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
This is some kind of actual saw.
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44 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Once the booths are assembled and the area is cleaned of shipping debris the exhibitors will unpack and set up their products for display.
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45 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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46 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
I saw a number of these bikes around both indoors and out. The spaces of the Las Vegas Convention Center are so huge that riding a bike between your booth and the parking lot would save a good amount of time.
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47 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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48 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
There are huge loading areas along the sides of these halls where the forklifts can carry pallets in and out.
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49 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Outside in the vast open area between the South and Central Halls, each exhibitor has a parking spot of sorts for all their shipping containers to be stored during the week.
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50 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
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51 of 51 Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive
Items are shipped to CES from all over the world for display-- their containers are stored out back during the week and then this whole process will happen in reverse when CES exhibitors dismantle their booths and leave Las Vegas.

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