The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is one of the largest trade shows in the world. As technology becomes a larger and larger part of people’s daily lives, a show like CES becomes more of a focus. Taking place over four days in January, from Jan. 6th through Jan. 9th, it is preceded by CES Unveiled on Jan. 4th and a day of press conferences on Jan. 5th.

The show began in 1967 in New York City but by 1997 it had found a permanent home in Las Vegas, Nevada. If Las Vegas is symbolic of everything flashy, entertaining, expensive, new and big in America, then it is the perfect place to contain the massive CES.

Every year, the International CES becomes the locus of everything new and exciting in the world of technology. Attended by almost every major technology company in the world (Apple and Google are two of the very few companies that do not attend), exhibitors from around the world, big and small, new and established, contend for the attention of the media, itself represented by over 5,000 attendees.

And contend they do. The fact that these companies are vying for the attention of the media makes it a difficult event to cover with any kind of completeness. Taking place on over 2.06 million net square feet and in multiple locations such as the Las Vegas Convention Center and World Trade Center as well as hotels such as the Sands, the Venetian, the Wynn, and more, the space to cover alone is a challenge.

Also, CES is growing. According to the Consumer Electronic Association’s CEO, Gary Shapiro, this year’s show surpassed the attendance of 2014 of about 160,000, and looks to to have reached over 170,000 attendees. Erika Blackwell, multimedia producer and anchor for YBLTV.com, attended as a member of the press and told National Monitor the fact that this year’s attendees were lining up for press conferences up to 2 hours early showed large growth from just last year. With that in mind, it is likely that the influence of technology in people’s everyday lives is directly correlative to the attendance and interest in CES.

In fact, Samsung, a company that makes products as diverse as cell phones and washing machines, estimated that by 2017, 90 percent of its products will be connected to the internet. This year the trends were easy to spot and utilized by the exhibitors to draw interest and attention. The Internet of Things, wearables, health, disruptive technology, mobile security, and 3D printing were just a few of the buzzwords floating around.

As the massive show unfolded over such a large space, with so many attendees, and over so many days, reporting on CES was certain to be an experience of highlights and memorable moments. Over the course of the 6 days from the Unveiled event until the expo’s final day of Friday, Jan. 9th, there were many products, exhibits and interactions that stood out.

Samsung’s press conference on Monday literally began with fireworks displayed majestically on their new 88-inch SUHD TV’s. Their flagship TV, with their curved screens, certainly caught the attention of the packed-to-capacity conference crowd. Samsung’s announcement of their washing machine with a built-in sink also drew many to the edge of their seats. LG made a big impact as well with products in the realm of almost every popular trend at CES. On displa were their G Flex 2 smartphone with a curved screen and self-healing body, their smart home products like a connected dishwasher, and even an LG smartwatch that reads and records heart rate.

Audi caught a lot of attention by sending a self-driving car from San Francisco to Las Vegas, marking possibly the most noticeable entrance at CES in 2015. Walking through the conference halls and trade show floors, what drew the crowds were 3D printers, the flying drones holding cameras, the huge displays of 3D and 4K TV’s, and Samsung and Oculus Rifts’ Virtual Reality displays. Ecovacs’ house and window cleaning robot models, the Deebot and Winbot respectively, were crowd-pleasers as well. The marketing team at Ecovacs did well to have the Winbot model climbing and cleaning windows at the company’s CES display.

While the huge, room-sized displays of companies like LG, Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, and Polaroid, along with the presence of the major automobile manufacturers, gathered the most attention, it was often the smaller start-ups that caught the eye. For instance, there was Lyte, an offshoot of a seven year old company called Sunny Cam Glasses, who were at CES to show off their new stylish glasses that record video and even allow easy streaming of the glasses’ recording to be shared on social media, among many other use. “They are designed to be worn for any occasion,” Lyte rep Ben Walsh told National Monitor. Lyte are already in talks with horse-racing officials to have the jockeys wear their glasses while racing and give the viewers at home the option to watch from the jockeys’ point-of-view or the standard recording.

Narrative, another young company, makes a small, stylish, and square-shaped wearable camera that focuses on photography rather than video but seems tailor-fit for popularity and success. The aforementioned Oculus Rift which is young but not small, were displaying their new virtual reality headsets that look to finally bring VR out of science fiction and into the mainstream. In fact, the company was recently given a massive boost with a $2 billion investment by Facebook.

In terms of disruptive technology, abound at CES 2015, a lot of talk was about Dish Networks’ Sling TV, a product which Dish announced at the show. Sling TV, which will very likely change the way people watch television and change the entire cable landscape, is a subscriber service that gives anyone with a broadband connection access to a lineup of channels that includes ESPN, CNN, TNT, TBS, and more. The service starts at only $20 a month and can be streamed through any number of devices such as Fire TV, Roku, Xbox One as well as other smartphones, tablets, and computers.

In the end, the description in a statement by the CEA encapsulates the show, calling it a, “mind-boggling array of networking opportunities, conference sessions, product demonstrations, headline-generating keynotes, and more.” It is almost impossible to imagine how the 2016 International CES will outdo the sensory overload and hyperbole of this year’s show, and yet as the promises of technology to make the consumers’ lives easier and safer and more entertaining continue, so will the success of the International Consumer Electronics Show.