Technical conferences change over time. Consider CES, wrapping up now in Las Vegas after generating the expected spate of headlines, mostly about wearables. (I have a Pebble so I can safely claim to be on the cutting edge, or at least the bandwagon.) For starters is the issue of the conference name. You won’t see many references to the “Consumer Electronics Show” on the official conference site this year. Consistent with tech’s global ambitions and love of acronyms, the official handle now seems to be “International CES,” though the media doesn’t seem to have caught onto this yet. More significant is how content at CES has evolved, even recently. As recently as 2011, the show reliably featured a slew of new Android phones. Now, most of the big announcements about smartphones — I think there is little argument these are still the hottest consumer devices on the planet — take place at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

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