Recently back from the Consumer Electronics Show and the National Retail Federation's Big Show, I'm excited to say that retailers are optimistic, and I'm hopeful their enthusiasm presages a successful year. At the same time, if there weren't a few white knuckles at these shows, then people haven't fully come to grips with the pace of change.

The economic downturn has permanently altered the way consumers shop, with more shopping trips beginning online and at in-store kiosks, more price comparisons and more coupon searches. Coupled with the social media explosion and breakthrough interest in mobile shopping, 2011 is poised to be the year e-commerce convergence moves from the sidelines to the heart of a retailer's strategic cross channel execution.

My year starts the first week of January in Las Vegas, at the Consumer Electronics Show. CES is the tip-off for what the CE manufacturers and the industry will showcase for retailers and consumers alike.

New and exciting technology is at CES for attendees and the press to see, try, and obsess over. Tablets to rival the iPad, 3-D screens and cameras, and 4-G phones were among the hot categories displayed against a backdrop of cool weather.

It's enough to make us ask if our personal electronics are obsolete right out of the box. If they aren't, then our in-dash car systems, judging from breakthrough infotainment and in-vehicle innovations exhibited by Ford and Toyota, surely are.

CES was well attended by the elite of manufacturers, retailers and industry pundits and critics. Early estimates called for 120,000 attendees, but during the show organizers estimated attendance at closer to 150,000 excited and ready-to-buy CE users.

I traded Las Vegas and my 3-D glasses in for New York and snow goggles as I moved to the National Retail Federation's Big Show and 100th anniversary celebration. If CES is about the technology, NRF is about what retailers can accomplish with the technology across multiple channels.

NRF makes available the most current information and innovations that drive retail and tries to help attendees translate them into ideas and actions that meet customers' wants and needs. This is a show where retailers can assess whether they're out front or out-maneuvered.

In multiple educational venues we heard that the technologies (many exhibited at CES) have enabled a smarter consumer who doesn't want to be sold to but wants to be engaged on her terms. The balance does shift when the customer brings her own tools into the store. Still, there is no homogeneous consumer with her hands out, but a heterogeneous mix with different product, shopping and technology preferences.

We in the kiosk and digital-signage industries are at the nexus of retailers' changing relationships with the consumers. Our solutions make it possible to deliver on the desire for:

·Access to information
·Consistency of experience across platforms
·Social engagement
·Relevance
·Efficiency

We will become increasingly adept at tying together retailers' solutions with the devices that customers bring into the store to create the kind of customized experience that can turn mere customers into loyal customers.

I'm no futurist, so I won't try to predict alwawhat retailing will look like at NRF's next big milestone event, but the pace of change is going to keep everyone gripping their seats for the next few years. Embrace it, as the consumer is; the opportunity is at hand! At retail it will be online, kiosk, digital signage and handheld devices as the portals for communicating.