They call it the Hong Kong Global Sources Mobile Electronics Exhibition, but I call it
Dongle Nirvana. Dong-vana, perhaps?
I had been warned that three days might not be long enough to see the manufacturers’ booths that I 
needed to visit, but when I entered the first of the three massive exhibition rooms filled with my heart’s most fond desires, I realized that I had seen just a glimpse of what heaven must be like.
Dante’s Celestial Rose, the Vision of the Redemption of the Dead, Muhammed’s 72 virgins.
Faster than I could say ‘Om’, I was teleported into three days of delightful, exhausting, frustrating, stimulating, and amazing feeding at the trough of dongle-mania that I have ever experienced.
You should think of the Global Sources show as the sine qua non of geekdom, nerdness non-pareille, the apotheosis of tech gadgetry.
It was cool.
And I’ll be back next year.
So here are my top five big-picture takeaways from my three days at the Hong Kong show:
- Asia–Shenzhen, China, specifically–is the center of the dongle universe.
- Innovation is alive and well in mobile computing.
- The market for technology that organizes and simplifies our lives is untapped.
- Anyone who thinks that creativity is the United States’ competitive competitive advantage needs to think again and come to this show–there was plenty of creativity on display here.
- I’ll be baaaccckk.
In my next column I’ll talk about the top ten gizmos I saw in Hong Kong.
Scott
