The Westin Grand Central is a deliberate choice of venue. Midtown Manhattan, steps from commuter rail, conference rooms arranged for efficient transit between presentations. Needham & Company has been running this event long enough to know that institutional investors do not come to New York in May for the scenery. They come to compress time—to see twelve companies in two days instead of twelve separate roadshows across three months. The 21st Annual Needham Technology, Media & Consumer Conference, running May 12–14, 2026, is an exercise in structured access.

Self-checkout was sold to the retail industry as a labor cost reduction tool and to consumers as a convenience upgrade. It has struggled to deliver either promise at scale, and the backlash — both from shoppers and from chains pulling the machines — reflects a miscalculation that was visible from the beginning. The premise required consumers to perform unpaid labor that workers previously did, while tolerating an error-prone system that flagged unexpected items in the bagging area, required attendant overrides on routine purchases, and created checkout lines that ran slower under volume than traditional lanes.