CES Blogger: A Day in the Life

A chronicle of Tues, Jan 9 at CES:

8am: Woke up from my Bloghaus nightmare. Tired. Very. Did some work stuff.

9:20: Made it out of the hotel room, with moderate/great difficulty.

9:22: Saw the line for the monorail – not to get tickets, but to get on it. Went to find a cab, only to find another line.

10: Got in a cab. Hit traffic due to construction. Another cab driver would vent later about how the city should know better than to clog up major arteries during the busiest conference of the year.

10:25: Got to the Venetian for my briefing with MediaZone. Stopped at Bouchon bakery for a corn muffin and TKO cookie, Daniel Boulud’s gourmet version of an oreo. So good.

10:30: Told MediaZone I was here – for my 10:30 meeting. Went to their suite and met MediaZone CEO Michelle Wu, among others. Today they announced their new social TV beta site, which allows viewers to easily share, comment, and take part in community features around IPTV. Some potential – though upon getting back to my laptop, I discovered item #1 on my wish list: Firefox compatability.

11:10: Explored the Venetian conference areas, then picked up my press badge. On the way to the press room, I asked a CES staffer for directions. The middle aged woman, after showing me where to go, stopped me and told me how much I looked like her son. She had to hug me. This was the second middle aged woman who showed me some affection on this trip, following the stocky, skanky woman showing way too much skin who approached me on a cab line late last night outside the Bellagio, asking, "Where are you going, baby?" When I told her I wasn’t going anywhere she was going, she asked if I was gay. Outing me gave me the perfect out.

12:15: Took a cab to Bloghaus at the Bellagio. Bought a chocolate covered ice cream cone from Jean Phillippe Patisserie, home of the world’s largest chocolate fountain. I’d carry this around with me for hours, not eating it until around 4. GREAT chocolate. At Bloghaus, I met more luminaries, including some of the crew from Travelistic, the travel video site.  It was a relief meeting more New Yorkers. With the Bay Area crowd, everyone’s all buzzing about social media, the next greatest things online, the entrepreneurs there, the community. It was all ethereal. New Yorkers brought it down to Earth. Everyone from back East was complaining about the traffic, the crowds, the pizza – everything but the weather. An aside: the conversations I had out here, with people from all sorts of the country, covered global warming, overpopulation, the dearth of spirituality in the technology community, and just about every other depressing subject known to man. Thanks everyone for the uplifting time out here.

2:30: Lunch with Weber Shandwick’s Jay Kolbe at Olives. Double thumbs up to the kalamata olive tapenade. The meal was good too, even if the tuna carpaccio, oddly enough, was too big a portion for an appetizer. Jay, thanks for lunch, and more importantly, the conversation. It’s kind of sad, needing to go to Vegas to schedule a lunch with an old friend, but I’m so glad we were able to do it. I also know Weber monitors media mentions religiously, so maybe now I’ll get a few more of them to visit my blog.

4:00: I ate the ice cream cone. Worth mentioning twice. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

4:20: We headed out to the Blogging for Business party, taking a couple limos. Thanks Travelistic for covering the fare.

5:15: After waiting a bit for the limo and dealing with the traffic, we got to the party at the Atomic Testing Museum, held in the brightly lit atrium. Oh, right, if the other topics of conversation weren’t upbeat enough, we were treated to an exhibit on nuclear warfare. I did meet some other luminaries at this event, like the PopGadget crew, which I got confused with Engadget. Some others: the bloggers from Snap and Earthlink.

 

At the museum, Nuclear Guy answered all of our questions about atomic energy:

7:30: Most people had enough of the event by then, if not well before. It was fun and all, with good Swedish meatballs, but it was just an odd venue for it all, and it kind of felt like we were hanging out in a school gym at a PTA function. Jeremiah, Sandira, and I couldn’t find a cab, so we headed to Roy’s up the road and got them to call a ride for us. Meanwhile, a homeless guy gave me advice to stop trying to hail a cab in Vegas. Thanks, homeless guy.

8:00: Watched the Bellagio fountains. Chatted with Cara.

 

8:15: Back at the Bloghaus, I finally got to meet Doc Searls, who pretended to remember my name or writing from somewhere, unlike Robert Scoble, who yesterday claimed to not have met me even when we had before. Robert, you rock and all, but I liked Doc’s response better.

10:00: By this time, Jeremiah had introduced me to probably the 100th person. Really, this trip would have been a real slog without him. Can’t wait for the next time we meet up, J.

11:00: I’m finally blogging this. In 13 hours, I’m speaking on a panel on online video, and in less than 24 hours, I’m home. I’ve never been part of anything like this, not to this degree. Hey, there’s the founder of Techmeme. And there’s the dude from Zooomr. This is a salon for the blogging world, and the best part – it’s all about the people, not the technology.