Midnight in the Vegas Blogosphere

It’s approaching midnight. I’m at an afterparty in Las Vegas at the Bellagio. I’m blogging.

What’s wrong with this picture?

No, not that picture – okay, something’s wrong with it. It’s my cellphone dressed as a penguin drinking Captain Morgan and Coke. But I meant the bigger picture, better described as this one here:

Yeah, that’s the one, blogging away with the Dell blogger, and people from Minnesota, and, well, lots of dudes, most of whom are now blogging while intoxicated. One just said, "It was a blast, man," without a hint of irony. I get the sense that guy’s a real big shot here, so he can say, "It was a blast, man," and people will think he’s a god. That’s what happens when you’re A-list. If I said, "It was a blast, man," they’d rip up my Bloghaus credentials. It’s tough on the bottom rungs.

So here we are, blogging, together. I wasn’t going to boot up tonight, not this late, and not in public, but all the cool kids seemed to be doing it. Everyone was at the big kids table, blogging their butts off, producing things in HD video, or something like that, and having a blast, man. Some guy’s looking at me right now, trying to figure out who the heck I am and why I’m at the cool kids table. I mean, there’s a guy here who reports to Michael "Dell would be my middle name if it wasn’t my last name" Dell. And he’s a blogger.

If you’ve detected a hint of RSS envy, you’re right.

As for the rest of my evening, following the previous post, I went over to Showstoppers at the Wynn for makeshift eating and schmoozing.

Time out: as I was writing this, I just spent some time chatting with one of the executives from Seagate, the sponsor of Bloghaus. Full disclosure: thanks to Seagate, I’ve been well fed, plied with some of the best schwag at the conference, and met some of the most interesting people here. It’s been free everything – food, beer, t-shirts, the works. I have every reason to be about as biased as I can be.

Except for one thing: I really don’t care about hard drives. I do, however, care about marketing, and brand advocacy, and social media, and all this wild stuff that doesn’t sound as exciting on a blog. And Seagate gets it – at least this person does, and I promise to share more in a future column. Too much for right now.

Anyway, Showstoppers is basically a big event for journalists where journalists try to:
a) get as much schwag as possible (ideally higher end stuff – tech toys, software, stuff with retail value)
b) get as much great food as possible (shrimp cocktails, sliced steak, nachos, stuff they won’t have to get from room service)
c) get as much free booze as possible.

All the while, there are exhibitors who pretend journalists care about their stuff.

I did get to see Jay Kolbe of Weber Shandwick, working the Vonage booth like it’s nobody’s business. I also ran into Jupitermedia’s ace editor Chris Saunders, and some good friends of friends from PR Newswire. There were also British people, one of whom will email me a picture of me and my penguin, I hope.

And then I came back to the ‘Haus that Seagate and Podtech built, blogging away, now at 12:16am.

Two celebrity blogger highlights before I go:
* When I was talking to Doc Searls, I dripped cheese sauce on my shoes.
* I saw Robert Scoble,  who I just remembered that I had met, and he admitted to have no recollection meeting me.

I saw Jeremy Pepper too, and I guess he’d want to let you know he’s a celebrity.