I was just talking with Buzz. We’re both exhausted. I didn’t do much of anything until late in the afternoon today.
Buzz and I gave Shel a whirlwind tour yesterday (ever try to see 600 exhibits in the Sands in about an hour? We did. And, no, we’re not talking about the adult show. The Sands is where we saw the Celestron and the SlingMedia booths. Both of which were rated by CNN as a “top 5 of CES”. The new SlingMedia running on PocketPCs is killer, by the way. Why did we go to the Sands? The Microsoft exhibit was simply too crowded to tour, Shel wanted a look at Windows Vista, but I told him I’ll come over and give him a personal tour later so off to the Sands we ran). The much smaller Google booth was also similarly packed, here you can see Shel and Buzz talking with Googlers. Personally, it was nice to get over to the Sands where there weren’t many crowds (but the companies were smaller and the technology was cooler).
On the way over to the Sands we saw this gas pump powered by Microsoft Windows CE and a car full of gadgets all driven by Microsoft stuff. Over at the Sands we saw this cool game seat (my photo, Web site).
If you’ve never been to a mega show like CES, or CeBit, you have no idea of the scale. It’s like having 400 BestBuys lined up in a row.
Anyway, if you really wanted to see the toys, watching Engadget is actually a better way to go. In fact, I was watching Engadget on my cell phone as I was walking around. Well, that and I kept running into the Engadget crew. I ran into Jason Calacanis at one party on Thursday night and he said “did you see that Toshiba Gigabeat?” I answered, no, cause it hadn’t been on Engadget yet.
I wondered why I hadn’t run into any Gizmodo folks. And I realized it’s cause I never have met any of them anywhere else. While Jason and Peter have had public events, and shown up at conferences from Gnomdex to Reboot and had introduced themselves often, I never have met Nick Denton or the crew that does Gizmodo.
Which one do I trust more? Which one do I have more brand affinity to? Which one do I link to more often? That’s right, Engadget, cause I have a personal relationship there.
Anyway, thanks to Waggener Edstrom for opening up a suite in the Wynn for bloggers. That was a great place to relax and get on the Internet and post stories. Hope they do that again in the future.
To tell you the truth, I’m not so excited about these styles of shows anymore. If it weren’t for the fun people I met at CES Camp, or on the show floor, I would be perfectly happy to miss the event and watch it on Engadget, CNET News.com, Gizmodo, Google News, or Gear Live.
Oh, on the way home last night who was sitting next to me? Jay Greene from BusinessWeek and Charles Walker, senior vice president of investments for Oppenheimer. Interesting and nice guys both. Earlier at the airport Jay introduced me to Stephen Manes, columnist for Forbes.
How did you watch news coming from the CES?
Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.
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