It’s my 4th day in Vegas and just now I am finding the time to blog. Mind you, the pressure to “get it up” is ever-present. But my colleagues have all left, most clients are gone, so I can do some personal business now.
This was my 3rd CES. It is getting more glitzy and larger each year, kinda like Burning Man, but make me stop drawing the comparisons there, please.
Must admit, I finally understand the big damn deal about HDTV. This year, Panasonic busted out the world’s biggest flat screen, again, but the image was SO sharp it really seemed like the folks depicted were in the room with you.
I did the press event called Pepcom on Sunday night, the same time Bill Gates gave his last keynote as MSFT bigwig. The video shown during the keynote about things he would do with all his free time was gut busting.
Got some quality hangtime with some excellent press types, too, as you might expect.
Finally met early blog legend and Linux expert Doc Searls. Introduced him to Benoit Schillings, CTO at Trolltech and one of my coolest clients ever. Soon enough, another geek wizard wandered over in the form of John “Maddog” Hall. I was lucky to snap a pic of them, too.
Taken with my trusty iPhone.
Also had the extreme pleasure of hanging with Mr. Fake Steve Jobs himself, too, aka Dan Lyons. These days he writes a gadget column for Forbes and continues the popular blog. Now this is a man who should just chuck the whole writing thing and go straight to stand-up. I think I peed in my chair a little bit from laughing most of the night.
Ya see, Donna, the founder of Sparkpr where I work, ordered something like 250 copies of the book that Dan wrote titled “Options” –which was pure fiction but reads just like reality. Written in his inimical Fake Steve Jobs voice, too. We gave it as a gift to our clients. A little light holiday reading. Dan even signed a few copies. It was one of the most clever, searingly insightful commentaries on Valley culture, I thought. So Dan offered to take the Sparkleponies (what we call ourselves, tongue firmly planted) to dinner as a thank you when were all at CES together.
We went to Aureole, a shwanky Charlie Palmer restaurant at the Mandalay Bay. It has this crazy three stories tall white wine tower in the middle of the joint. A lady straps herself into the trapeze swing and gets pullied up the side to retrieve the bottle of wine you just ordered. Great gimmick! Dan brought along the very suave Bruce Upbin, a big shot editor at Forbes.
We talked a bit about clients, marveled at how much “talent” is flown in for the convention this week, and potty humor soon ensued. Now, the way Fake Steve writes you would assume that Dan Lyons is a party animal. Not so. Total square. But in a good way. He drank a few glasses of Pelligrino and nothing else.
That is him, Dan Lyons.
This is Bruce Upbin. He digs Brunellos, too. We had an amazing bottle of Flowers Pinot Noir, 2005 and a Rosso di Montalcino. Just a lovely time. The whole 4 hour experience reminded me why I love this job!
The wine angels at Aureole! A perfect Vegas show!