CES 2006 In Review
You know, I thought there might be a fair chance that I was one of the youngest CES attendees with a press badge, based on absolutely no facts. Then, while perusing the Sands Expo on the fourth day, I saw a nine year old girl named Jennifer with her parents (breaking some cardinal rule I swear I read on the CES guidelines page) and, of course, her very own press pass. Perhaps I was one of the youngest writing for at least a somewhat legitimate site?
Anyway, CES was rather staggering in its sheer scale. Everyone wants to showcase their latest and greatest takes on the same, tried and true. While there were some genuinely fun, cool devices we got to play around with, there was nothing that made me call home that very night to brag about—no teleporters or holodecks, or, for that matter, teleporting holodecks.
If nothing else, my experience with Gizmodo and the rest of the Gawker team at least garnered an in to some serious networking opportunities. I was at CES for Gear Live, whose editor I met at E3 this past year. As such, I finally had the chance to meet Jason Calacanis and the rest of the Engadget crew. While I was at Gizmodo, Joel made his dislike for the Engadget crew (specifically Rojas) well known enough. Put simply, I heard all of the bitching and lamenting. The reality was, he didn’t like that he was being beaten, but that was a result of being understaffed and underfunded, even on Gawker Media’s most profitable property.
Engadget did quite the job this year at CES. They were covering everything on the showfloor they could get their hands on, along with every possible keynote and press event. And while a lot of the showfloor itself and some of the items they covered were themselves naturally boring or not interesting (at least ot me), it’s important that someone out there grab all the gritty details and let the rest of the public decide what’s important to them.
Calacanis was a pretty nice guy from my limited exchange with him. He exudes pride in his accomplishments and in the progress he’s made with Engadget, but so long as he keeps his figures in check and his accomplishments well audited, there’s never a problem with being confident and having the chops to back it up. Rojas came off as a bit… arrogant, I suppose, but I didn’t speak to him long enough to truly know. (Although, I must admit that my impression of him has already been somewhat tainted by several different anecdotes from trusted-and-not-just-Joel sources…)
Regardless, one of the best things about these trips is finally getting to put faces to names, or to meet people you’ve read about in Wired, at the very least. Is it too ambitious for me to want to both write for Wired and be featured in it at some point?
Tags: CES, Engadget, Gawker, Gizmodo, Jason Calacanis, Joel Johnson, Nick Denton, Peter Rojas, Weblogs Inc