CES Archive

The CES Party You Don't Want to Miss

So, even though I've covered tech for quite a while, I've never been a gadget reporter and hence always avoided going to CES. For those who don't know, CES is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In the wake of the dot com bust, as the housing market took off, and we all felt richer it became the must-attend tech conference. It didn't hurt that it was the golden age of gadgets with flat panel TVs, DVRs, iPods, iPhones, and Tasers. Yes, Tasers. There's endless footage of curious reporters getting Tased at CES for some reason.

What was the reason? I don't know. Because every January, I've been happily back in San Francisco at a desk, not standing in mile-long cab lines. Now that CES is allegedly on the wane, I didn't even give attending a second thought. Until one night when I was having dinner with Brian "Pocket-Sized Ricky Ricardo" Solis and Somewhat Frank Gruber and they convinced me by ordering a second bottle of champagne, promising we'd all co-host an epic party, and I wouldn't even have to get Tased. I never host a party in Vegas without involving Tony "My TV commercials suck, but I'm awesome otherwise" Hsieh, because that's like doing a mob hit in Jersey without calling Tony Soprano. (I'm not sure that metaphor makes sense. It's early. But you know what I mean.)

Flash-forward a few months and a big check from Intel and we're all set to have the CES kickoff party this Thursday night. Tickets are free but extremely limited, so watch Twitter. We will each Twitter the Eventbrite link at 2 p.m. pacific time today. They will go quick. Did I mention free drinks? Yeah, it's going to be awesome.

Here's a clip from my last Vegas party with Tony:

Vegas Baby from sarah lacy on Vimeo.

And here's a slightly more substantial video shot yesterday where Paul Kedrosky and I discuss CES's questionable relevance at a time when none of us have money for gadgets.

Back When We Thought the Downturn Had Already Hit...

I was looking through old TechTicker pieces because it seems I'm at least making a cameo appearance at CES this year. Tony Hsieh, Brian Solis, SomewhatFrank Gruber and I are (hopefully) throwing a HUGE, EPIC opening night bash, just waiting on our sponsor to come through. (Fingers x'ed!) I'll update via the blog and Twitter as it will be amazing and you HAVE to come. Even more amazing than Tony and my BlogWorld party, if that's possible...

At any rate, I thought it might be fun to do some man-on-the-street stuff at the conference for TechTicker, mostly because my editor, Brad, is brilliant at stitching on-location footage together. I was thinking of this piece from SXSW (yes I did things there besides get heckled), so I dug it out to show my producer.

It's actually pretty funny to watch. We seem so naive just a few months ago! Valleywag? Gone. Rev3? Layoffs. Get Satsifaction? Well, still throwing epic parties at least...

Watch and enjoy.