Visual Proof: C.E.S.

*click on image to view full gallery

Holy F! I thank party gods that the Consumer Electronics Show had the self-awareness to keep putting on their annual show in Vegas. A brief rundown and photo expose from the road.

Sunday night, the cab to hotel, cab to 40/40 club, cab from 40/40 club. The sports bar ultra longe was dead, maybe no sports that interested the ultra rich that night. It was at the Pallazzo, which looks like the back alley to the Venetian. In fact, that’s the way most cabbies described how to get there, lacking enough aesthetic differentiation to stand apart from its more notable Italian counterpart adjacent on the strip.

After leaving 40/40 for the janitorial staff, we headed to the Hard Rock, for a massive, pulsing free-for-all of top 40 hip-hop mashups. Shit was intense. The Dj’s spastic mixing tore up rap from the 80s to the 00s, lingering on the newer dirty south tracks. Our convoy was even fortunate enough to see a staff-performance “Crank Dat” on the stair landing above the dance floor.

Indeed, Soulja Boy’s “Tell Em” was the song of the trip, and while the CES delegates may have not ventured as far off the strip as Hard Rock, there was no shortage of maligned Supermans in unpressed Banana Republic khakis all up in the clubs of Las Vegas Blvd during the rest of our stay.

On Monday morning, the Keynote speech assembled the tech press corps in a conference room to hear two primary speeches that kicked off the conference. First up was Consumer Electronics Alliance President and CEO Gary Shapiro, who passionately- if not melodramatically- espoused the importance of free trade. Referencing great pro-trade US leaders like Roosevelt and Clinton, Shapiro waived a finger at the current US administration and several presidential candidates for their regressive isolationist policies. Rather intense for a 9am kick-off speech; this guy was supposed to be the window dressing for Panasonic prez Sakamoto’s keynote.

Sakamoto came on to warm applause, delivering a well-tempered speech with moderate pauses, direct hand motions and delicate head nods. He unveiled several new technologies under the umbrella of bringing the family together, showing what’s in store for the upcoming HD age: Huge TV’s! Wireless connectivity! Touch-sensitive walls! On a grand scale, this represented the bulk of the CES offerings as a whole.

A few highlights of CES, the parties, and the people:

• Microsoft’s Surface, a touch screen coffee table that recognizes and uploads your personal devices.
• Intel/BMW’s F1 demo in the parking lot. Well setup, heavily staffed, lots of hands-on tutorials and periodic tire burnout demonstrations.
• Sony’s Rolly, a baseball-sized party to go
• LSU wins. Ellsworth wins bets.
• The Playboy suite at the Palms? Or near the palms? Or something?
• Toni Braxton’s massive building wrap ad covering the Flamingo Hotel. Who would have thought she still had it?
• Missed: What may have been the unexpected highlight of CES, a leapord print taser with a built-in mp3 player.

A few pics to complement the story, with lots of blurry pics of gadgets that I may or may not have been allowed to shoot. Enjoy

Tuff Little Unit - Join The Future || Warp

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Visual Proof, Technology, Event Review, Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.