This is my CES 2007 Wrap up, the social version. As I mentioned before I left, the biggest thing for me at CES is the networking. By networking, I don’t just mean meeting new people and companies. I also include the great people in this wonderful community of site owners, bloggers, Mobians, and Microsoft MVPs. I truly enjoy running into, hanging out with, and running the show floor with these great friends. I do enjoy meeting the new folks too.

I arrived in Las Vegas at 1:30pm and was greeted with 20 or so emails pushed to my B lackJack. One of these emails were from a fellow webmaster, Jason Dunn asking about the Palm Treo 750 release I broke embargo on by mistake. (I made a +2/-2 timezone snafu, doh!) I franticly start looking for WiFi to fix this. I was unsuccessful. Luckily Jack Cook was ready to take care of business and got this release down. This trip was not looking good from the get go… Shortly before Jack got the post down, I received some emails from various Palm folks. Oops. So so sorry guys.

So I get into the cab line and after only 15 minutes, I am on my way to Harrah’s! I get to Harrah’s, avoid the massive lines at the check in desk by stepping into the Diamond Club Check in room (thank you!), plop down my deposit (I don’t use credit cards), and off to my room.

The visit to the room is short. I unpacked, freshened up and went across the street to Caesar’s Palace to meet up with Jack for the Pepcom Digital Focus event and give him his Christmas present. (so he could put in the car and not have to carry around) We had 2 hours to kill so we hit a couple tables and a couple slot machines. On the way to the Pepcom event, we walk by a sports memorabilia store where Pete Rose was signing autographs. I couldn’t believe we got to see Pete. Pete Rose was my 2nd favorite growing up, second to Dale Murphy.

At Digital Focus, we ran into EVERYONE! Well, not everyone, but a ton of my friends! I got to meet Kevin Tofel for the 1st time, he was with James Kendrick, who I had previously met. It’s always fun to meet up with those guys. I was also able to meet an army of Gizmodo folks. They were pretty hard at work, but they took a moment to exchange greetings and then they went off to war. It was pretty cool how well organized these guys seemed. I am not making this post to tell about the cool goodies I got a hands on with, so we’ll leave all that fun stuff out. In addition to the friends we ran into, I was able to meet up with a few company execs and marketing guys that I had talked with in the past as well as meeting some new contacts that were thrilled to share with our community over at Mobility Site. One of these marketing guys was really not a guy, it was a lady named Sue (not a boy named sue). Sue Schmitz is one of the Wagged Team. She was representing the SPOT team, but is working with another great company too.

The next big company I met was Palm, I got see the folks face to face and get this… They didn’t shoot at me. (After the breaking of Embargo, I was a tad worried about that, so I wore my bullet proof vest) They entire booth of Palm folks were very friendly and I got a chance to play with the newly announced Palm Treo 750. Next up was OQO. Those guys are super cool and seem to be super passionate about their device, as well they should. In the rush to hit all the booths that I wanted to see at the event, I totally missed the HTC booth. I think that Matt Miller dragged me over there. That brings up Big Matt, aka Palmsolo… Always a pleasure to see him. Now that Matt is a big time blogger for Ziff Davis now, I figured he would turn into Walt Mossburg, but nope, he’s still as cool as he was 3 months ago when he cheated me out of a MP3 player at Mobius. So, Todd Achilles is one of the coolest guys I met. He has some great ideas and very personable. We tried to leave the HTC booth for like an hour, but one person after another showed up, throwing monkey wrenches in the plans. 1st it was Jason Dunn and Steven Hughes showing up WAY TOO LATE. I don’t want to forget my good buddy Jason Gordon. Jason is the coolest. How many people can have 3 of the coolest jobs in the world in a 3 year period? Jason worked for Microsoft, then he moved to Motorola and launched the Moto Q, now he’s moved on to HTC.

Jack and I also ran into Ed Hardy from Brighthand. I had not seen Ed in like 3 years. Dave Shier was also in attendance. Let’s not forget Rich Brome from Phone Scoop. Somehow he shows up at all the coolest events. I don’t think Rich actually has a home.

After herding Matt Miller, Jason Dunn, Jack Cook, and Steven Hughes together, we left the show and made a bee line for Pure in Caesar’s for the HP party. We met up with our MVP Lead, Tyler Welch. I had never met Tyler in person. We consumed about 20 gallons of bottled water, and headed out. (It was too loud to really talk) Jack took off and the rest of us headed over to McDonald’s of all places to have some fries and conversation. We all went our separate ways and I hit the room, posted some news and videos and at 3am, it was time to sleep.

All the guys at Caesar’s Palace Pure Nightclub
Left Photo - Steven Hughes and Jason Dunn
Right Photo - Matt Miller, Tyler Welch, and Jack Cook

This was one long day and I would have been satisfied leaving right then. I saw all my good friends and most of the goodies I wanted to see all in the DAY BEFORE CES. But no, there is more…

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