Of course I’m going to CES. Again. Why would I not?
Normal people can look forward to easing their way back into the work after the holidays, but I know I won’t have that luxury–because I will once again fly to Las Vegas for CES only a few days after New Year’s Day.
That’s been my journalistic lot in life every January since 1998, aside from the pandemic-frozen winter of 2021, and 2026 will not break that streak. Nor will any future January that I can imagine until I retire, whatever that means to somebody who strings together words for a living.
And yet so many tech-industry publicists open up their CES pitches by asking me, the guy serving a life sentence of covering the show, “Going to CES?”
So here’s my official answer to that question: Yes, I am.
To try to get ahead of other questions I keep getting in PR pitches for the Consumer Technology Association’s trade show:
- I should land at LAS late in the morning of Sunday, Jan. 4 and fly home late in the evening of Thursday, Jan. 8.
- Right now, my schedule looks least crowded on the afternoons of the 4th and the 5th and during the day on the 8th.
- If your client is hosting an evening event, my least scheduled evening is Wednesday and my most scheduled evenings are Sunday and Tuesday.
- If your client is hosting a morning event involving breakfast, please tell me about it so I have an alternative to the crime against bagels that is a CES press room.
- I will be at Pepcom’s Digital Experience Monday night and ShowStoppers Tuesday night; if your client will be at either of those giant receptions, please tell me how to find them there, but don’t ask me to set a time to say hi.
- If your client is hosting an event somewhere off the Strip Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, the answer is no. Vegas traffic is at its worst during CES, Clark County never does anything meaningful to improve it, and an Uber voucher won’t make the other cars disappear.
- Invitations with no hint about an event’s location are also a complete waste of everybody’s time. (What is it about this event that makes PR types lose their minds and commit elementary mistakes like that?) Please accept the reality of the space-time continuum and describe an event’s whereabouts upfront.
- Speaking of time, please get your pitch over with already. I don’t want to have to be reshuffling my CES schedule between Christmas and New Year’s.
- If your pitch is good enough, I may set aside most of what I just said here and take you up on it. Case in point: In January, I accepted a day-before invitation to get a ride to Lake Mead on Monday of CES week and experience a battery-electric sport boat.
- Yes, I got your e-mail about CES.
#ces #consumerElectronicsShow #consumerTechnologyAssociation #cta #gadgetGathering #las #lasVegas #lasVegasConventionCenter #pr #techPr #techTradeShow #vegas
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