Bloghaus vs Press room vs Experiencing CES

PR Queen Renee Blodgett has a great article today on Old vs New Media at CES this year.  Once you’ve read it, scroll down to read Jim Louderback’s comment:

And let’s face it, if you’re hanging out in the press room at CES — or the Bloghaus at the Bellagio, sucking down free coffee and looking for your next freelance gig or some free bandwidth, you’re in the wrong place anyway.

I think Jim’s comments are spot-on.  I kept wanting to go to the Bloghaus, but kept having other things that I felt couldn’t be missed.  I’ve heard it was a great time, but I was truly amazed at the quantity of time people chose to spend there.  In my eyes, CES is so packed full of events (note to self: do not attend 4 press conferences next year – ugh), I couldn’t justify the taxi line and traffic to head over to the Bellagio Hotel to hang out with other bloggers.  Don’t get me wrong, there is no insult intended here – I had some good friends there and a lot of bloggers who I read religiously. 

Now, granted, I am in this utterly tiny minority of bloggers who happens to make a living in the consumer electronics field.  For me, it was equally important to attend events as a blogger as it was to extend my personal network of consumer technology manufacturers.  Furthermore, I was asked by a client to scout new technology for possible licensing or acquisition needs.  This created a bit of a “perfect storm” (in a good way) for me where literally every booth had the potential of being interesting, either for the blog, for the client, or for me.  It’s nice when worlds like these collide.

I did hit the press room a few times, but mostly to grab a bagel or a coffee and then head back off to the floor.  While there, I couldn’t help but notice the level of “old guard” that was there.  It was like being surrounded by the ghosts of CES past.  I was impressed by the quantity of available laptops and network connections they provided for people to use.  Primarily, the two press rooms (one in the Sands, one in the LVCC) were located very conveniently to do a drop-by. 

I’d like to see CES approach bloggers differently in CES 2008 with these simple suggestions:

• team up with & sponsor the Bloghaus, then either move it to the Renaissance (right next to LVCC) or at least have an annex there – the Bellagio is beautiful, but prohibitively far from the action.  Also, I’d rather see CEA doing the sponsorship than an individual company – while I applaud Seagate for their initiative, as I was walking the floor with Dave Winer he made some very good points about the bias it creates (whether evil or not, it’s bias).
• change the single “press” badge into three badges: Analyst, Online Media, Offline Media – the rationale being it tremendously helps the PR staff for a company to know who they are talking to.  some companies care more about the blogosphere than they do print media.  others don’t.  focus is good.
• provide blogging “clusters” (or pods) on the show floor – once you have your Online Media badge, you can go to these pods which include power and network and allow you to rapidly get your fresh content online

Anyone out there have any other thoughts for blogging & CES 2008?