Day two began with me going to the Wynn to have breakfast with our ad publishers, Netshelter, while the rest of the Icrontic crew headed off to the Venetian to finalize their press badges and prepare for the Samsung Press Conference.
While Robert and Peter covered Samsung, Charlotte and I went to register for the Adult Entertainment Expo. We secured our press badges, and met Peter and Robert so they could register for theirs. If Geeks Love It, We’re On It… right?
Vegas, baby!
Next up, Peter and Robert went to cover Sony’s press conference while I went to meet with TekNMotion. Once we all reconnected, we headed off to the Sprint Media Event. Alas, in the scheduling shuffle, we neglected to RSVP despite the fact that we received invitations, and we were denied at the door.
Lost, dejected, and hungry, we made our way back to the hotel where we basically succumbed to exhaustion. The final point of the day was the arrival of our fifth reporter, Nick Mertes, before we all fell asleep.
Day 3 started super bright and early, with Nick heading off to the Ford keynote, Peter and Robert going to the Intel pre-show press conference, and Brian and Charlotte heading to Planet Hollywood to meet with Capcom. After the Intel press conference, Nick, Peter and Robert headed over to the Nvidia press conference.
Afterwards, we all met up at the Nvidia booth on the south hall showfloor, where we spent a solid two hours with Nvidia PR manager Brian Burke, met a flurry of Nvidia staffers, and came away with a good feeling for what they’ve got coming for 2010.
Pete finally gets to meet Thermaltake's Ramsom Koay
We parted ways again; Charlotte, Nick, and Brian went to cover LEGO’s upcoming MMO, LEGO Universe while Peter and Rob went to the Intel keynote. Our “feet on the floor” work done for the day, we then headed out to the suite parties.
First stop for Nick, Charlotte, and Brian was the PC Race for Charity event, where system builders from top tech sites race to build PCs. The event was a swank affair, with an amazing food and beverage selection. We met up with Ramsom Koay from Thermaltake and Dan Snyder from Intel to trade gibes and compare show notes. Statuesque cheerleaders in silver foil bikinis bid us farewell with pompoms and glittery smiles as we left and wound our way through the endless marble and gilt halls of the Wynn and Encore hotels and made our way to the AMD Tailgate event.
No lie. Over 8 million DX11 cards shipped. Grats, AMD.
AMD has reason to celebrate: The ATI Radeon 5870 won a CES innovation award. A 5870-shaped cake and a champagne toast heralded the good news. We met up with some old friends from AMD and also finally got to meet our old buddy Sylvie Barak. I will say this about AMD: the food they had catered in to the suite party was the best I’ve had in Vegas so far.
We then meandered, perhaps a bit tipsy, to the new Aria hotel. The Aria opened a mere three weeks ago and it became clear very quickly that the Aria is the current Vegas nighttime hotspot. Every glittery and beautiful person in town was making an appearance. We went up to visit with OCZ Technologies. OCZ is a company that is clearly doing it right. They were showing their new fourth generation Z-Drive: an SSD so fast that it actually breaks the standard ATTO benchmark. While in addition to being amazingly fast, it also is upgradable–it has removable NAND DIMMS. We were extremely impressed.
Rob, Pete, Char, OCZ's Lisa Gregersen, and Nick
After a long and tiring day, we eventually made our way back to our hotel, and crashed hard while preparing for day four. Day four brings more, more, more as we hit even more press conferences, attend more parties, and have more fun. See you tomorrow!
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