Las Vegas – I tried to get into the Cisco press conference today. Should have known something was wrong when they stared handing out “Stand-by” tickets and had sign-holders for “Confirmed” and “Stand-by” lines.
After I and about 30-50 other press people were turned away because they room had been packed to the gills with standing people, some Cisco PR droid made the suggestion that “You can watch the press conference live on the web.”
Um, Droid, if I wanted to watch it on the web, I wouldn’t have arrived 20-30 minutes early to get a stand-by ticket and stand in line. Or even put this on my “to do” list of conferences to view today.
And say, just FYI, to all the Cisco PR people the next time you suggest something that inane– The Wi-FI in the press room is crap and the media is falling out of the runty little room into the hallways, so if its’ a choice between burning battery on watching the webcast or flaming you, I’ll pick door #2.
You couldn’t have gotten a bigger room, Cisco?
I mean, if you had to print “Confirmed” and “Standby” tickets and made up signs, there’s this implication that you knew you would have a lotta lotta people, so, why not get a bigger room?
(And a Big Shout Out PS to Gary Shapiro, head of the CEA, who is plugging his new book, The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream. Hopefully, Mr. Shapiro and CEA could apply some innovation to the nightmare of CES “Press Day” press conferences – BIGGER ROOMS, HELLO – and the crappy Wi-Fi and generally treating the press like a bunch of cattle, because I’m not real interested in buying his book from Barnes & Noble at the moment).
I think you could call this a big #Fail day all around.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see if I want to roll the dice on getting crammed into a too-small room for Samsung’s press conference at 2 PM – wasting only 30 minutes in line if I make it or get turned away – or proceeding directly to stand 90 minutes in line for the 3 PM Panasonic press conference.
And people don’t understand why I keep getting a greater hate for CES.
