BoomTown will be Southwesting to Las Vegas today for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, being held there over the next several days.
CES has certainly lost some of its immediacy over the last several years, as big players like Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) suck up all the oxygen outside of its noisy, analog crowd-filled pushfest. This year’s spoilers are the Nexus One launch yesterday and the upcoming iSlate arrival in a few weeks.
But CES is still the place to be to see a lot of different kinds of tech treats–from big-screen televisions to mobile devices to tricked-out stereo systems to whatever those odd booths in the back are peddling–in one spot to try to discern the tea leaves for innovation.
And, of course, also to go to a lot of parties with passels of geeks! Yes, it is that kind of fun. Ladies, hide your gadgets!
But, this year, Walt Mossberg–with whom I do an annual video walk across the massive Convention Center floor, where he is treated like the tech equivalent of Brangelina (see last year’s video below)–and I are trying to up the ante a bit by throwing a substantive interview event with top tech execs, which All Things Digital will be live-streaming on Friday.
We are at capacity at our venue at the Venetian Hotel, but you can see Walt, MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka and I grilling digital leaders, starting at 3:30 pm PT and ending at 5:30 pm (and it will also be available later for watching anytime).
Onstage: Jon Rubinstein, Chairman and CEO of Palm (PALM), talking to me; Reed Hastings, CEO, president and chairman of Netflix (NFLX), to be queried by Peter; and Google VP of Engineering and Android guru Andy Rubin, who will be interviewed by Walt.
ATD will also have extensive coverage of all the doings at CES over the next several days, so there will lots to peruse from keynotes to product launches to the annual blogger snub by Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, who seems to prefer to do pre-speech interviews with more traditional newspapers and television outfits.
But we’re not bitter and will cover whatever he gabs on about onstage tomorrow–apparently, a slate PC (how original!) with Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)–at the opening keynote at CES.
Remember: What happens in Vegas, stays right here.
Until then, here is my annual video interview of Walt, as well as Mossberg Solution columnist Katherine Boehret, on the CES floor last year:
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