Posts Tagged ‘Las Vegas’

By Joe Klein

It’s that time again! January brings with it our favorite trade shows of the year! And, wouldn’t you know it, they’re all in one of our favorite places, just a mere ninety miles north of our “home base!”

Las Vegas is most definitely the place to be this month, and, as we are every year, we’re geared up to go! This week we’ll be attending the 2010 CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW and checking out the latest gadgets and toys at one of the world’s largest trade shows.

We’ll also be checking out the annual “adult companion” to the CES, the ADULT ENTERTAINMENT EXPO! The event, staged each year by the AVN MEDIA NETWORK  is always a total riot, with nearly every major adult entertainment celebrity and luminary in attendance. The booths on the main show floor, open to all “fans” of the genre, is filled to the brim with “eye candy” in every direction. The vendor booths in the exhibit area below the main level, open to the trade and press only, display some of the craziest—and kinkiest—toys around!

Every year the AVN ADULT VIDEO AWARDS are handed out on the last night of the event, honoring the best performances and productions in many categories of adult entertainment. While other commitments and parties prevented us from attending last year’s award ceremony, we are hoping to attend at least part of the awards show this year, which has changed venues from the Mandalay Bay to The Pearl nightclub at The Palms Hotel.

It’s going to be a few days jam packed with gizmos and gadgets of all kinds, and our schedule is already packed to the gills with endless things to do and see. Besides trying to take in the acres of exhibits at the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Sands/Venetian Expo Center, we have a pretty large list of parties and press events. If past experience is any guide, we’ll be lucky to get to even half of the events on the list. But that’s just what convention week in Vegas is all about.

So, we’re off and running! As I have done for the past couple of years, I’ll be meeting up with our old pal MICHAEL BUTLER, who is the online host of the music channel at MEVIO.COM as well as hosting his own online podcast and live streaming shows, THE ROCK AND ROLL GEEK SHOW and GOOD CLEAN FUN. Michael will be doing his own video reports for MEVIO all day Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’ve agreed to help out with camera and sound duties and even help with a bit of production assistance. So it looks like yours truly, NEW MEDIA JOE, will definitely be on the go!

We’ll try and blast out a few tweets whenever we get a chance. Check out our TWITTER FEED for those!

We will probably be so busy attending the show, press events and parties that we may not be able to blog or tweet “live” during the show. (Hotel internet connections and access also play a major role in all of this.) So, if we don’t post updates during the week, rest assured that there will be our own CES coverage and updates to follow later!

In the meantime, no need to wait for our coverage. There’s plenty of great ongoing, up to the minute and LIVE coverage of the Consumer Electronics Show to be found online! Below are links to some cool live new media coverage of CES 2010.

CNET LIVE AT CES

TWIT CES COVERAGE

TWIT LIVE

ENGADGET’S CES COVERAGE

ENGADGET PODCASTS

REVISION 3 CES COVERAGE AND VIDEOS

GEEK NEWS CENTRAL CES COVERAGE

SIN CITY get ready, because here we come! See you in LAS VEGAS!

 

By Joe Klein

The 2009 Blogworld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas has come and gone over a week ago. But since then, the articles, blogs, comments and videos streamed out in droves during a week that saw a great deal of other new media developments that emanated out of another event, the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, that, unfortunately, we weren’t able to attend.

As we have done with our blog posts of previous new media related events, we’ll do our best to provide our own recap, which is, for the most part, a mash-up of our own experiences and those of others that have been posted online since Blogworld ended.

New Media Creative associates BRETT BUMETER and I both arrived early for the conference, on Wednesday afternoon. After settling into our digs at the Las Vegas Hilton, we decided to skip dinner and opted instead to proceed directly to the pre opening night LAS VEGAS TWEETUP at the Hilton’s Tempo Lounge, which started at 6:00 PM. We also wanted to meetup with our old friend ANDY EVANS, who is the CEO and founder of London-based NET COMMUNITIES and PODCAST VOICES. By the time we arrived at about 7:00, our friend Andy had also arrived and it was great to see our old mate for the first time since 2007. The meetup was in full gear with at least a couple hundred early-arrivers already drinking and networking to the max. A few tweets reported that over 300 tweeps attended this lively gathering, which was hosted by the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. There were drawings for free rooms and dining certificates at the hotel.

We hung out at the LV Tweetup for a couple of hours, played a little blackjack with Andy and then moved on to an impromptu soiree at the Wynn Hotel that was tweeted out by Brian Solis and a few dozen of his closest friends. This get-together was supposed to be in one of the hotel’s dining rooms, but too many wild and crazy bloggers and tweeters showed up, so everyone was re-routed to a large outdoor balcony patio overlooking the hotel’s famed LAKE OF DREAMS which features a pretty incredible three dimensional multi-media show on a small man-made lake with a large cascading waterfall. After this event, it was definitely time to head back to the room, relax for a bit and then catch some ZZZZ’s before the Expo got officially underway.

Here are some pictures from Wednesday night’s Tweetup and party at the Wynn…..

TIM STREET, ANDY AND JOE	JOE, TED MURPHY AND BRETT

JOE, JULIE VASQUEZ AND BRETT	JOE AND NICOLE SIMON

ANDY, EWAN SPENCE AND JOE	TODD COCHRANE, BRIAN YUHNKEE AND JOE

WARREN WHITLOCK AND JOE	VICTOR CAJAIO AND JOE

ROBERT GAINES AND JOE	TED MURPHY AND ANDY

ANDY AND FRIENDS AT THE WYNN	CC CHAPMAN AND JOE AT THE WYNN

LAKE OF DREAMS AT THE WYNN	LAKE OF DREAMS AT THE WYNN

LAKE OF DREAMS AT THE WYNN	LAKE OF DREAMS AT THE WYNN

Here is a YouTube video shot a couple of years ago of ”Winnie,” a giant animated frog who sings during the Lake Of Dreams Show. We missed this portion of the show while we were at the party, so it was cool to find it online. The video appears to have been shot from the same patio balcony that Brian’s party gathered on. This attraction really is a “must see” at The Wynn Las Vegas!

Thursday, it was off to the races, with the first full day of Blogworld conferences. (The exhibit floor didn’t open until Friday.) We dropped in on several, while, at the same time, met up with old friends and networked with new ones. There was a pretty nice luncheon for the full access show attendees that day, which also featured a “mini-panel” discussion with the head of social media at the Ford Motor company, SCOTT MONTY and columnist and tech market blogger KARA SWISHER . Not too sure whether having this little panel while people were still eating was such a good idea, because people were pretty much into having lunch and chatting it up with others at their table and not all that into listening to a new media and blogging business discussion as they ate. Not to mention, it was pretty hard to hear. Still, Scott and Kara had some good points to make and case studies to pass on. Oh, and the baby greens salad, steak and asparagus lunch wasn’t bad! Kara posted an article and video interview with Scott Monty which you can view here and a separate story and video interview with Blogworld co-founders RICK CALVERT and DAVE CYNKIN which can be accessed here.

Our long time podcasting and blogging pal, MICHAEL BUTLER, also known as THE ROCK AND ROLL GEEK and director/host of the MEVIO MUSIC NETWORK, arrived from San Francisco just after lunch. We picked him up and returned to the LVCC just in time for the mid-afternoon keynote panel with web strategist JEREMIAH OWYANG, founder of IZEA TED MURPHY and “e-mom” WENDY PIERSALL. The panelists offered up a lot of dialogue and blogging, social media and the Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines regarding endorsement disclosures. (The FTC story is one created quite a stir in the blogging community earlier this month, and was the subject of major news coverage the week before Blogworld.)

THE RNR GEEK

THE AFTERNOON KEYNOTE PANEL

Michael, Brett and I left the panel discussion a little more than half way through to wander the halls and drop in on a few other sessions going on at the Expo. Of course we bumped in to a variety of old friends and colleagues at every step of the way and I got Michael to shoot a few more photos.

JOE WITH THE BOURQUINS	LEWIS HOMES AND JOE	JOE AND CHRIS BROGAN

CHRIS HEUER AND JOE	MIKE MCALLEN AND BRETT	ROB WALCH AND JOE

We needed to end up at final event of Blogworld’s first day, the day’s closing keynote presented by new and social media guru CHRIS BROGAN. This was my first “announcer gig” of the conference for me, and my first public appearance as “New Media Joe.”  After a few opening remarks by Blogworld’s CEO and co-founder, Rick Calvert. I was introduced to the full room and “did my thing” with the Chris Brogan intro. Fortunately, I managed to get the crowd pretty worked up for what turned out to be a pretty insightful session by Chris. As tweets from the those in attendance (and others following the Blogworld stream online) flashed on screens behind him, Chris inspired those gathered for the keynote with his thoughts, observations and numerous tips for achieving blogging and social media success. The video of Chris Brogan’s entire closing keynote can be viewed by clicking here. Here are a few photos of the keynote, including one of good old New Media Joe introducing Chris to the adoring crowd!

“NEW MEDIA JOE’S” FIRST GIG!	CHRIS BROGAN INSPIRES THE CROWD

CHRIS BROGAN	MICHAEL AND CC AT THE KEYNOTE

After the closing keynote, we returned to the hotel for a recharge and to “freshen up” for the night that was just ahead, which was upon us in a flash. We picked up our pal Andy and headed over to the BELLAGIO Hotel, where we decided we would rather partake in their very elaborate buffet (which includes lots of sushi and seafood delights which we favor) so we didn’t have to worry about picking through “party food” later on. Besides, we were totally famished. After a pretty scrumptious feast, we proceeded on the THE BANK nightclub in the hotel, where the very hot TECHSET party, hosted once again this year by BRIAN SOLIS and STEPHANIE AGRESTA, was already raging on at full steam. Although the music was quite loud, and the crowd was pretty rowdy, everyone there seemed to be having a great time, including us! Here are some pix of the gang at Thursday night’s party at The Bank nightclub…..
 
 
 
 
 

We hung out at this fling for for a couple of hours before heading out and back to the Hilton. Our big mistake (or, more accurately, mine, as I was driving) was heading east on Flamingo Road from the strip to Paradise Road. Ongoing construction (which I thought had ended many weeks ago) still had the popular thoroughfare down to one lane in each direction and it took us well over half an hour to travel the three or so miles from the Bellagio Hotel back to the Hilton. Butler and I were exhausted by this time, but our mates, Brett and Andy still had lots of energy left and wanted to party some more! So, upon arriving at the Hilton, I opted to loan my car (and some spending cash) to the two “kids” so they could continue to revel through the night! God only knows (or maybe even he doesn’t know) what kind of escapades they chose to partake in until all hours!

Michael Butler and I proceeded to the Hilton’s Tempo Lounge (where the Wednesday night Tweetup took place) for a nightcap, and as fate would have it, ran into our good friend TODD COCHRANE and his own cohorts from RAWVOICE, who were in Vegas themselves to man their company booth and host their own Blogworld party on Friday night. We hung out with the Raw Voice crew for about an hour, and it was time to pack it in for the night. But, where were Andy and Brett, pray tell?

With the two main days of the Blogworld Expo still ahead of us, we knew that were was much more to come…..

In Part Two of our Blogworld Expo recap, we’ll share our experiences from the event’s two big days, Friday and Saturday. This “really big post” will also include loads of additional photos and links to numerous other reports that have been posted online over the last week Look for the next installment to be up and running right here, same company, same blog, in the next few days, if all goes as planned!

Until we post again, we’ll end this one with two pretty cool videos. First, the promo video for the 2009 Blogworld and New Media Expo posted online by the events organizers, Rick Calvert and Dave Cynkin…..

Next, my own personal favorite Blogworld promo video that I came across while poking around on YouTube! Great job and a great example of getting out the word using viral video!

 

 

 

By Joe Klein

Okay, I admit it. We haven’t blogged in quite some time, taking a few months off to work on lots of other projects. Plus there was a lot of travelling (and a bit of vacationing) since our last writing!

Interspersed between completing jobs and coordinating projects, I, personally, managed to visit some cool places and catch some great shows, including a few great oldies acts in my current home base of Laughlin, NV. Since early spring, some great artists appeared, including Eric Burdon (of the Animals), former Righteous Brother Bill Medley, Tommy James, Felix Cavalerie (from The Rascals), former Monkee Davey Jones, Gary Puckett (lead singer of the Union Gap) and “Bad To The Bone Man” George Thorogood. I caught most of the shows, and they were great. Here’s a couple of shots of me with Tommy James and Bill Medley taken a few months back when they appeared in Laughlin.

  

At the end of August, I ventured to Chicago for a big family event over the Labor Day Weekend. (I was born in Chicago and still have family there.) New Media Creative’s “voice of god,” Bill Fortune, is a lifetime resident of Chicago (except for a few short periods when he worked in other cities as a disc jockey). Bill has a very nice pad in the suburb of Palatine and I stayed with Bill for a couple days before checking into a Skokie hotel for the family events on Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday night Bill and I met up in Schaumburg (not too far from Bill’s home) for the second night of the 2009 SeptemberFest. The SeptemberFest is a huge festival that happens every year over the Labor Day Weekend. The event is staged in a very large park in the heart of Schaumburg, and features lots of big carnival rides, carny style game booths, a huge bingo game to support charities, dozens of food booths with faire from many of Chicago’s most popular restaurants and nightly free concerts staged on a huge lawn in the park. Saturdays and Sundays are the biggest days, of course, and the concerts on those nights usually feature pretty big name bands, or, more accurately, bands that were big names several years back. Saturday night Randy Bachman performed (and we couldn’t attend due to my big day of family stuff) and Sunday night’s concert featured Starship with Mickey Thomas, joined by Bobby Kimball, the former lead singer of the hot seventies and eighties band, Toto.

As it happens, I hired Bobby Kimball to sing lead on some very cool radio station jingles I produced over thirty years ago (way back in 1976) and, about two years later, Toto was formed and really took off, with hits like “Hold The Line,” “Rosanna” and “Africa.” I had also hired a couple of other members of the band (Jeff Porcaro and Steve Lukather) to play on recording sessions for other projects (not related to the radio jingles) in the seventies. So when Toto took off, it was really exciting, and I partied with the hot, new band on a couple of occasions in the late seventies.

The concert at SeptemberFest was really great. Each year they build a large and very respectable outdoor concert stage and, with at least 50,000 people assembled on the massive lawn in front of the stage, the concert resembles a mini-Woodstock event. The show lasted a little over an hour and a half, and was then followed by an awesome fireworks show that lasted over twenty minutes and was, admittedly, one of the best fireworks displays I’ve ever seen! The SeptemberFest is really a HUGE event that attracts over a quarter million people every year, and this year marked the 39th year of the annual festival. Kudos to the city of Schaumburg for staging a truly memorable event, for me at least.

Another cool thing about attending was having a chance to meet, for the first time, a fellow blogger named Kent Kotal, who maintains a cool blog at his website, ForgottenHits.com. The blog, which grew out of a twice weekly newsletter that Kent has been sending out for many years, is centered around fifties, sixties and seventies oldies music, radio, the Chicago music scene and, during the summer, baseball, of course! Kent is, admittedly a real “die-hard” fan of sixties and seventies oldies. Kent loves stories about oldies radio, radio in general from the sixties and seventies and other subjects related to oldies music, sports and Chicago itself. He still sends out the newsletter twice a week via email to a mailing list of a few thousand friends and fellow fans, and updates the blog several times a week. The blog contains many of the stories contained in the newsletter. This past summer, Kent featured scores of blog entries, stories and shared memories from the “summer of Woodstock,” forty years ago in 1969.

Kent is a really great, dedicated and hard working guy and his blog and newsletter have built up a loyal following of music artists, songwriters, record producers and deejays, who contribute their own stories and comments by emailing them to Kent on a regular basis. So the blog and newsletter has, in its own small way, become an invaluable source for news about oldies, radio and the Chicago music scene. It’s now a great place where many people involved in the radio in music business a few decades ago (myself included) can write—and read—stories about the music and radio business that can’t be found anywhere else! The blog and newsletter also, sadly, serve the purpose of a kind of “oldies obit page” and are often the first source for the sad news of the passing of a forgotten, but notable, music or radio legend from bygone days. The blog is really worth checking out if your in to oldies or radio from the era, and, at the blog, you can click on an email link and sign up for the email newsletter as well. The Forgotten Hits blog can be found here.

It was great meeting Kent and attending the concert with him and his wife and my old pal and partner Bill. With all the people amassed on the lawn, we chose not to try and sit too close to the stage. The have a huge, thirty foot wide projection screen and display a very nice four camera shoot of the concert. So we sat back a bit and off to the side and enjoyed the show as a TV broadcast on a huge big screen with the most awesome sound system around!

Here are a few shots from  the 2009 Septemberfest. There are shots of Mickey Thomas and Bobby Kimball (taken from the big screen) a shot of Bobby Kimball and myself backstage after the show (where Bobby appears like “The Ghost Of Toto’s Past” because I think the camera was at the wrong setting) and a picture Kent Kotal, Bill Fortune and myself at the festival.

 

 

Chicago was a blast, and, having to travel there from Laughlin, I was forced to make an overnight stop-over in Las Vegas going and coming home. It was a burden, but thanks to the Hard Rock Hotel for lightening the load! Stayed in their brand new tower on the top floor. Check out a few shots of the cool new rooms and the awesome view of the infamous Rehab pool and the Vegas Strip from the south facing rooms in the Paradise Tower…..

  

 

Now that I am back at home base (at least for a few weeks before my next trip, which will be to Los Angeles at the end of the month) it’s time to settle down and move into the next projects that are up on the board. Look for a cool story soon about my close friend, Russ Terrana (who was the chief engineer of Motown Records from 1966 until 1988 and mixed a large percentage of the label’s biggest hits). More stories and updates in the weeks to come and, hopefully, on a more regular basis now until the end of the year!