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LAS VEGAS: British readers will probably be familiar with the Carlsberg "probably the best lager in the world" ads. The latest versions have the theme of something very mundane being turned into a male fantasy - a guy turns up to view a flat and walks in to find a luxury penthouse with beautiful women serving drinks and pizza, talking intelligently about sport and leading him onto a balcony with a grandstand view of a football game. The punchline is "Carlsberg doesn’t do flatmates, but if it did, they’d probably be the best flatmates in the world."

Well, right now, it’s nearly midnight in Las Vegas and I’m blogging in probably the best press room in the world.

The official press room of the Consumer Electronics Show closed hours ago. I left a defeated army of journalists there this afternoon, lining the walls, sat on the floor trying to get a wireless connection or queuing for a lunch box, or an ethernet connection or access to one of the official wired laptops.

Here, I’m sitting in a comfortable chair in a luxury corner suite of the Bellagio Hotel with panoramic views of the strip. I’m typing on a just-released widescreen HP TouchSmart PC running Windows Vista, there are only six currently available and three are in this room.

I’m sipping on a gin and tonic from the bar and listening to Gorillaz on a serious sound system. There’re pizza and snacks on the table, a party atmosphere and the photo blogger Thomas Hawk is sitting next to me showing to a crowd the CES babes photos he’s just uploaded to Zooomr.

Robert Scoble has come over to see if I’ve got everything I need. He’s been holding court on a bean bag in a room next door where you can chill out playing video games on a large high-definition television. The suite is open and the drinks and blog posts are flowing 24/7.

This has nothing to do with Carlsberg, but it has everything to do with Scoble’s PodTech, sponsors Seagate and bloggers becoming the coolest guys in the room. This suite is known as the Bloghaus and is for bloggers only.

It’s the kind of fantasy journalism that video gamers and geeks on all-night scripting sessions might imagine. But for a few days in Vegas, it is real and the most concrete example I’ve yet to encounter of the elevated status of the new media newcomers, probably the best treated journalists in the world.   

January 9th, 2007 in Uncategorised | Permalink