BobBuskirk.com » Events

A Fun Memorial Day Weekend

Bob Buskirk — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 03:15:20 +0000

This past weekend was Memorial Day and for most people it is a long weekend. Since I work from home it really was not a long weekend for me, but I did enjoy my weekend. As I said in an earlier in a post I have been getting out more and this past weekend was no exception. The weekend started on Saturday where we went to a party down in South Side. The party was at a Steelers House, but I can’t say who’s place it was. I was actually surprised when we got there because it is in the middle of South Side, but since it was on the river it really didn’t seem like you were in South Side at all.

The party was really fun and it was just great to relax and have fun. Most of our group showed up so it was really a good time.

After the party we all headed over to Diesel which is a club here in Pittsburgh. They were holding a “White Party”, which if you don’t know is where everyone wears white. It was actually really cool and it was the first time I’ve actually gone to the white party in Pittsburgh.

Finally on Sunday I went to a cookout / party at my friends house. That was also a lot of fun. There was a ton of food and it was nice to just relax. I really hope everyone had some time to relax over the holiday weekend I know I did!

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SUSHISAMBA at the Palazzo

Bob Buskirk — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:19:41 +0000

When you think of Las Vegas you think huge casinos and gambling, but Las Vegas has some of the best restaurants in the county. Hell even some of the buffets are really good! I’ve had some of the best meals of my life in Vegas. The Rodizio Fire Pit at Rum Jungle was awesome, my monstrous shrimp cocktail and 22oz porterhouse at Envy Steakhouse was just great and the 5-course meal I had Zeffirino was simply amazing. Oncec again this year in Las Vegas I had one of the best meals of my life, definitely the best sushi of my life!

It was pretty late at night and Colin, Jack, Ramzi and I were originally going to go to the Pho place at Treasure Island, but it was closed. So we walked across the street to the Palazzo and ended up at Sushi Samba. Sushi Samba isn’t just a Japanese sushi place its a mix of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian cuisine. The inside of Sushi Samba is very chill and relaxing. I started things off with a Mojito, which is becoming one of my favorite drinks.

The menu was quite big, they seemd to have a lot of things that I might have wanted to try, but I was here for Sushi! They had most of the normal Sushi you would find most places but they had many unique rolls that were a mix of Japanese, Brazilian, and Peruvian all in one. I first ordered the BoBo Brazil which is comprised of seared american kobe beef, avocado, kaiware, shiso, red onion and chimichurri. Then I was about to order a shrimp tempura roll, when our waitress told me they had this special which was a shrimp tempura roll topped with seared Japanese Kobe beef and avocado spread. So I decided on that instead.

When the Sushi was brought out I tried the BoBo Brazil rolls first and they were just great! One of the better rolls I’ve had in a long time, it had quite a lot of different flavors to it. After trying to BoBo Brazil roll I tried one of the special rolls. When I put it in my mouth it just like melted! The Japanese Kobe beef was so tender and had a taste that I never experieced before, it was amazing! There have only been a few times in my life when I ate something and was like, “Wow this food is just AMAZING!” this was one of those times. There is definitely a difference between Japanese and American kobe beef too! This was the best Sushi I’ve ever had in my life and would fly to Vegas just for it! Thats how good it was! If you are in Vegas you definitely have to check out Sushi Samba!

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Super Bowl Ads 2010

Bob Buskirk — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:26:54 +0000

I’m not a huge football fan, especially when the Steelers are not playing, but I did watch the Super Bowl this year. The Reason? The ads of course! Before we get into that congrats to the Saints for pulling out the 31-17 victory over the Colts, the onside kick to start the 2nd half was brilliant. According to the Super Bowl XLIV Wikipedia page the broadcast had a US audience of 106.5 million viewers and scored a Nielsen rating of 46.4 with a 68 share, the highest for a Super Bowl since Super Bowl XX in 1986.

The ads this years were really not that impressive at all, some of them made we wonder why the companies even paid the money for the spot. What was really surprising was all of the Budweiser and Bud Light ads. They had a total of 8 ads! One that’s sure a lot of money to drop on ad spots and two all those ads are not going to make me choose Bud Light over Miller Lite! Out of all the ads the one that stuck out the most was the Google Search On Ad. This ad marks Google’s first major push into TV advertising. It just showed how powerful Google is and what you can do with it.

The Motorola phone ad was funny, it’s like if you create a crappy phone just put a hot actress in the commercial then people will buy it!

This year’s ads were not that impressive at all!

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Is CES Slowly Going Away?

Bob Buskirk — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 19:06:26 +0000

I myself have been going to CES for 5 years now. For ThinkComputers it is really the highlight of the entire year, we really don’t attend any other trade shows. We get to see the latest technology, new products and catch up with old friends, not to mention getting to spend a week in Vegas. Something really stood out to me this year during CES…it was very small! Also this year CEA (the company that runs CES) tried to kick out many exhibitors who opted to use hotel rooms instead of paying for a booth.

Where was everything?
If you were on the show floor at all you definitely had to notice it was smaller. There were completely open spots on the show floor! The North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, which normally is car audio, was almost completely empty! Apparently what was left of car audio was moved to the Palms, which not only is off the strip you can’t even take the monorail to get there. The Sands Expo at the Venetian, which usually held a lot of niche products and vendors, was not even used; take a look at our Sands Expo article from last year. Many large companies who normally have decent size booths either opted for a very small booth or had meeting rooms instead.

Another thing that bothered me were the press rooms, rooms specifically for press members that have free WiFi, computers, printers, etc. In past years the press room was a nice comfortable place to work, they even had free drinks and snacks. This year the only free drink in the press room was water and there were no snacks at all. Press lunches used to be a big buffet, now you get a lunch ticket and a boxed lunch. The computers in the press room were running Windows XP Professional. You’re telling me you can’t get a large company to sponsor the press room? A sign of the times I guess?

Another thing that many companies have done in recent years is use a hotel suite to show off products. From what I’ve heard on average a booth at CES costs around $75,000 – $100,000 depending on the size and that is just for the space. Then you have to pay for construction of the booth etc, bringing costs up even more. I couldn’t imagine what large companies that have massive booth’s pay for them, I would guess some pay upwards of $500,000 in total cost if not more! Because of the hefty cost many companies display their products in a hotel. Let’s just say on average a hotel suite costs $1,000 a night during CES, include food and some other expenses, you are still under $10,000 for all of CES. You can see why many companies are doing this.

CEA Kicks Out Companies
The CEA who runs CES does offer a hotel suite package. The official CES hotels are The Venetian and Palazzo. Each had specific CES floors that allowed companies to display products, and get their name listed on the official CES Venetian / Palazzo suite guide. From what I was told this cost was $8,000 on top of the cost of the suite itself. And there is a catch, you are not allowed to sleep in the suite, it is just for display purposes only. So companies have to pay $8,000, plus the cost of the suite, plus the cost for another room for their employees.

Many companies had no need to be listed on the CES guide and did not feel like paying the $8,000 to CEA, which is very understandable. So they just went ahead and booked a suite themselves making sure ahead of time that they were allowed to display products. Well apparently this year CEA was cracking the whip on companies that did this. All hotel staff was told if they saw products being displayed in rooms that were not official CES rooms to report it. I was in one such room being given a product demo when the hotel manager and security guards asked anyone not registered to the room to leave the room. Not only was this very unprofessional it was embarrassing for the company in the suite.

I also met with a company later in the week that was kicked out of the Palazzo. They told me that they called ahead of time and made sure they were allowed to display products and have meetings. When the hotel found out they were displaying products and having meetings during the week they were asked to remove to products, but for some reason were allowed to have a party that night. Maybe because the party was being catered by the hotel? The next morning the company was asked to leave the hotel and still pay for the 4 days they had the room booked, when they only stayed 2. Funny they did this AFTER the party that was catered by the hotel.

I personally know of 2 companies that were asked to leave their suites at the Venetian / Palazzo, but I heard of up to 30 companies being ousted from the hotels. Because CEA has a deal with the Venetian and Palazzo I guess they can do this, but it is very unprofessional and many companies have done this in the past without any issues. It makes me think that the CEA put pressure on the Venetian / Palazzo to kick out companies that did not pay their fee.

DailyTech and Hardware Secrets both have articles on their experiences getting kicked out of hotel suites while meeting with companies

So is CES Going Away?
I really hope that CES is not going away, but this year the show was noticeably smaller and there was all of the drama within the Palazzo and Venetian. This could just be a sign of the times, but I hope that the 2011 CES is much larger and more exciting. I think next year you are going to see many companies using other hotels for meetings rather than the Venetian and Palazzo.

I originally posted this at ThinkComputers, but I figured I would post it here as well.

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Lenovo’s Blogger Nights

Bob Buskirk — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:49:01 +0000

Another really cool event I was able to attend during CES this year was Lenovo’s Blogger Nights. This was a 3 day event hosted at AquaKnox at the Venetian. The entire event was hosted by Lenovo, but each night was co-hosted by someone else. Wednesday night was co-hosted by social media club, Thursday Night was co-hosted by Social Media Jungle and Friday night was co-hosted by GDGT. Because CES was so crazy we were only able to make it on the last night, which was Friday.

I had never been to AquaKnox before and it is a really cool place. There were tons of free food and an open bar as well. Lenovo’s idea for the blogger nights was getting everyone together in a relaxed atmosphere where reps are not trying to shove products in your face. Lenovo did have products setup and a demo room, but you were not required to demo any of the products.

One thing that was missing from this event was free WiFi. I had brought my laptop to actually do some work at the event and I was unable to get on the internet. If you are brining tech media and bloggers together you should have some free WiFi! All in all it was a good event though! Here are some photos from the event.

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The 2010 PC Race For Charity

Bob Buskirk — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:12:52 +0000

The PC Race is one of the best events to attend during CES. Not only is it for a good cause, but you really get to network with a lot of people and hell it has the best food! Also it’s probably the only place you will be able to find most of the tech media all in one place! So the way this event works is that 30 contestants all tech media see who can build a computer the quickest with the winner getting $10,000 towards the charity of their choice. Second and third place also get cash prizes for charity and everyone’s computer that gets built does get donated to their charity so it is a win-win!

This year the event was live streamed on Ustream, but we have the recording of it embedded below.

In the end Chris Ramseyer of TweakTown took first place with a build time of 6 minutes 53 seconds. Here are some photos of the event!

ThinkComputers very own Colin Dean!

Fellow Pittsburgher @iJustine

Rob of Techgage

Dan of TechwareLabs

Paul of Hi Tech Legion

Chris of TweakTown….the winner!

Jason of TechwareLabs

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The CES 2010 Swag

Bob Buskirk — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:01:36 +0000

One thing that is great about going to conferences is all the free swag you get. Since I go to these events as media many companies have made up gift bags especially for media members. Another thing that I’ve also noticed is that the more established your site is the better swag you get! This year I really didn’t want to pick up that much swag mainly because I never really use half of it and it is a pain to pack in my suitcase, but I did get quite a few useful things this year.

The first thing that is always a keeper in the CES press bag. This year it was a vertical messenger bag, that had room inside it for a laptop and a few other accessories. It was a decent bag, but still does not beat the rolling backpacks CES had a few years back, those were awesome! It seems like every year since then CES has been giving media cheaper and cheaper bags.

Some of the best things I received this year would have to be a new motherboard from Cyberpower, Keyboard from OCZ, Geforce 210 video card from Shuttle, a pillow from Cooler Master, a 128GB SSD from Kingston, and a 500GB hard drive I won at the night before CES party!

This was definitely a year I actually received swag that I’m going to use, maybe I’ll do a giveaway with the rest of the swag, stay tuned for that!

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The 2010 Night Before CES Party

Bob Buskirk — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:51:01 +0000

Everyone knows the Night Before CES Party is always the best! It’s always packed, there is a great DJ, free food and drinks and of course they have it at the best location, Palms Place. This year the party was hosted by Cooltronics, Futurelooks, and Redux. Last year we were on the 56th floor of Palms Place, but this year we were up on the 58th floor! Once again this floor only has 4 suites all of which feature 3,120 square feet of space, a pool table, full kitchen, and five 42-inch plasma TV’s. It’s the perfect place to have a party!

This year’s party it seemed like everyone knew who I was. It was not me going up and saying hi to people it was the other way around, which was actually pretty nice. I finally got to meet Cameron from TweakTown, he flew all the way from Taipei to come to CES! One thing that is great about this party is the view, you can see the entire strip from the balcony of the suite!

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In Vegas for a Week

Bob Buskirk — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:48:49 +0000

Well it’s that time of year again, off to Vegas for CES. This trip is always a lot of fun and it sure gives me a break from all of the holiday madness of the past month. It also is good to get out of Pittsburgh and the cold, although it is only around 50 degrees in Vegas it is sure a lot better than like 15-20 degrees in Pittsburgh, and there is no snow!

Getting through the Pittsburgh airport was very easy, there was no line at the security check at all. We went right through and were in the terminal within 10 minutes. Instead of going right to our gate Colin and I decided to grab food so we stopped in O’Briens, which is sort of like an Irish Pub. The food wasn’t that bad, I got a steak salad.

Once we boarded our plane we seriously waited for over 30 minutes waiting for them to load luggage on to the plane. After that our plane had to be de-iced, which took another 15 minutes. Takeoff was a little bumpy, but we are finally up in the air.

If you want to track my trip you can easily do that by following me on Twitter, friending me on Facebook, following my Flickr stream, or just by checking back to this blog. Also if you want to meet up when you are in Vegas please email me or shoot me a message on twitter.

I am in Vegas for CES, which I go to every year for ThinkComputers so make sure you follow the ThinkComputers twitter account as well.

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Tracking Events on Twitter

Bob Buskirk — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:13:48 +0000

I have been using Twitter for quite some time now and I really did not find out its potential until a few months ago. Many people think that Twitter is just for seeing what your friends are up to or in my case seeing what I’m having to eat, but it is really a useful resource for tracking current events and things that are going on right this minute. This is really where you see the power of Twitter and why hashtags are extremely useful.

A few months ago when the G20 was happening in Pittsburgh there was sure a lot going on in the city. There were many demonstrations, riots, and other interesting things going on. When everything first started happening I really did not have any urge to go downtown and check things out. So since I am on the computer a lot I loaded up Seesmic Desktop and put in #G20 and #Pittsburgh in a search column and the tweets that included those hashtags started coming up. As the G20 started getting closer the more and more tweets came up, I saw pictures of blackhawk helicopters over the city, pictures of protesters, etc. It was very cool, and more informative than the news about the G20 that was on TV.

As one of the first protests was getting broke up by riot police twitter was going crazy! People were explaining it as it was happening and telling people who were stuck in the crossfire where to go. Reading all of these tweets I felt like I was really there in all of the action! It was like I was in a war room overseeing the battle! Like I said it was better than watching the news!

I finally decided to go down to check out the action the second night of the protests. With my iPhone I was able to still track the hastags and found out where the protests where happening and was able to know where to go to be safe and out of the line of police, who were basically taking arresting anyone who was out that night.

This really shows what a useful resource Twitter is and how it can keep you safe! It will be fun to track things going on at CES when I’m there in just a few days!

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