CES, the International Consumer Electronics Show, is a huge geek shindig held yearly in Las Vegas. There are 2500 exibitors talking about over 20,000 new products. There were keynotes from the likes of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Ford President Alan Mulally, and Nokia President Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. There were celebrities like Lady Gaga, Drew Carey, author James Patterson and techie Guy Kawasaki.
The knowledge tracks from CES include emerging technology, home entertainment, in-vehicle technology, issues and attitudes, research, the environment, the future, and wireless communications.
It's an all male lineup of keynoters, but there were women speakers and women in attendance. Techmamas was there, speaking at a Mommy Tech Summit. The Mommy Tech Summit was a conference within a conference, and also held a spot on the exhibit hall floor showcasing the latest in portable devices, wireless phones, notebooks, photo sharing services, and accessories that appeal to expectant moms and young families. @techmama posted many tweets and photos from CES—search her Twitter stream for CES to get lots of tidbits.
MSNBC reported Tech firms targeting Mom as the real decision maker from CES, as if they suddenly discovered while visiting the Mommy Tech exhibits that women make most of the financial decisions in families. MSNBC said, "CES dedicated a series of sessions to mothers and their use of technology, which demolished stereotypes of women as technologically illiterate." I'm happy that women got some attention at CES, so I'm holding myself back from the snarky remarks about this type of reporting.
Stacy Libby from Laptop TV Mom and Silicon Valley Moms was in Las Vegas and Tweeting busily. She mentioned some of the women in attendance, including Jodi Kahn of iVillage. Another Stacy who was in attendance is Stacy Moore, who tweeted during the Qualcomm keynote that phones laid out like bricks would create a wall bigger than the great wall of China. Of course, that didn't stop Qualcomm from introducing new products at CES.
Laura Diaz from Inhabitat was looking for CES 2010: Green Gadgets Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show! and she found plenty of them. Among the green electronics she found solar chargers, human powered generators, recycling gadgets, lots of things made from recycled materials, new ideas for eco-routing and eco-driving, and new types of building materials.
Susie Wee blogged about The Intel Keynote, the Microsoft Keynote, and very likely there will be more on her blog by the time this article is published. She mentioned big themes at CES on Facebook.
Susie Had a full day at CES today. Some big themes: 3D TV, android mobile phones, slates/tablets/e-readers, netbooks, connected TVs w/ internet apps.
Sarah Austin was there making videos. She interviewed several people from Ford, including filming this demo of the ambient lighting features Ford is coming up with.
Rosa Golijan was on hand from Gizmodo, covering CES with Photos and videos of various antics. Speaking of photos, there's a Flickr stream with a growing number of photos.
PaidContent was there, with Staci Kramer reporting in tweets, as in this example Steve Ballmer's Keynote in Tweets. Corvida Raven from SheGeeks attended. At the end of day one, she asked, Where is the Innovative Technology and expressed some disappointment over what she was seeing.
It's probably a reflection of the way things are now, but the tweets are more abundant than the in-depth blog posts about almost everything at CES. Many women there were tweeting about specific products they were checking out. We may see blog posts coming out this week, now that the conference is over, detailing more about what we can expect in terms of new technology based on the gadgets and gizmos that women found interesting in Las Vegas.
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Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor|Web Teacher|First 50 Words