Blogging at CES 2009

By Christopher Loncto, Sharp

Even amidst the doom and gloom of today's economy, it's amazing to me how much opportunity is out there. This morning I had two meetings that really energized me about the future of business, and the potential of Sharp, the company I work for.

First, a meeting with a well known company on the forefront of communication and while, I can't say what was proposed, or if anything would ever come out of it, I was excited about the opportunity.

Then, sitting down here at the Sharp NBC Universal Multimedia Lounge, I struck up a conversation with Rohit Bhargava, the SVP of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Ogilvy. I'm very intrigued with digital marketing and social media, and Rohit hit me right off the bat with some interesting concepts. He's written a book called Personality Not Included, which is all about creating and maintaining conversations with your customers. Should be great airplane reading for me tomorrow - if I'm not sleeping. Why I scheduled myself on an 8:20AM flight I cannot say. But I will get to see my wife and boys a little earlier, so that's a benefit.

Things have been busy here at the big show. Even though the overall attendance seems down the media presence seems to be just as large as last year's, and that has kept us busy. I was pleased to see some of our key press at our party last night at XS in the Wynn. I was even told we held the best press conference of all manufacturers, which was very flattering, considering the source.

Speaking of our party, we had a blast. As the official HDTV of Major League Baseball, some MLB stars like David Ortiz, John Maine, Joba Chamberlain and Hanley Ramirez stopped by to talk and take pictures with our guests. Very cool. NBC's Jimmy Fallon also stopped by, but unfortunately I didn't get to meet him.

I still haven't had a chance to check out the competition and the wireless things I've been meaning to. With a show this big I probably will get to see about 1% of what I want to see. I better go now.

Thanks for reading. This has been a lot of fun.