It’s Sunday late afternoon in Vegas, and I’m in the BlogHaus at the Bellagio. Very cool setup in the suite here (stand by for some pix later), Just chatted with Robert Scoble, and he told me they have an amazing amount of bandwidth — the best anywhere here, I’m sure. He said some 400 bloggers RSVPed, many at the last minute, a lot of ’em to take advantage of the ‘Net access, no doubt. So this place will get busy — especially after the Gates keynote, which is about to fire up at the Venetian. Right now, there are probably 50-60 people here.
But back to my first post from Vegas. Actually, this one’s not about CES per se, but rather a pre-event I attended yesterday and today called Storage Visions, across the strip at The Flamingo. 
A presentation this morning by Steve DiFranco, VP of sales and marketing for AMD, was interesting. He said that in the next three years, more glass will be sold than in the last 30! And a lot of that glass it for things we look at (not through, like windows), meaning all the many displays we have in our homes and offices on computers, TVs, phones and what have you. “This phenomenon has gone almost unnoticed,” he said. But, as you increase the amount of glass, he said, “you have to increase the amount of content you put on it” — which is certainly a focus of both this event and CES. “There are now multiple places to view content in our homes,” DiFranco said, and really everywhere we go. “And our houses must become more aware of content,” he said, referring to the huge opportunity in home networking devices (and his firm undoubtedly has some things up its sleeve in this regard).
“The real problem is the disorganization of this content,” DiFranco said. “Consumers must become content managers.” When the house gets connected, there will be less need for storage on individual devices, he explained, and more need for a “bit bucket” type of device, meaning central storage.
“The ‘connector’ becomes the next big thing after all the glass you’ve just bought,” DiFranco said. In fact, this may be the Year of Glass, but he says next year will be the “Year of the Connector.”
Today’s plugged-in consumers he called the “exposed generation” — meaning their desire to share content, a la YouTube and MySpace, et al. But, he said, they really don’t care where their stuff is stored. “So it will go where it’s cheapest and easiest to access.”
An interesting point DiFranco made in closing was that you’ll see amazingly little in the way of “the connector” at CES this year.
Tags: BlogHaus, PodTech, Robert Scoble, CES,
Storage Visions
Nonetheless, I’m sure anxiously following all the talk about what will be announced later next week in SF by his royal supremeness, Chairman Steve. And I’m sure I’ll be spending some time in the next few days in Vegas talking with people about what they think is coming.
At last count, some 150 of us bloggers will be converging there to hang out in an upper-floor suite at the Bellagio, on Seagate’s dime. It’s a 24 x7 press room-slash-hangout-slash-party for bloggers of every stripe! Hey, who needs the show floor and all the sore feet that go along with it! Someone recently called this event “probably the best, and longest, blogger meetup ever”! I’m really looking forward to it, to seeing old friends and meeting new ones, and will certainly do some live blogging from there.
The limited-edition kit shown includes Vaio TX notebook, a privacy screen, and and Cybershot digital camera, which are all are packaged in a stylish aluminum attachĂ© case. Get this: also included is an exclusive welcome letter and a serialized glass photo certificate verifying it’s a real Sony Vaio notebook. Hey, that glass certificate will look good as you strike a pose with your martini glass, no? Shaken, not stirred, of course… And here’s a shot of yet another James Bond/Casino Royale product bundle offered on the site, this one including the above UX Micro PC model. 
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