It’s pretty clear what happened here. Dan Hesse was there, and someone realized that online journalists and bloggers would ask tough questions. PhoneNews.com has lost count of the number of times we’ve asked for interviews with Mr. Hesse. We’ve even gone as far as to ask repeatedly starting several months before an event.

At tonight’s debacle, we provided our PhoneNews.com and Newsroom Network credentials. I even showed them the emails where we RSVPed (in two separate emails, no less). But, to no avail. After wasting an hour (yes, a full 60 minutes in transit, walking, and waiting) of our time, they decided to hold a “separate but equal” event for the online media, sans all the stuff they didn’t want us to have access to.

Anyone who can recall what happened to the African American community, knows how separate but equal fails miserably. We won’t be going. Back in 2008, the CEA tried to relegate CES online media as merely “bloggers”, but backed down after just one year, letting journalists choice their identities and accommodations.

Now, in the past, Newsroom Network had a “morons of the show” award. And, technically, we still do. But, instead, I’m going to try something different this year.

Instead of aborting all coverage of Sprint at CES, we’re going to cover them. But, we’re also asking for them and Stanton Communications (the people that managed this debacle) for a formal apology.

We don’t really care where it’s posted, say the @Sprint twitter feed, or on Stanton’s or Sprint’s PR web sites. Doesn’t really matter… we’re not asking for grandstanding, simply a note that they dropped the ball and won’t do it again.

And we’ll keep reminding them of this, slowly posting this from one site, to twitter feed, to the next. Even on places where it doesn’t quite make sense… spreading the word until it clicks in people’s minds.

Because, that’s our job at Newsroom Network, to inform so companies improve. Other members of the media just take it… we don’t. It’s why we report and advocate to the consumer, and when companies waste hour(s) of our time… we have to hold them to account, no different from when they waste your time.

Update: Sprint did issue an apology to me for the problem at CES. Stanton Communications claimed that they didn’t receive our emails until weeks later, when we had started to contact Sprint representatives directly (having not received confirmation of our RSVP). They also claimed that the fire marshall was preventing them from letting additional people in, something that was not stated to us by Stanton at the event.

Since CES, Sprint and Stanton have treated us with the high level of respect that we’ve come to expect from Sprint media relations, they’ve clearly worked to demonstrate that this was a one-time mistake.

And, with that, we’ve started looking at other options. One of those, is Las Vegas.

Don’t get me wrong, all the buzz about there being “lots of synergy” and “great tech culture” that’s all true about Silicon Valley. But, Silicon Valley has lost what it was all about I’m afraid. I’m a decade late, and a few hundred thousand dollars of seed money short.

What Silicon Valley was about, was cheap, available area to develop in a bay of brainiacs. Since the dot-com bubble, Silicon Valley has become a bloated, land-locked area. Even Google has to lease land from NASA. NASA! Nobody has room to expand, and rent for a startup is sky-high. This isn’t how it was, and it isn’t how it was supposed to be. Companies were supposed to be able to slowly grow out of their homes, to small offices, to venture-backing, to launch. And, that’s just something you can’t do in a bad economy staring down rising rents. Yes, rising even in this economy.

Las Vegas is one of two areas that I believe will become the Silicon Valley 2.0. The other is Detroit, but I have doubts about Detroit’s long-term viability. Both have clear things that put them in the running: A poor economy has ruined their land values, along with having the infastructure that is a virtual perfect incubator for Silicon Valley.

Here’s what I see happening, long-term at least. Las Vegas will become the city where tech companies go to incubate. When they grow, they will either attach to Vegas, or re-locate as strong companies to Silicon Valley 1.0. Think of it as a graduation ceremony for companies that “make it.”

Clearly though, MechaWorks has some room to grow before it “makes it”. Newsroom Network is not yet off the ground, and Full Circle (gosh I want to say the final name that we’ve trademarked) has not yet been announced to consumers.

So, we’re going to survey the Vegas area closely. No, we won’t make the CES cutoff if we move there, so don’t ask if we’ll have a booth. Sorry, we’re not going to waste money on it this year. But, I will let you know what we decide, as we’ll probably make the decision by around when CES arrives.

I have no idea how long I will sleep in today, but I suspect it will be much closer to 12 hours than eight.

To describe how big the show is, is really hard. It fills all four areas of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Just for comparison, CTIA typically fills two to three. Then, it fills two ballrooms of the (connected) Hilton hotel. And, it fills half of the Sands Convention Center (only accessible really by shuttle).

I’m tired. The staff off site is tired. It was downright exhausting. There’s the walking, the massive amount of articles, and staring at what’s left to cover in the aftermath.

The one silver lining? CentralGadget.com is already a hit, and I want to thank everyone out there for making it happen. Keep tuning in over there, this is only the beginning.

Well, for starters, our server went down at 5 AM. Just for point of reference, I finally got settled into my room and went to bed at 3 AM. Two hours sleep… so you might say I was broken from the get go.

Then, the WWAN connection broke. Went to the AT&T backup, and the drivers refused to install (multiple restarts, chkdsks, etc have failed to fix it) So, we ponied up for in-room Wi-Fi. Wonder what happened next? You guessed it, the in-room Wi-Fi started to timeout like crazy… likely due to the activity from everyone using it at CES.

What next? Well, I toggled over to our Verizon WWAN line, powered by an HTC Titan. Unfortunately, power drains out of that faster than you can charge it (seriously), so it became a jumping around game with the batteries. This was about when Palm was getting on the stage…

After I got the press badge sorted away (another 30 minutes there), I finally got to the show. Photos, details, got it. Went to upload it all online… and the memory card reader broke. 90 minutes later, I finally was able to buy another one… and that takes me to where I began penning this post.

It has been a brutal day. But, going sleepless for another night should bring things back up to speed. Did I mention I’m taking the week after next off? This is no vacation for us in the media… while this is an extreme case, it is a draining, loss-leading venture.

Forgot to mention, I’ve also had two Motorola P790s fail, and another staff member’s hard drive just got the knock of death.

In short, the term blogger in my opinion, needs to just go away. CES is not helping with that process… except to make everyone confused about what a blogger is.

Some of our competitors at MechaWorks were even issued a mix of badges. This insulates the notion that CEA (the people behind CES) just decided to thin the air, and give known quantities press badges, and everyone else blogger badges.

Big mistake. One, the CEA can’t possibly win any positive media attention by making bloggers second-class-citizens. Imagine if 10% of people with blogger badges run into a brick wall just once at the show.

Two, it’s going to cause problems when bloggers are, well, not bloggers. When they can’t get into press briefing rooms, meetings, conferences, luncheons, etc.

Now, are some of the other MechaWorks sites (like our new CentralGadget.com), actually blogs? Well, you tell me, sound off in the comments.

P.S. Apologizes for the delays in doing some actual posting on my personal blog (yes, press can blog). Launching CentralGadget.com took a bit more energy than anyone on the team thought.

Update: I was going to post an update, talking about how I realized that CEA had the best of intentions. But, since then, they appear to be making things right. They are swapping out blogger badges with press badges for people on a case-by-case basis. I haven’t heard any established media person being turned down that has asked today… myself included.

My suggestion remains the same however. Next year, just have two press rooms, and let people meander about as they fill up.

Not foreseeing that, I already locked in other plans for next week… oh well, hopefully this will stick and I can attend all the future CESes.

Many thought it was weird in ’04, ’05 and ’06 that PhoneNews.com chose Macworld Expo over CES. But, we had good reason… Apple has unloaded just about as many wireless innovations at Macworld, as the entire CE industry at CES. Need a list? AirPort / 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n, Bluetooth, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, IMAP IDLE, iSync, SyncML… oh, and that little device that takes the entire web with you.