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Why Didn’t Pepcom Recognize Leo Laporte?

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Right now, the Internet is buzzing with CES news as bloggers check out the latest consumer technology offerings. Last night, though, there was a break in the tweets about tech as people expressed outrage over popular podcaster, radio show host, and blogger Leo Laporte was denied access to a pre-CES press event called The Digital Experience put on by PR company Pepcom. Apparently, they didn’t know who he was. Leo’s pretty much a go-to guy in the tech field, so as you can guess, most of his fans were baffled.

Sad panda picture Leo posted on his blog after being denied access to The Digital Experience at CES 2012.

In a quick audio clip, Leo says that he was denied access because they didn’t have credentials – proof that he qualifies as press in the tech field. I don’t know if that was a mistake on Leo’s end by not sending in paperwork or a mistake on Pepcom’s end by misplacing the paperwork. My attempts to contact Pepcom have gone unanswered.

Because Pepcom is being tight-lipped about what happened at The Digital Experience door, I’ll be clear about one thing: I don’t think an a-lister in any industry has the right to demand, “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!?!” when they haven’t followed the registration process for an event. It’s rude, and more importantly, event staffers need the numbers ahead of time to make sure there’s enough food and they’re following fire code laws. That said, I really doubt that this is what happened. This isn’t Leo’s first time at a major event, and he’s not known for being a diva. I think this was simply a case of crossed wires (appropriate for a tech event, right?). I think there was a mix-up with the registration and Leo was mistakenly left off the list.

No matter who was to blame, though, what really matters is that Pepcom staffers – those at the door representing the company – should have without question allowed him access.

See, if you’re a business owner, especially a PR agency, you’re responsible for knowing who the content creators are in your industry. Access for Leo would have meant a ton of additional press for their event, and for all of the companies at their event. Word on the street is that the companies involved paid $15,000 to have a booth at The Digital Experience, and when you’re shelling out that kind of dough, you want access to the best media personalities and analysts in the industry. The fact that Leo instead went somewhere else that evening was a huge blow to those companies.

It can be difficult to know everyone in your industry, especially when you’re new. I’ll never forget the look of shock and horror on a friend’s face when I asked, “Who is Chris Brogan?” several years ago. As a relatively new blogger, I legitimately didn’t know. So I don’t really blame the people working the door for not knowing.

The first person I blame is the person who put together the list. If the people working the door were newbies, they should have had a group of people under the header, “These people didn’t complete the registration process correctly, but they need to be allowed access anyway because they’re a-listers and we want them at our event.” Okay, maybe the header needs a little work, but you get the idea.

At the very least, there should have been protocol – someone at Pepcom who well acquainted with people in the tech industry should have been on call to give approval (or not) if someone arrive who wasn’t on the list. Especially when they arrived with a camera crew who was on the list. It was obviously a mistake.

The second person (or team of people) I blame is whoever was running Pepcom’s social media accounts.

It’s bad enough that this was exploding on Twitter and Pepcom didn’t respond. After Leo’s initial tweet, tons of his fans tweeted about it. When looking to see if Pepcom responded…I couldn’t even find a valid Twitter account for them. Their site says @PepcomEvents, but there’s no profile under that name, and @Pepcom is a egg profile with no tweets. Maybe I’m missing something? How are you a PR events company without a Twitter account?

Update: I’ve been told be a few people that @PepcomEvents was their Twitter handle, but when they started getting all sorts of negative attention over the Leo incident, they changed it so people couldn’t find them and eventually just completely disappeared. I can’t confirm this because, once again, Pepcom ignored my emails and phone call…but…WOW. There are no other words. Just wow.

What they do definitely have is a Facebook page…which says nothing about the Leo Laporte incident. in fact, they very quickly deleted every post mentioning it as it was uploaded to their page. You can see now that their wall is squeaky clean with no negative posts at all.

But this is the Internet. Once something is posted, it doesn’t just disappear. Facebook user Adam J. Kragt was smart enough to start taking screenshots as posts were being deleted. Pepcom took that post off their wall of course, but you can still see the images here.

People were mad. In his audio clip, Leo sounded more disappointed than angry, but in any case, this was a huge Pepcom mistake, and they didn’t do anything to correct it. Social media gives us the awesome ability to screw up in public…but it also gives us the chance to easily and publicly apologize and make things right. As soon as he was denied access, Pepcom should have reached out to him on Twitter or Facebook and corrected the problem. Somebody was obviously monitoring their social media accounts (at least, on Facebook), so why didn’t anyone try to fix the mistake? Why did they instead try to hide it by deleting negative posts?

Will this blow over? Yes. I’m sure an equally big scandal will rock the Internet soon (if it hasn’t already during the writing of this post). People will be saying, “Pepcom who?”

But what really matters to Pepcom, to any business, is the button line – the money. And if I was a company involved with their event or thinking about getting involved with it, I wouldn’t be so quick to jump on board next year. I would be more inclined to spend my sponsorship budget on other events where major players in the industry aren’t turned away at the door. Leo has said that he won’t be going back to their events and I’d be worried, as a sponsor, that others would follow in his footsteps. So while the general public will probably easily forget, the people who write the checks won’t…and when they search for press about The Digital Experience, this post is what they’ll find.

** Update by Rick**

When I read Alli’s post, I pretty much agreed with her entire Post. One thing that struck me is that Leo’s TWiT is one of the most high profile press entities at CES. He has one of only two networks I am aware of that have a booth at the front of the show. The other is CNET.

I had our Deb go take a couple photos of Leo’s booth. Here is the TWiT booth at the very front of the South Hall at CES.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty hard for any attendee at CES including the PR flacks to miss.

A Blog’s Eye View: CES Exposed

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The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest trade show for consumer technology, is underway in Las Vegas today (January 10th – 13th).

By taking one quick look at the conference schedule, you’ll see there are some fantastic speakers, tracks and sessions. Trade show attendees will hear from speakers at Microsoft, Intel, Ford, Verizon and Facebook – just to name a few.

If you check your twitter stream for #CES or #CES2012, you’ll see there are many content creators attending the event who are giving us a great look into the show. It’s easy to get lost in CES twitter hash tag land, which might leave you wondering, “Whose tweets should I follow?”

Who To Follow

Here’s an alphabetical list of who to follow, who is covering it well and who is there in the trenches of CES. The list includes several of our speakers from BlogWorld L.A. 2011, as well as a few members from the BlogWorld team.

(Side note: I’ll be adding to this list throughout today and Wednesday.)

Beth Blecherman@TechMama, Technologist- CoolMomTech.com, Founder- Techmamas.com

Bryan Rhoads@bryanrhoads, global social media @Intel

Cali Lewis@CaliLewis, Host of GeekBeat.TV. Tech correspondent for CNN, FOX and Sirius 101’s GeekTime

Calvin Lee@mayhemstudios, Blogs at Method to Mayhem

Cathy Brooks@CathyBrooks, Raconteur and genetically inclined connector. Evangelist & Head of Strategic Relationships for mobile search

Dave Delaney@DaveDelaney, Founder of Geek Breakfast & Nashcocktail. Co-founder of BarCamp & PodCamp Nashville

Dave Taylor@DaveTaylor, Blogger, entrepreneur, public speaker, dad from AskDaveTaylor.com

Deb Ng@debng and @blogworldexpo, Social media enthusiast, oversharer, and Conference Director for BlogWorld. Author of Online Community Management for Dummies.

Heather Solos@HeatherSolos, Blogs at Home-Ec101.com

Jennifer James @MomBloggersClub, Founder of Mom Bloggers Club

Jen Wojcik@TheJenATX, Biz Dev for BlogWorld & New Media Expo, Co-Founder PinqSheets.com

John Pozadides@JohnPoz, Co-host of GeekBeat.TV and blogs at www.onemansblog.com

Kelby Carr@TypeAMom, Founder of Type A Parent conference

Kristi Trimmer@dragonflytweet, Social Media, Design and Editing

Leo Laporte @leolaporte and @TWiT, Podcaster, broadcaster and tech pundit. The Tech Guy on the Premiere Radio Networks. Live at live.twit.tv

Mike Schneider@schneidermike, Blogs about social media and technology at www.schneidermike.com

Patti Hosking @newmediapatti, Director of Business Development for BlogWorld and New Media Expo, Employee #1

Rick Calvert@blogworld, BlogWorld & New Media Expo founder

Sarah Kimmel@Tech4Moms, Blogs about technology for moms at www.tech4mommies.com

Syed Balkhi@SyedBalkhi, Creator of WPBeginner.com

 

What Is The Next Big Event?

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Do you have an event, conference or meeting, besides of course our event which I just talked about, that you want us to know about?   CES was a huge event in Las Vegas last week, and our very own Rick Calvert and Patti Hosking was in attendance along with the reported 150,000 other people all wanting to see what the next cool thing was in consumer electronics.  We at BlogWorld & New Media Expo love to attnd these types of events and we plan to make sure we have someone that can make it to help promote our show and to also report on what we see in the industry and trends and news.  The problem is, it is tough for us to keep track of all of the events in our industry.

Mashable, RWW, TechCrunch and others all have calendars of events and we tend to keep our eyes on those lists to make sure we see all of the events that are reported in those industries, but event they don’t have a handle on all of them.  What I want to know is what are your events?  Are yopu running something that we shoudl attend?  Do you have a conference, or a show, or a trade event in an industry that doesn’t necessarily fit into the tech world or maybe it is on the fringe of social media, or other places you think we should know?  What about in other countries, are you planning on having a show in your city and in your country not in the United States?

With the number of categories our convention and trade show covers, with real estate, business, sports, military service, technology, monetization, politics, etc, etc.  What events are not being publicized that we should attend?  Leave a comment and URL here if you have an event we should notice.  I am also going to start compiling a list of events that are brought to our attention as we want to help you promote your event as much as our own.  If we can make a hub for people to come and find events in the new media world, we would love to help.

I think the next big thing that we may be attending is Affiliate Summit West again in Las Vegas.  Many of our friends and track leaders and speakers all attend that event on affiliate marketing.  Will we be seeing you there?

MacWorld isn’t A Trade Show!

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Excuse me but I have to rant for a moment. First Robert Scoble posts that Apple pulling out of Mac World is a sign that Social Media is killing trade shows. Which was bad enough but in Robert’s defense he is a tech blogger not a trade show expert.  But then Expo Magazine posts this:

Why does a trade show have to have a grid of booth spaces? Why can’t a trade show also be a film festival?

Well because that’s what makes it a trade show. According to Websters:

: a large exposition to promote awareness and sales of especially new products within an industry <a computer trade show>
Now a trade show can be lots of other things as well including a film festival but having booths, or tables, or exhibits of some sort is what makes it a trade show by definition.
That point aside MacWorld isn’t a trade show, it’s a consumer show with a trade element to it. Which is exactly why the end of the article mentions this:
Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld is part of a larger corporate strategy de-emphasizing trade shows in favor of reaching customers directly through its retail outlets.
You see consumers visit retail stores to buy things. Wholesale distributors and retailers attend trade shows to select products to sell in their retail outlets. Most trade shows do not let consumers in (officially) they sneak in (in big numbers at events like NAMM, CES and the now defunct E3). Exhibitors at trade shows do not build their booths to see consumers, in fact they hate dealing with them because that is not their purpose for exhibiting.
/rant off

MacWorld isn't A Trade Show!

Author:

Excuse me but I have to rant for a moment. First Robert Scoble posts that Apple pulling out of Mac World is a sign that Social Media is killing trade shows. Which was bad enough but in Robert’s defense he is a tech blogger not a trade show expert.  But then Expo Magazine posts this:

Why does a trade show have to have a grid of booth spaces? Why can’t a trade show also be a film festival?

Well because that’s what makes it a trade show. According to Websters:

: a large exposition to promote awareness and sales of especially new products within an industry <a computer trade show>
Now a trade show can be lots of other things as well including a film festival but having booths, or tables, or exhibits of some sort is what makes it a trade show by definition.
That point aside MacWorld isn’t a trade show, it’s a consumer show with a trade element to it. Which is exactly why the end of the article mentions this:
Apple’s decision to pull out of Macworld is part of a larger corporate strategy de-emphasizing trade shows in favor of reaching customers directly through its retail outlets.
You see consumers visit retail stores to buy things. Wholesale distributors and retailers attend trade shows to select products to sell in their retail outlets. Most trade shows do not let consumers in (officially) they sneak in (in big numbers at events like NAMM, CES and the now defunct E3). Exhibitors at trade shows do not build their booths to see consumers, in fact they hate dealing with them because that is not their purpose for exhibiting.
/rant off

Are You A Gadget Blogger Headed to CES? Don’t Miss the Big Blogger Party!

Author:

The Blogworld gang is headed to CES, and for the third year in a row we’ll be attending the “It won’t Stay in Vegas” blogger party hosted by our friends at the Parnassus Group and Platinum sponsor AMD.

As usual, they have an all star lineup of gadget and tech bloggers on the guest list, including Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, Andru Edwards, and hundreds of other tech bloggers.

Gary Vaynerchuk has picked out some great wine for the attendees,(view Gary’s keynote from BlogWorld 2008 here) and Sony is hosting a game lounge, with comfy seating and plenty of room for people to play all kinds of games on a single console, over a local LAN, or against the rest of the world on Sony¹s PlayStation Network (PSN).

Jim Turner and I hope to see you there!

The party is open to any bloggers who host a focused, editorially independent (non-vendor) blog and cover the tech or gadget space. You can request an invitation here:

Are You A Gadget Blogger Headed to CES? Don't Miss the Big Blogger Party!

Author:

The Blogworld gang is headed to CES, and for the third year in a row we’ll be attending the “It won’t Stay in Vegas” blogger party hosted by our friends at the Parnassus Group and Platinum sponsor AMD.

As usual, they have an all star lineup of gadget and tech bloggers on the guest list, including Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, Andru Edwards, and hundreds of other tech bloggers.

Gary Vaynerchuk has picked out some great wine for the attendees,(view Gary’s keynote from BlogWorld 2008 here) and Sony is hosting a game lounge, with comfy seating and plenty of room for people to play all kinds of games on a single console, over a local LAN, or against the rest of the world on Sony¹s PlayStation Network (PSN).

Jim Turner and I hope to see you there!

The party is open to any bloggers who host a focused, editorially independent (non-vendor) blog and cover the tech or gadget space. You can request an invitation here:

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