I understand that there’s logistics and manpower to be considered here but I feel a little let down. CeBit gave me access to a CeBit press area on their website but now won’t give me a press pass. I’ve been blocked out because I’m an online minion. A speck of paper dust in the great printing press of real journalists. And before anyone stumbling across this post thinks ‘Stop moaning and do some training like a normal hard-working member of the press you online minion. You speck of dust you’ let me outline my case.
In Feb 2006, Carrypad was a blog about UMPCs, then it was a better blog, then it turned into a portal and then the portal got bigger and better. 1 million pages were viewed and by the time CES 2007 came around, 700 articles had been written about UMPCs and a partner portal had been bought out. Today, Carrypad is registered as a company and will be continuing to work on UMPC portals full-time just like one of those ‘Man earns living from Blogging’ articles you see in the Sunday press. Its not just a little blog anymore you see. And now, the organisers of the event that kicked-off the UMPC market in 2006 and listed UMPCs above HDTV in their 2006 trends roundup, won’t give a press pass to the person that does as much research, news, reporting on UMPCs as anyone else in the world. (except possibly Ctitanic who, some say, has fourteen arms!) If CES can accommodate the bloggers in such a good way (its poetic that one of the most successful blogging setups at CES was called the BlogHaus!) then what’s different over here? If anything I would expect less bloggers to go to CeBit and the admin to be less of an overhead than at CES.
This is snipped from the CeBit rules and regs that where updated at the end of November, just before I started my application process.
5. Due to the widespread availability of the Internet and the problems this creates in checking out
journalistic credentials, Deutsche Messe press ID cards will only be issued to journalists in possession of
a recognized press ID card. The only exception will be for Internet editorial staff employed by media
companies or publishing houses such as SPIEGEL online etc.
Lets not beat around the bush here. They are in the right and I’m obviously writing this in a rather cheap crybaby kind of way in the hope that it garners support and gets picked up by CeBit (press accreditation link) and that they reconsider the blogger and Internet publications situation. Personally I’m going to be investing a lot of time and money in my CeBit project and I want to make sure that the site visitors and my CeBit sponsors (I hope they’re still going to do it now!) get the best value possible. I guess there will be many other bloggers in this situation too so out of for them and I (right grammer?,) please excuse me while I Technorati tag this across non-UMPC sectors and mention names like Robert Scoble, who has blogged about this issue before. It doesn’t look like there’ll be any sort of Blog Haus in Das Haus der Technologie – CeBit 2007
Are there any other bloggers reading this that got a press pass for CeBit? Anyone fancy inviting me? Free interview and lessons on how to drink German beer in return!
Steve.
, and lots more naughty link-seeking tags!
