Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Why Dan Gillmor is a great journalist


Remembering Comdex

But I want to recall the better part of Comdex. For years it was the place where companies showed off new technology, or at least bragged about what they were planning to sell. It was a place where industry luminaries showed up not just to flog products but also to roam the cavernous convention floors, looking at all the cool new stuff people were inventing.

I will miss a ritual I later adopted at the Consumer Electronics Show, which for many of us replaced Comdex as the most important show of the year. I'd walk the most distant parts of the show floor in the most remote pavilion, far away from where gigantic companies like Microsoft, Intel and others held forth, looking for interesting technology that the small fry -- unable to afford prime show-floor real estate -- had wanted us to see. I'd see genuine entrepreneurship in action, and always learned something.


Attention editors and reporters, the exciting work in technology is almost always done by the little guys. If you are not telling their stories your readers will not be able to follow the industry.

(emphasis Technoflak)

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