Each year in January I head to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics show and every year I don’t think it can compare to the year before, but this year really blew many of my previous trips out of the water. It seemed like everything fell into place this year and I did some things in Vegas I’ve never done before!

I’ve explained here on the blog before why I love the CES trip, but I will go over it again. While it is technically a work trip it is also one of the few times I get to see so many friends that I have in the industry. It is a great feeling seeing people you do business with all year and at times it seems like one big party. I think that the CES trip is the perfect balance of work and play and that’s what makes it so great.

So as far as work went this year I only had two other guys come with me to cover the show (Jack & Derrick). Jack has been coming to CES with me since 2009 and this was Derrick’s second year. Having a 3-man team left us a little short-handed, but I think we did a great job covering the show and the guys really did a good job keeping up. On ThinkComputers we have 66 CES articles published and 52 videos on our YouTube. I do not think that is bad at all!

When it came to partying this year I had a great time, but still kept a good balance. I would say out of all of the industry parties (I only went to 4) the MSI party was the best. It was at Moon in the Palms and they actually had a good DJ and people were dancing and having a good time! I have been in the Hugh Hefner suite at the Palms in the past, but I have never gone swimming in the pool on the balcony there, well that happened this year! I also went to Hakkasan with friends in the industry one night and we had a blast!

At the end of the week we decided to get a 2-bedroom suite at Palms Place and just like last year with Vdara it was a great way to end the week and finish strong. Stay tuned for an entire post on that suite! I think the biggest thing this year was that I was a little less stressed, things were getting done and if something did go wrong I took it in stride and did not flip out. Also Jack and Derrick really helped out a bunch this year and made it possible to get up as much content as we did. Remember you are only as strong as your team!

Expect post on many of the highlights of the trip!

Thanks to everyone that made this years CES trip so memorable, see you all next year!