No Ticket Needed. But Where’s Your Ticket?

I will admit, in my pre­vi­ous post I was say­ing that I would rather see Steve Jobs, so per­haps is kar­ma that I got turned away at the door from see­ing Bill Gates’ keynote address. I did come to Las Vegas a day ear­ly to see Bill Gates’ keynote address but was not able to get in tonight because I didn’t have a pink tick­et to get into the ball­room. But why didn’t I have a tick­et? Check out what the CES web­site says about the keynote speech­es.

Note about keynote seat­ing: The Venet­ian ball­room reserved for this year’s speech­es will accom­mo­date 3,500−4,000 atten­dees. This is a stag­ger­ing 2,000 seats over the total capac­i­ty of our pre­vi­ous facil­i­ty. No tick­et will be required for admit­tance. Keynote seat­ing will once again oper­ate on a first-come/­first serve basis.

There were quite a few angry peo­ple as they were turn­ing away peo­ple. This pho­to above was right at the entrance I was turned away from. I hope it’s not a sign of a CES to come.