The GIZMODO Kids Are BACK at CES – Opportunity for Revenge?

Remember last year at CES, when the kids at GIZMODO started turning off people’s displays during presentations? The high profile prank put into question the legitimacy of blogging at the show. Something that many bloggers were rightfully upset about because it put their reputations at stake as it was only recently that CES recognized bloggers and began providing accreditation, albeit segregated ones.

Yes, they separated grumpy old journalists from the spawn of Web 2.0, but from my recollection, the amenities and the free box lunches were fairly comparable at both press facilities and the only difference on the badges was a little “blogger” ribbon. The fight still rages on though as many events like the historically snobbish ShowStoppers Event, only recently removed a paragraph on their registration page that compared bloggers to regular people driving race cars, and how just because you drove a race car, does not make you a race car driving, like how just because you blog, does not make you a journalist. Although ShowStoppers is well known for being douches to people they don’t deem worthy, did we really need to give event organizers like them anymore reason to shut the door on bloggers?

What made the prank so controversial was the fact that there was no real apology to CES, companies or staff affected by this behavior. In fact, they seemed fairly proud of what they had done while staff at booths just trying to make a living, were brutally interrupted by having their presentations halted by these shenanigans. Not only is it embarrassing to sit up on stage with blank screens, but before it was made known what the cause of these black outs were, I’m sure that many presenters were visibly shaken off their game and many staff were put under undue stress by their bosses to try to fix a problem that they had nothing to do with. Well, I present to you your opportunity for retribution!

It appears that GIZMODO will be back for CES 2009. I don’t know how, but it probably required shoving quite a few more products down their pants than they are normally used to. For any of you disgruntled booth staff and presenters looking for sweet revenge on the “GIZKIDZ”, you might want to head on over to the Sandisk Booth on January 9th, where between the hours of 4 – 6PM, they will be having a “Battle of the Bloggers” where Gizmodo, CrunchGear, BusinessWeek, Network World, AppScout and more will compete in an epic RockBand 2 battle. I smell an opportunity for poetic justice here. Nothing pisses a kid off more than having their RockBand game disrupted by…oh…I don’t know…a blank screen?

I’m all for a good prank and what not, but when you start messing with people just doing their jobs and trying to make a living, then not try to produce a real apology, that’s just not right. Hopefully, some enterprising group of individuals will make good use of this information, while sparing the men and women just trying to do their jobs on the showfloor. I expect to see pictures and videos