While "live" online show reporting is commonplace
these days, few people know where it began. This is something I was reminded of when I ran
into Tyll Hertsens in a hallway at the Venetian. Tyll is the president of HeadRoom Corporation, a manufacturer
of headphone amplifiers and accessories, as well as an online retailer for headphones and
almost everything that's related. It was actually Tyll who started it all more than ten
years ago, while I simply watched -- and learned. I call this story "The
Handoff."
Doug Schneider (left) and Tyll Hertsens
It was 1997 and the place was San Francisco, that year's
home to the now-defunct "Stereophile show." While we were doing
traditional show reporting -- i.e., long text-based reports days, even weeks,
after the fact -- Tyll, a manufacturer, not even a publisher, came to the show with a
laptop, a digital camera, and the promise that he'd eclipse us all by doing on-the-spot
reporting. So, while we were casually walking the halls taking notes and snapping
pictures, Tyll was scurrying here and there taking pictures fast and typing things into
his laptop at lightning speed as he went around the show. Frankly, it was inspiring to see
him move so fast and do so much.
However, it was also quite apparent that it was tiring. In
fact, one day at lunch while we were lounging around, we could see Tyll busy typing and
having no time to eat. It was pretty apparent that what he was doing was more than one guy
could handle. Furthermore, this was at a time when there wasn't Wi-Fi anywhere, and none
of the hotels had high-speed Internet access. It was all done through dial-up, which could
be very unreliable.
But, his results were impressive. Tyll had plenty of
coverage up on the spot, long before anyone else did. Furthermore, it was apparent that
his method of reporting was the wave of the future that even if he didn't do, somebody
else would. This is where "The Handoff" comes in.
Following that show, Tyll vowed never to do it again;
however, I vowed that the SoundStage! Network would pick up that ball and run with it. So,
we used what we learned from Tyll's experiment and we went to the next CES with about five
people, a single computer, a couple cameras, and reliable ways to dial into the Internet.
That first show we did was tough, too, but we learned from it again...and again...and
again...and again.
It's now 2009, and we've covered more shows than anyone and
posted coverage as it happens. What's more, we're still improving -- for instance, we took
everything we learned from the previous shows and have attempted to make this
report the best one yet.
Today, we're the leaders in online show reporting, but
we're also well aware that we wouldn't be if it weren't for those initial lessons we
learned from Tyll Hertsens, the guy who actually started it all.
