In addition to the usual magical fare that you’d expect from such a master, he’ll be turning some MagicJacks into cold, hard, cash—right before your eyes. I’m assuming you also get to keep the cash, because otherwise it would just be a cruel, cruel trick.

Either way, I’ve been a fan of magic and comedy every since I could understand the words “Steve Martin.” So here’s to getting excited about a magical comedian coming to the party.

That’s why we’ve arranged for It Won’t Stay in Vegas partygoers to have three different forms of transportation to and from the party on the 9th.

That’s right, I said three. In addition to the AMD blogger party shuttle and the Lovesac blogger bus, we’re also getting a helping hand from the CntrStg shuttle, which is generously going to be moving people between the two locales.

And of course, if you’re going to be a registered attendee at CntrStg, then you get to hop on the CntrStg shuttle to get yourself around during the rest of the show. Another reason to sign up now!

With more than six million songs available to stream from Rhapsody on the award-winning Sonos Multi-Room Music System, we’re certain you’ll find the songs that will make the night memorable. And just think—if you hear a song playing that is absolutely horrible, you can spend the rest of the evening trying to find the culprit!
 
So, how do you submit your songs to the party playlist? You have two options:

1. Hop on Twitter and send your song request to @RhapsodyPR and @SonosPR with the hash tag #iwsiv09 (it won’t stay in Vegas 09) No Rick Astley requests will make the playlist, sorry.  And we do reserve the right to decline additions to the playlist due to inappropriate language.
2. Go to the post on the RealNetworks Blog and add your song request as a comment to the post. Lacy, (aka @RealTweeter) and the RealNetworks official blogger, will keep a running playlist on the blog for attendees to preview until CES.

But that’s still not the best part. Here’s the best part:
 
At the 7:00 hour if you’re playlist request is played, you’ll win a Sonos Multi-Room Music System and a one year subscription to Rhapsody.
 
Honestly, I’m a little jealous. Get crackin’.

Please note that we largely HATE to send rejection mails. The best parties have lots of people with many perspectives and experiences. Limiting the scope of this event is a regrettable outcome of having limited resources available.

I’ve been rejected from events before and it sucks. Just happened to me at a Microsoft gathering held in November (.5 miles from my office!) I tried not to take it personally, but it was hard not to.

I admit I initially fell into a reductionist line of thinking and felt personally slighted. Once I realized my writings/audience didn’t really align well to the MS event, I felt better. (In a similar vein, note that there are people I would readily have to my house for dinner that don’t fit this party…)

It is critical to us that the people attending and hosting the event view it as being worth their precious time and money. That means the bloggers must meet interesting people and see interesting things. It means the people paying the bills think there was a tangible ROI to the big bucks they spent. These are the prime directives, as without those two things the party will not survive.

Admittedly, those two things can conflict at times so we walk a bit of a tightrope here.

That being said, Here is why you might have been rejected.

1) You’re not really a blogger:
a) You don’t blog regularly.
b) Your blog just launched the other day. (Some people in the past have set up a blog just to come to the party and then immediately abandon it…)
c) You provided us with a link to a static web site, but not a blog.
d) You have no Web presence whatsoever.

2) You are an employee or contractor to a non-sponsoring vendor.
Brand Y is paying big bucks to help host an expensive party during CES. They don’t particularly want to see people from Brand X milling around. We’d love to have you at the party next year though. Contact kim AT parnassusgroup DOT com about becoming a sponsor.

3) You are a PR or marketing professional who represents vendor(s) not sponsoring the party, or are perhaps interested in attending to promote your services to our sponsors.
Note the reasoning above and below (items 2, 4), and also that since the sponsors are already aligned with firms that drove sponsorship of this party, we are loath to do anything that could distract from their efforts.

4) You don’t blog about consumer electronics much/at all.
Not a deal killer, but too many posts about your cat can be a problem, especially if no one is commenting or linking.

5) You came to the party last year but didn’t post, tweet, or share a single word (good/bad) about what happened or who was here(!)
This is the least likely reason, and is one that is typically combined with one of the others. Posting is not an absolute requirement, but c’mon, we work hard on this. Send us (and the people buying all the food and drink) a little gesture, even if it’s a thumbs down. We can’t improve without input.

6) You lean heavily/exclusively in snark as a traffic driver.
So far no one has been rejected for this one, but we got stung by this a few years ago at the Blog Business Summit San Francisco. There’s critical thinking and then there’s gratuitous negativity. There are better ways to linkbait…

7) You gave us a lousy email address. (…not a deal killer, but c’mon…!)
Info@, Mail@, Admin@, Blog@, etc. etc.
Hey, we’d like an email address that you might actually pay attention to…

8 ) Your blog contains no profile information. Hey, no “about” page…?

8 ) We screwed up. We might have assigned you one or more of the above attributes to you by mistake. If so, email Jason AT parnassusgroup DOT com.

It’s absolutely amazing to have so much support for our event this year at CES, and we’re very grateful to all our awesome sponsors: AMD, Sony PlayStation 3, Lovesac, MagicJack, AT&T CruiseCast, MeadMap, Truphone, and Microsoft Windows Home Server.

For anyone who was considering sponsoring the party and is still looking for an opportunity to connect your product or service with bloggers covering CES, you should consider nabbing the exclusive sponsorship for our Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk Q&A session. It’s in a room at the Venetian that seats 200 people, and we can put space in the back of the room for a demo if you’d like.

If that sounds interesting to you, go ahead and contact Kim Larsen (kim AT parnassusgroup.com) - but hurry up because I don’t expect this exclusive sponsorship offer to stay open for long.

ShowStoppers produces invitation-only, special events that organize company launches, product introductions, sneak previews and hands-on product demos for reporters, editors, columnists, bloggers and industry analysts – trade, consumer, entertainment and business journalists and analysts specifically selected and qualified in advance by ShowStoppers.

I’ve heard no end of good things about ShowStoppers from people who have attended in the past, and I fully expect this year’s event at CES to be as good as those before it.

I’ll be there hanging out, checking out the crazy new gadgets, and tweeting about it. Like our party, ShowStoppers in an invite-only event, so if you think you’d like to show up, make sure you’re on the list.

How do you do that? Here’s the word on the street:

The press badge you receive from the tradeshow does not guarantee automatic admission to ShowStoppers. Issuance of ShowStoppers press credentials is solely at the discretion of ShowStoppers.

For information, working press, bloggers and analysts are invited to contact Steve Leon, sl@showstoppers.com, 512-288-0950.

For web-based publications and blogs, please provide a link to an established website with current and regularly updated industry-related news. The site must have an Alexa traffic ranking of 250,000 or lower.

Good luck!

They just launched a new blog along with a new site design, and I’d recommend keeping an eye on it for updates about the lounge.

We’re planning to spend some time over there mingling, hanging out, blogging, and enjoying the refreshments.

If you haven’t already registered for CntrStg, I’d suggest hopping on over to the Eventbrite page now and putting your name in. I hope to see you there.

In case you’re not familiar with AMD, they’re based in Sunnyvale, California, and they were started in 1969—which makes them positively ancient in the technology industry! There’s plenty more trivia “>on the Wikipedia page…

Rumor has it that AMD is rummaging about inside their company looking for some cool schwag to hand out at the party as well. If you’re not already on the guest list for the party, you should request an invite!

We talked with Gary Vaynerchuk and Robert Scoble about the downturn in the market, and we all agreed that we’d like to accommodate the mood in any way we can. With that in mind, Gary’s going to fly in early on Friday the 9th and join Robert to do a two hour Q&A session in the Cassanova rooms at the Venetian from 2-4pm.

It’s going to be a totally open, totally honest, no-bull session where you can ask Gary and Robert questions about how to keep your blog running successfully in hard times.

This is not about them. It’s about you.

Unlike the party, this session is open to anyone who wants to show up. If you want to drop your name in the bucket, feel free to add yourself to the event page on Upcoming.

If you’d like to sponsor this exclusive Q&A session with Gary Vaynerchuk and Robert Scoble, please contact Kim Larsen: kim (at) parnassusgroup (dot) com.

I am a huge sucker for video games. I used to run a video game blog called Flicker Gaming, and just last month I got hooked on both Spore and Star Wars: Force Unleashed.

Basically, I’m you’re average tech geek blogger at CES.

Which is why I’m extremely happy to announce that Sony’s PlayStation 3 will be hosting a video game lounge at the “It Won’t Stay in Vegas” blogger party at CES 2009. After all, what’s a party without a few consoles lying around?

We’ll have several PlayStation 3’s set up in the side room with comfy seating and plenty of room for people to play all kinds of games on a single console, over a local LAN, or against the rest of the world on Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN).

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am pumped for this. So I’ll be practicing. I’m looking at you, Andru Edwards.