The organizers behind the upcoming CES conference in Las Vegas have confirmed that Yahoo chief executive Carol Bartz will be delivering a morning keynote on the first official day of the show.

There was once a time when a keynote from the chief executive at Yahoo was a very big deal, of course that time was several years, two market crashes and three CEOs ago. The company is far from the trailblazing media darling that dominated headlines at the height of the dot-com boom.

While the company may not possess the huge market share or generate the media frenzy it once did, this upcoming keynote will still be important for Bartz. Closing in on one year at the helm of Yahoo, she will be making a big speech that could well mark her transition from the "new CEO" to simply just the CEO at Yahoo. Additionally, this will be Bartz' first chance to make some actual company announcements free from the overtones of corporate housecleaning and rebuilding that have hung over many of her earlier addresses.

It could be interesting to see how Bartz handles the situation and whether Yahoo can deliver big enough news to justify the keynote billing. The first day of CES is often a very heated competition for media attention and headlines, with companies seeking to steal the top billing with a big product announcement. Last year it was the Palm Pre, does Yahoo have anything that big up its sleeve?

The last time a Yahoo company exec gave a big speech at CES, Jerry Yang was rolling out the company's redesigned home page and portal plans. While the plans were fairly interesting, they were quickly drowned out when a few weeks later Microsoft went public with its bid for Yahoo and Yang's standing at the company began to take a downward spiral that eventually ended with the hiring of Bartz...so at least she doesn't have too tough of an act to follow.

14 Oct 2009