CEO blogs used to be all the rage within the business blogging community. Remember when we’d hear blog consultants gush about CEOs who dared to blog with transparency and authenticity. I rarely hear much talk about CEO bloggers anymore. Do you?

Remember Jonathan Schwartz? He was the poster child of blogging CEOs, the now former (as of February 3rd) CEO of Sun Microsystems. All you could hear was crickets on Jonathan’s blog from May of last year until finally Jonathan’s farewell post on January 27. Clearly he had a few things going on; Oracle was in the process of acquiring Sun. When you’re selling your company that is pretty much all that occupies your mind. I know that first-hand, as I’m happy to say my company (Netconcepts) was acquired by Covario last month.

The thing that most struck me was the name of Jonathan’s new blog. It’s titled “What I Couldn’t Say”. Hmmm. I guess transparency within a corporation only goes so far.

With the economy is in freefall, perhaps the tolerance of various boards of directors for CEO transparency has lessened? Or it could be simply that CEOs are just too busy and blogging isn’t such a priority, now that “blog” isn’t Word of the Year anymore.

Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, is another CEO blogger who was acquired and who we don’t hear from any longer in the blogosphere. His last post was July of last year, and that wasn’t so much of a blog post as it was a copy of a letter that was sent to all the Zappos employees announcing the acquisition by Amazon. Before that, Tony last posted in January 2009.

I’m guilty too. My own “CEO blog” hasn’t seen any activity in over a month — no posts since Covario acquired us. But the reason for my ‘radio silence’ has nothing to do with the acquirer. I may no longer be a President/CEO, but I am still encouraged to keep blogging. The reason I don’t blog frequently is the same one as last year (when I was only posting a few times a month at best): I’m preoccupied running around speaking at conferences all over the U.S., writing for magazines, etc.

Then there are the corporate blogs where the CEO occasionally chimes in with his/her own post. My acquirer, Covario, fits into that group with its “Actionable Insights” blog. Trinity Road, an etailer of religious products like first communion dresses and rosaries, has a corporate blog, but you rarely if ever hear from the CEO on it.

Then there are the CEO blogs where you wonder if it’s actually the CEO who’s blogging because it’s so polished. Steve Spangler the science toys e-tailer, I think fits into that category. If you look at the posts on Steve’s blog you’ll see a gradual evolution to a style that is more and more polished.

Chris Baggott, CEO of the Compendium Blogware, has one of the best CEO blogs out there, in my opinion. It’s full of valuable content, it’s not overly polished, his personality really shines through, and he blogs regularly. It figures though. If any CEO would have that kind of a CEO blog, it would be the CEO of a business blogging software company!

I had a great time last week at Blog World. The turnout was great, at several thousand attendees. The show was buzzing the whole time, even on Day 1 which is normally a light day in terms of attendance. The sessions were *solid*. It was a “who’s who” of bloggers presenting. The networking (in the speaker lounge, in the hallways, at the receptions, etc.) was excellent. The WiFi worked great (at least for me). The only real negative in my opinion: the food was not vegetarian-friendly (grrr).

I had my 18-year-old daughter Chloe with me. She and I both were speakers at Blog World, she was on a panel about blog monetization and I was on a panel about SEO. Chloe monetizes traffic to her Neopets cheats site/blog with Google AdSense, and spoke a bit about that. I did impromptu site critiques in my session.

Then there were the shows. All I have to say was “Wow!”. This is one thing that Blog World is known for — is for hooking up bloggers with free tickets to shows (”Bloggers Night Out” I believe is what they call it). We did FOUR shows in two days! It was fun but exhausting. The first night was America’s Got Talent Live! and Blue Man Group. The second night was Jersey Boys and Cirque du Soleil “O”. My daughter and I had a blast.

All four shows were excellent. Jersey Boys is my favorite musical now. It was awesome. My new favorite Cirque du Soleil show is “O” (and I’ve seen 6 Cirque shows). It was spectacular! If you haven’t seen a Cirque show, you absolutely *must*.

Blue Man was bizarre and amazing. Surreal. I loved it! And America’s Got Talent Live was great too — I have to admit I had no idea what to expect with that, and I was pleasantly surprised. My favorite AGT acts were Recycled Percussion, Nuttin’ But Stringz, and Barbara Padilla (here’s a picture of me and Barbara, below). But honestly, they were all great. (I can’t believe how low Lawrence Beaman’s voice goes!)

Even though Vegas is not a family friendly town, my daughter and I had a great, clean time. As much as I wanted to see Zumanity, I passed on that one (not really an appropriate father-daughter activity!).

I also wish we weren’t forced to walk through the cigarette smoke filled casinos so much. No matter what, it seems, you have to walk through the casino to get *anywhere*.

My sincere thanks to the three shows that provided me and Chloe with the comp tickets — America’s Got Talent Live, Blue Man Group, and Cirque du Soleil. It’s brilliant blogger outreach to treat us bloggers to such great shows.