Hello Friends:

Twice today I've heard references to NDAs being required in the past
at HP World and Interex conferences. I've been to 18 of these yearly
shows in a row, and many others outside of North America, and I
haven't ever signed an NDA. If Interex has required NDAs at its
conferences, I don't believe anybody has signed them since 360K
floppies were your standard desktop storage medium.

Perhaps a return to nostalgia is driving this need for extra secrecy
:) Who knows, in time we could revive the 029 punch decks, and and
other long ways around the information path.

In the publishing world we don't call them NDAs, because they're not.
Both the vendor and press calls them "embargoes," and they expire on
a given day. We have honored these as needed at the NewsWire. They
can be necessary, but they don't cut us off altogether from reporting
like an NDA does. They only delay the inevitable report. No
professional reporter would sign an NDA in the course of publishing
news. That's because NDAs and publishing have incompatible goals.

(It's always a little baffling to watch people describe your work
without ever having done it, been trained at it, or even interviewed
you about it -- especially while they're telling you that you've
described your work incorrectly.)

Frankly, I think it's something of a stretch to point out 20-year old
NDA policies, and the most exclusive Special Interest Group --
Software Vendors, talking futures with HP about unreleased MPE
versions -- to claim that Interex has used NDAs in its mission.
Business as usual for the last few decades, and for 98 percent of the
Interex SIGs, has been in the open. Now we have the New HP, and new
policies in its shadow.

As for the "unlimited press access to HP officials," I spoke with
Computerworld's reporter about his interview with Ram Appalarju, the
Director of Marketing for HP's E-Services Software Environment. Ram
introduced himself to me as "the person who Dave Wilde works for."
The Computerworld reporter said that Ram told him "everything has
quieted down" about the 3000 community's reaction to EOS. While we
sat in the press offices, the reporter grinned. "Everything was fine,
of course," he said. The news is always good from Marketing. Similar
high spirits were observed from Ann Livermore, he added.

The real interest in user conferences isn't from HP. It flows from
the users, and my 18 years of watching the users in give and take
with the vendor has been entertaining and illuminating. It's too bad
that Interex seems to see the need to put that light under a basket.

--

Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
http://www.3000newswire.com
512.331.0075 -- [log in to unmask]

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