Hello Friends:

I'm the member of the press who bolted to the front of the roundtable
room, to avoid having a burly security guard forcibly eject me. I
think I have a unique perspective on the severity of what Denys calls
"a flap." I spent the first 10 minutes of the roundtable wondering if
the LA County Sheriff would be waiting outside the door, to haul me
downtown for trespassing. Before Denys wants to spin this as
grandstanding, I suggest that he make that same walk down the aisle
away from the security guard.

The story that I told Denys on the floor of the conference included
the detail that I had already notified other board members and Ron
Evans. By the time Denys sought me out on the show floor I had
already mentioned the problem to Bob Combs (Interex board chair) and
Ed Witkow (also of the board) in the aisle before Carly Fiorina's
speech -- 24 hours before Interex staff tried to bar the press.
Neither of the Interex board members had any knowledge of the policy,
or wished to comment.

Later on during the day before the roundtable, I asked Ron Evans,
Interex Executive Director, about the mistaken policy and who was
responsible. He said two HP executives had asked the user group to
bar the press -- and that Interex "granted the favor in return for
one that HP did us."

To start the day before the roundtable, I asked the Interex staff
handling press liasion why the policy was in place. In less than two
minutes, Nellie Khoo of Interex was giving me the "no comment."
Evans' reply turns out to be the only straight answer we've gotten so
far about Interex's change in press coverage policy.

I'm puzzled about why Denys believes he might have made more of a
difference in LA than the Interex board and executive director I
contacted. I'm glad to learn that Denys' policy on admitting the
press to roundtables flies in the face of those mistaken Interex
staff decisions at Los Angeles.

The Interex no-press policy wasn't supported by either the
roundtable's moderator, or by Dave Wilde, who head's HP's 3000
business. We checked with both of them the day before the roundtable
began. My bolt to the front of the room, ahead of the burly security
guy, might not have happened if we knew Wilde or Birket Foster didn't
welcome us.

>1- Not a single one of the protagonists came to tell me about it.
>They all knew where to find me but instead they chose to grandstand.

Now Denys knows how the press felt in being left out of the loop.
When some user groups bar the press, they at least tell the reporters
in advance what's off limits. The Interex notice appeared in small
type in a handout we received while already at Los Angeles. We told
Interex staff and its board chair of this mistake one day before the
attempt to bar us. Denys must feel he could have corrected this error
more quickly.

>But it would have been even more efficient to tell me or some other
>director or Ron
>Evans about it and ALSO do the grandstanding.

That sounds like a little grandstanding in itself. We just didn't
come to Denys first, or second, to solve a problem with Interex's
press liasion. It was a problem that was apparently so tough that Ron
Evans, the head of the Interex staff, couldn't get his own editors
into the roundtables. It's interesting they didn't challenge this
exclusion policy that "exceeds the rules of Interex."

We'd just be glad to have Interex revert to its independent status --
backed up by the sensible heritage of its board members. We're hoping
some kind of apology -- like the kind HP's panel members at the
roundtable extended to us immediately -- is also part of that
sensible heritage.

--

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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