and don't forget, Now, more than ever, your Interex membership brings you
benefits beyond the ken of man.

At 02:22 PM 9/30/2002, Ron Seybold wrote:
>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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Regards,

Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
www.thekompany.com
949-713-3276

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