Please accept our apology on behalf of the publications department
of Interex. An e-mail message that was intended for me by Jean
Nattkemper was mistakenly sent to Alfredo Rego of Adager. Since the
message was posted on the 3000-L I felt it was important to address
this and related issues publicly. We have attempted to make personal
apologies to all involved parties, but I am anxious to discuss the
issues personally with any concerned individual. You can call me at
(800)468-3739 extension 614.

For those of you who are interested, I  thought I would take a bit
of your time  to outline some of the issues leading  up to and
including the e-mail.  Jean mentioned "anti Interex nonsense" that
had been taking place on the 3000-L. "Nonsense" is an emotional and
poor choice of words. I assure you that many of the staff at Interex
(myself included) "lurk" on the list in order to gain a better
understanding of the issues and concerns of MPE  users. The
discussions that are critical of Interex are reviewed so that we
might be able to change things that we do in order to better serve
our members and the general HP user community. Sometimes the
discussions are difficult for the staff to read.

Some of the comments about the finances of Interex caused some
concern so I did a bit of checking. I'm told that Interex is audited
annually by an outside accounting firm and that the operating
budgets and results are published and distributed to anyone
interested at the annual business meeting (last one was at HP World
in Chicago).

The comment about penalizing an advertiser editorially because of
their affiliation to a candidate or for any other reason other than
the merits of their products, is totally inappropriate. To my
knowledge, neither Jean nor any other editor at Interex has ever
done this. To the contrary, we are trying harder to entice would-be
writers to work with us. Recently, we began a new program of
offering advertising credits for vendors  that commit to write for
Interact. We've also agreed to try and help the smaller consulting
companies get more access to the 3000 market by changing policy on
certain listings. We are also loosening our policy of not allowing
companies to mention their firms or products in articles they author
or contribute.

Having said all this, I assure you that we think of Adager as one of
the pillars of the HP community and an important Interex supporter.

With regards to the mention of Chad Gilles  it is inappropriate for
any staff  member to comment or in any way involve themselves in the
election process. The only election-related interaction the
publications department should have is in publishing material
supplied to us by the Nominating Committee or reporting results. We
apologize to Chad.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to
speaking with you.