Joe Howell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hilarious!   Back in 1991 I was privileged to work on the Program Committee
>of Interex .  At the first planning meeting at Interex headquarters, I
>suggested that, as M$ and its coming NT operating system was an important
>(though not necessarily welcome) part of all of our daily lives, maybe we
>should invite Bill Gates to be our key note speaker.  At that time I was
>informed in no uncertain terms by the HP rep at that meeting (was it Orly?)
>that under no conditions would HP allow (did they control Interex?) ANYONE
>from M$, especially B.G. to speak at our meeting.  The attending Interex
>Board member (was it D.A?) told me to "settle down and quit rocking the
>boat".  I succumbed to their pressure.

You must be thinking about a non-Interex and non-HP kind of operation.  Our
fearless leaders would never use words such as "allow" or "control" or
"settle down and quit rocking the boat".  You would expect to hear these
kinds of bromides from bean counters or whatever, not from visionaries
whose only mission in life is to take *full* advantage of golden
opportunities.  Besides, wasn't Mr. Platt himself doing, relatively
recently, everything under his power to APPEAR side by side with Bill
Gates, so the world could see that Mr. Platt was following Microsoft's
leadership?

I'm terribly confused...


>... Instead, we got some good speakers,
>like the guy from Aberdeen Group (sorry too many years, I forgot your name)
>and of course that GREAT speaker from Sun Valley, Idaho (A.R) with the
>central American accent and neat sense of humor.

Thanks for your kind words.  I always enjoy my presentations at Interex
(err... HP World) and 99% of the audience seems to enjoy them too,
according to the reviews I receive from Interex.  Naturally, there is
always that proverbial 1% who complain loudly because I tend to spend a lot
of time on issues that are NOT in the original abstract and (heaven forbid)
not even in the submitted manuscript...  Tough luck, because my assumption
is that people know how to read.  The abstracts (and papers) are there for
anybody who cares to read but the really fun part of a face-to-face
conference is the human interaction and the tough questions that I enjoy
asking according to the circumstances of the moment and the twinkles in the
eyes of the audience -- not to mention the latest technological gossip --
and I never know about these exciting things until the very moment of the
presentation :-)



>Isn't it funny how the worm turns?

Absolutely.  I like your opening word: Hilarious!

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|            r  |  Alfredo                     mailto:[log in to unmask]
|          e    |                                  http://www.adager.com
|        g      |  F. Alfredo Rego                       +1 208 726-9100
|      a        |  Manager, R & D Labs               Fax +1 208 726-2822
|    d          |  Adager Corporation
|  A            |  Sun Valley, Idaho 83353-3000                   U.S.A.
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