X-no-Archive:yes
Jerry most certainly did a great job, but even more important was the fact so
many people submitted such quality material in the MPE (and the other tracks).
 Jerry was left with the (thankless) job of brutally cutting and dropping
excellent presentations in order to come up with the nicely balanced program he
put forth.

You should also know that another track leader was none other than our very own
Jeff Kell.  He put together a dynamite E-Commerce track.

My putting together the HP3000-L lunch pales in comparison to the work these
two gentlemen, and the rest of the program committee, performed.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   F. Alfredo Rego [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Monday, 23 August, 1999 7:31 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: HPWORLD '99 -- personal perspective

Jeff Vance wrote:

>1. Although I mostly attended SIGs and Plenary sessions I believe
>the MPE schedule was far better than in previous conferences.  By that
>I mean that it looked like there were fewer times when I wanted to attend
>two (or more) MPE sessions at the same day/time.  I think we have Jerry
>Fochtman to thank for this.

Jerry Fochtman did an outstanding job.  I told him that he must be a
masochist, because he accepted the same position for next year, which
is good for us but quite a sacrifice for him and his family.  Thank
you, Jerry.  I know that you could not please everyone and that
several people (some of them close friends) got upset at you.  As
they say in the skiing world, "no guts, no glory" or "go for broke to
get a gold medal".  All you have to do now is to find more hours in
the week :-)


>8. The CSY portion of the HP booth had a lot of traffic the times
>I visited.  Lots of Apache and Java interest.

Java is vital for the HP3000's future.  I was very pleased to see
"lots of interest".

I would like to add that, in addition to Java (and not "instead of
Java"), Wirt's QCTerm was quite a jump forward in technology (even
though it was written in 30-year-old BASIC -- this, precisely, was
the whole point :-)


>10. There was a good turnout at the unscheduled, not well publicized
>session to discuss the [potential] new GUI and VPLUS replacement
>strategy for CSY.  CSY needs to take the lead here and it looks like
>we have a good start.

I like HP's new proactive attitude, reflected in Jeff's "CSY needs to
take the lead here".


>12. Lots of people attended Mike Yawn's Java tutorial, despite its 8 AM
>start time, where he presented similarities of Java programming to COBOL,
>and assured the audience that COBOL programmers can certainly be very
>proficient Java programmers.

Any programmer can certainly be a very proficient Java programmer :-)

What is great to see is that the HP3000 fully supports Java, so that
the very proficient Java programmers (see above) can do wonderful
things on the HP3000 and not on other Java platforms :-)


>13. The AV folks were fast.  I needed an overhead projector and got one
>set up in about 10 minutes after making the request.  I  guess my next
>talk will need to use newer technology.

Amen.  The whole infrastructure for HPWORLD worked very smoothly
(even with the glitches and complaints, which will never go away
because it is impossible to please everyone and nobody can be all
things to all people).

As I mentioned to Michael Doyle outside the Marriott (just before or
just after braving that traffic light to/from Moscone), people may
get a bit excited about things but, in the end, we all do it because
we care deeply.  And the bottom line is that Interex put up a
first-class conference, as anyone who has visited Moscone as
frequently as I have -- for all kinds of conferences -- can attest.


>14. It was nice again to meet some faces from 3000-L at the Thurs
>lunch, thanks to Denys for setting this up.

Thanks, Denys!

  _______________
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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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