Open source expert takes on the hardest job at Microsoft (Network World)

Posted Mar 1, 2011 21:37 UTC (Tue) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link]

A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win.

Well, it turns out that the information was actually quite valuable to her. I mean, it was talking about a drug and a therapy that she was not aware of, and that her doctor wasn’t aware of. So, I mean, I actually helped her and everything. She also owed me and she put my conference sked…she put my session on the conference agenda. I mean, what can I say? I’m just too nice of…OK. So you want to love those conferences to death. I’ve killed at least two Mac conferences. First there was the Mac App Developers Conference. I was on the Board of Directors of the Mac App Developers Association long ago, and after I left I worked to try to turn it into a cross-platform developers conference, and I did. I managed to make it.. their last conference was very cross-platforn, both Windows and Macintosh, which of course turned off their Macintosh audience; half of the conference was irrelevant to them. They didn’t care about Windows. They were a bunch of Mac guys. Which diluted the value of the conference. And they didn’t know how to advertise the Windows guys when the Windows guys showe dup. So they lost money that year and the group folded. Oh, well. One less channel of communication that Apple can use to reach its developers.

The other conference was called the Technology and Issues Conference. it had been going on for, like, ten years. It was an independent conference. it was by invitation only. They invited VPs and above at all the major Mac software companies. And they always held it in, like, Yosemite or Vienna or Hawaii. It was a big junket thing. And it was always…they held the conference the last few days of the week before Fourth of July weekend, right, so it was just a junket trip. But Apple always hated this conference because, you know, all of their ISVs got together and received a message that they didn’t control as much as they would have liked. Well, I sponsored a dinner and I brought…because once you sponsor a dinner, right, you get to talk to them during dinner. You get to do a dinner presentation, OK, once the clatter of knives dies down. And we were there being so helpful. Apple was still nickel and diming its developers to death. And so we’re there handing out free software developers’ kits to everybody there, and free copies of the Explorer PD and other things like that for their kids, because, you know, they’d bring their wives and families along with us, and so we’d give them free games and stuff. And then I gave them this big presentation over dinner and so on. So it seemed like Microsoft dominated the conference. Well, Apple got so pissed off at this that they threatened the guy that ran the conference that they were never going to send anybody again, that they were going to schedule conferences that directly opposed it so that the VPs couldn’t go to his conference, they could only go to Apple’s conference and so forth. So by injecting Microsoft content into the conference, the conference got shut down. The guy who ran it said, why am I doing this? I’m losing money on it every year anyway. Screw Apple, they don’t need my help. And so the conference died, so that’s two. I’m working on two other Mac conferences now.

Posted Mar 2, 2011 0:14 UTC (Wed) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link]

Posted Mar 2, 2011 17:03 UTC (Wed) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link]