Conference to take on HP perspective

Volunteers and attendees seemed ready to see changes unfold at the conference. Some of the technical content of the conference, once unmatched before the rise of the Internet, has given way to a broader business agenda, according to HP-UX presenter and volunteer Chris Wong.

“I think HP World is great for what it is,” she said. “It will be interesting to see how all the changes will play in this year’s event. The biggest change for us HP-UX users is the loss of our independent Interworks conference, starting with last year’s HP World. This had always been a separate technical conference, but last year it was held concurrently with HP World. I heard many complaints because there were not enough technical tracks. However, this year the program looks impressive. HP World is for HP users on all platforms and all levels, so when you set up a program for everyone, there are going to be weaknesses.”

HP thinks enough of the new conference to use the venue for its technical pre-sales training for its support employees. HP will also unveil a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) track of sessions, an infusion from the world of the Compaq ETS conferences. But only paid attendees qualify for an Event Confidential Disclosure Agreement (ECDA), which is required to attend NDA Technical Sessions and to enter the Whisper Room — an area which HP says “may contain prototypes and demonstrations of future HP technologies.”

While some of HP’s future may become clearer, some parts of the past HP World experience have been discontinued. The management roundtable between HP 3000 customers and the executives of the company has been shifted to a Customer Needs Panel. The meeting lets HP execs listen to what the 3000 customers need from the company, but it doesn’t demand that HP resolve or explain issues from behind a microphone as in past years. Conference volunteers like Paul Edwards, who’s moderating the 3000 panel, are considering reconfiguring the chairs in the room to eliminate the “panel before an audience” arrangement of years past.

Edwards believes this year’s HP World represents the last major gathering of the MPE community at a conference.

“Homesteaders feel like they don’t need to spend money to go to a conference to learn anything more,” Edwards said. “I think we’re going to lose a lot of the core group of volunteers. The 3000 vendors are either not going, or cutting way back.” About 150 booths with 170 companies were booked for the expo floor two weeks before the show opened. Two dozen firms had some HP 3000 product or service to offer other than migration expertise — although a few of those were authorized resellers, whose 3000 business expires Oct. 31.

Maintaining independence

Interex’s Evans said that HP doesn’t have any larger voice in this year’s show, despite the fact that it’s a partner in the conference. Contracts are in the user group’s name, and its staff is managing the production.

“They don’t have any more say than they’ve had in the past,” he said. “The program committee always included a speaker from HP.” The Compaq ETS show is being combined with HP World “as a direct result of HP gathering us together and saying, ‘Let’s see what we can put together, rather than having ourselves spread out.’ It was costing HP a lot of money, as it would any exhibitor, to go to multiple events.”

Registration for HP World has been switched to the Encompass ETS model, tracking speaker and statistical data more closely. Press registration ran through a PR firm contracted to HP for the show, another example of extra involvement from HP. And a low-ball $1,060 attendance price came through a late July e-mailing from HP, a first for HP World.

Computer user groups whose focus lies on a single vendor must always work with that vendor’s needs however. Over in the IBM iSeries marketplace, for example, the COMMON user group works so closely with IBM that one long-time volunteer there said “We’re wedded at the hip.” HP World doesn’t provide HP’s competitors with opportunities, because as Evans said, “They invest a lot of money in this show, and it’s not an endowment. It would be a slap in their face to give major exposure to their competitors.”

Cagle, as a volunteer whose experience goes back into the 1990s, sees a challenge for any user group to maintain a stance independent of the vendor’s wishes. Ever since the conference was renamed from Interex to HP World in 1997, HP has owned the trademark to the show name. Cagle said he’ll be taking notes on problems all through this year’s conference — but he added that pressing an agenda that challenges HP might not be in the user group’s best interest.

“Regarding independence, it’s obviously more difficult than it used to be,” he said. “My impression is that the people within HP who interface with Interex are now largely Compaq — and they have been used to having their own little pet user group that they controlled. One would have to believe that Interex is nothing more than a thorn in their side, and being pushy about independence may not be a winning strategy for Interex at this point.”

Evans said the user group was hoping for attendance equal to last year’s HP World. Though the show might be larger in areas like its scope of talks, the executive director said the revenues for the user group which rose from HP 3000 volunteers should stay in line with what Interex might have managed before its new partnership with HP and Encompass. “We’re still expecting to get what we expected before we formed the partnership this year,” he said.