August 2004

HP’s Technical Conference gets a spot in the Big Easy

Tough competition for attendee and exhibitor dollars is now scheduled for New Orleans, “The Big Easy,” as HP announced the site and date of its 2005 HP Technology Forum. The meeting, which HP said is “currently scheduled” to be held in New Orleans, Sept. 12-15, 2005, will open about three weeks after Interex wraps up its 2005 HP World show in San Francisco. HP touted its new conference as “the first conference to deliver qualified, consistent education and training opportunities across HP’s broad base of customers, partners and employees.” The claim led one Interex volunteer who’d led the group’s HP 3000 content, Jerry Fochtman, to dispute HP’s promise. What about the 30 years of Interex conferences, he asked?

“Guess everything up to this point over the last 30 years that has strived to do that, with both HP’s assistance as well as partnership, wouldn’t qualify,” he said in an Internet posting. “All this political-speak is just that...a bunch of bull-dung…just like when the printer division claimed world-title to an image they put together, which wasn’t close to Wirt [Atmar] and company’s efforts in Anaheim in 1996.” Historians will recall the 3000 community’s “World’s Largest Printer Image” stunt pulled together at the Interex show in Anaheim. In a bit of unintentional irony, Fochtman made reference to the first Interex annual conference which went by the name of HP World.


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