IPROF 98 Roundtable

IPROF Management Roundtable

An update on user-funded
enhancements for the HP 3000

Q. I’m Ken Paul of Adager. In 1996 at Anaheim the management roundtable started out with a 60 Minutes-esque grilling of Dick Watts followed by several 3000-esque questions which seemed to possibly leave a bad taste in HP’s mouth and the 9000 people who were in attendance. In 1997 the HP World Round Table started out with an Oprah-esque talk for about 45 minutes to an hour, followed by very few questions at least 3000 related. Most that were submitted ahead of time. Most of those questions were filtered off to other roundtables or were just not even addressed. I believe the only question 3000 related was more or less scripted, so I thought it was a huge waste of time. Then afterwards in trying to give comments or feedback, some of the feedback stations had closed because they had no more giveaways to give. So my feedback evidently wasn’t good enough that there wasn’t anything to reward me with my feedback. So my question, both to HP and Interex, is do either of you want a management roundtable – I think this is an example of a good one – at the HP World symposium, and are we going to have a new variation this year?

Interex’s Chuck Piercy: Now I know how the rest of the panel feels here. All this time I was enjoying myself. It is a problem because the mix of people who attend has changed. You can’t have a management roundtable entirely taken up by 3000 questions when 75 percent of the people are using Unix that attend the conference. What do we do the next year, when actually the percent that say that they are installing NT in some way will probably exceed even the percent that have Unix? We’ve tried to handle that by farming off questions into the other roundtables that have been created over the last few years, like the support roundtable where issues can be dealt with in more detail and would be maybe more productive like this one. I would say that we are constantly trying to change to keep up with the audience that we have. It may be that with the creation of these other round tables the management roundtable is not as useful as it used to be.

Ken Paul: It was the event of the conference and it had no competing sessions of any kind. Very heavily attended obviously, and this year several competing sessions. Is there a possibility having a 9000 management roundtable at the same time as the NT management roundtable at the same time as the management 3000 roundtable. Does HP think it’s it’s becoming a waste of time because it is so hard to address the diverging groups that are out there?

Roy Breslawski: Well, I don't think anybody in HP thinks it’s a waste of time – certainly not in CSY. We would not want to see it go away. You’re right, it’s a complex subject to deal with because there are multiple operating systems. When you get a large audience with everything mixed together what’s intensely interesting to one person is an Oprah-esque talk show to another person. We probably need to work together with Interex to make sure we’re doing something that addresses as many people as possible as well as possible. We certainly would like to see it keep going. I can’t say for sure what it will be this coming HP World.

Interex’s Deloy Cole: I would just like to say that we have made steps to make it different this year. We have less than half the competing sessions in 1997, and also the roundtables this year don’t conflict with each other at all.

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Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.



	IPROF Management Roundtable

	An update on user-funded enhancements for the HP 3000
	Q. I’m Ken Paul of Adager. In 1996 at Anaheim the management roundtable started out with a 60 Minutes-esque grilling of Dick Watts followed by several 3000-esque questions which seemed to possibly leave a bad taste in HP’s mouth and the 9000 people who were in attendance. In 1997 the HP World Round Table started out with an Oprah-esque talk for about 45 minutes to an hour, followed by very few questions at least 3000 related. Most that were submitted ahead of time. Most of those questions were filtered off to other roundtables or were just not even addressed. I believe the only question 3000 related was more or less scripted, so I thought it was a huge waste of time. Then afterwards in trying to give comments or feedback, some of the feedback stations had closed because they had no more giveaways to give. So my feedback evidently wasn’t good enough that there wasn’t anything to reward me with my feedback. So my question, both to HP and Interex, is do either of you want a management roundtable – I think this is an example of a good one – at the HP World symposium, and are we going to have a new variation this year? Interex’s Chuck Piercy: Now I know how the rest of the panel feels here. All this time I was enjoying myself. It is a problem because the mix of people who attend has changed. You can’t have a management roundtable entirely taken up by 3000 questions when 75 percent of the people are using Unix that attend the conference. What do we do the next year, when actually the percent that say that they are installing NT in some way will probably exceed even the percent that have Unix? We’ve tried to handle that by farming off questions into the other roundtables that have been created over the last few years, like the support roundtable where issues can be dealt with in more detail and would be maybe more productive like this one. I would say that we are constantly trying to change to keep up with the audience that we have. It may be that with the creation of these other round tables the management roundtable is not as useful as it used to be. Ken Paul: It was the event of the conference and it had no competing sessions of any kind. Very heavily attended obviously, and this year several competing sessions. Is there a possibility having a 9000 management roundtable at the same time as the NT management roundtable at the same time as the management 3000 roundtable. Does HP think it’s it’s becoming a waste of time because it is so hard to address the diverging groups that are out there? Roy Breslawski: Well, I don't think anybody in HP thinks it’s a waste of time – certainly not in CSY. We would not want to see it go away. You’re right, it’s a complex subject to deal with because there are multiple operating systems. When you get a large audience with everything mixed together what’s intensely interesting to one person is an Oprah-esque talk show to another person. We probably need to work together with Interex to make sure we’re doing something that addresses as many people as possible as well as possible. We certainly would like to see it keep going. I can’t say for sure what it will be this coming HP World. Interex’s Deloy Cole: I would just like to say that we have made steps to make it different this year. We have less than half the competing sessions in 1997, and also the roundtables this year don’t conflict with each other at all.
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Copyright 1998, The 3000 NewsWire. All rights reserved.