Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsl!cbnewsk!ech
From: ech@cbnewsk.att.com (ned.horvath)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Mac Developers Conference
Message-ID: <1991Mar14.133705.14406@cbnewsk.att.com>
Date: 14 Mar 91 13:37:05 GMT
References: <1991Mar13.154807.18869@jhereg.osa.com>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 42

In article <1417@radius.com> lemke@radius.com (Steve Lemke) writes:
>Am I the only person who found it rather odd that that big (expensive?)
>color poster that just came to everyone in our engineering deparment said
>nothing more than _when_ the conference is?  The most amusing part is that
>it has a registration form, on which you can select the days you wish to
>attend.  _HOWEVER_, _NOWHERE_ on that big poster did it indicate _ANYTHING_
>about _WHAT_ the agenda was for each day!

From article <1991Mar13.154807.18869@jhereg.osa.com>, by andrew@jhereg.osa.com (Andrew C. Esh):
> I think they did it to get us to do exactly what you are doing: Run around
> and ask everyone else what the deal is. You are providing advertising, and
> you are targeting just the sort of people they want to reach. Nice trick.

Never attribute to malevolence (or diabolical cleverness) that which can
be explained by simple incompetence...

In this case, it isn't even incompetence.  Imagine you're in charge of
organizing this conference.  You have to book the hall, circuses, Dominos,
and Harry Anderson months in advance.  You have to go around to all the
PMs and engineers at Apple, ask them what's REALLY going to ship by then and
who's going to present what, and how it ties in with everything else, find
out what morning Scully will not be golfing so he can do a keynote, and you
have to have all that info be as current as possible.  And you have to
accurately publish it to 2000+ developers 60 days before the conference.
And it all has to be true at the time of the conference.

I submit that this is a logistical impossibility.  Fortunately, it doesn't
matter.

The appropriate strategy if you're local is to book the first two days,
when all the way-cool stuff is announced, and pool your money with two
other people to book a total of one day each of W-Th-F.  Swap badges
appropriately when the real schedule comes out Monday night :-). Everybody
gets to go to the Friday party anyway.

If you aren't local, it costs you close to $1K to attend just one day
(airfare is more or less constant from anywhere in the USA, plus two nights
in a hotel), so you might as well spend the $2K and buy the whole package.
Your mileage may vary depending on how much driving you can do without sleep
and whether you are willing to sleep in the back seat...

=Ned Horvath=