From: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 12:16 AM
To: eWEEK readers
Subject: Sapphire gems; zzzzzs to As
“Lets see whats shaking,” cackled the Kitty as he entered San Franciscos new Moscone West, which, in contrast to earlier Moscone modules, sports an aboveground architecture that seems to scream “Earthquakes be damned.” This year, as he joined the Gartnerites for their Symposium/ITxpo, Spence used his patented session-covering method, which is akin to speed dating. Fueling up on weapons-grade espresso, the Kitty waited until the sessions finished, then darted maniacally from room to room taking down the key summary points from final PowerPoint slides. “Just reading the last slide of each presentation on the show CD-ROM would be more efficient, no?” kibitzed a crony.
Breathlessly, the Maven of Murmur answered the clarion call of the KattPhone and a tipster who said to look for the promotion of Mark Willebeek-LeMair, CTO and strategy officer of 3Com acquisition TippingPoint, to a senior position at 3Com, possibly as security strategist for the company.
Spence tried to stay conscious during a panel that featured IBMs software chief, Steve Mills, and Ciscos senior vice president and general manager of product development, Charlie Giancarlo. “Thank the Lord for Wi-Fi,” thought the Katt, as he IMed his buddies while listening to the panels message that complexity is bad and simplicity is good. “Theres Gartner, going out on a limb again,” laughed the Lynx.
An IM from a Boston buddy described Lawson Softwares guerrilla marketing stunt outside SAPs Sapphire conference. Lawson hired two flatbed ad trucks to circle the Beantown convention hall, one bearing the textbook definition of the word “sap” as “to undermine the foundations or to deplete or weaken gradually,” with the other defining Lawson as “an American software company that puts their customers first.” As the panel droned on, the Puss pondered how much moolah Linksys might suck out of Cisco, thanks to all those high-maintenance home users, when he heard Giancarlo state, “Making things easy to use for the consumer can be quite complex.”
Needing amusement, Spence joined the throng of fellow Red Sox fans at McAfee Coliseum that evening as the As hosted the Sox. The Baron of Babble, decked out in his Red Sox cap and treasured “Boston Red Sox 6-Time World Series Champions” jacket, was juggling two hot dogs and a bag of peanuts when the KattPhones new ring tone, “Sweet Caroline,” began to play. Answering the call, the Kitty was soon pleading meow culpa to a call from Idetics executive VP of sales, Paul Scanlan, concerning last weeks column. Scanlan said that he was referring to himself, not a co-worker, as a “rat bastard” and that the memory problems that plagued his MobiTV demo were in the handset software, not in his product. The Fenway-loving Furball shut off his phone just in time to see his beloved Red Sox lose to Oakland, 6-4. “At least the tickets were cheaper than back home,” groused the Grimalkin.