In 1978 we had a couple of Apple II's in a back room. Today there are 400 exhibitors squeezed into four huge exhibition halls.
I started off at sparrow tweet attending a pre-breakfast talk by Mike Whalen, director of global marketing for Computer Reseller News.
He discussed the $900 billion dollar world estimate for IT this year, 59% of which is now outside the US.
Mike talked on global channel marketing trends. Creating partnerships to add value is crucial in the next few years and the Small Business sector must be addressed.
I managed to have words with him afterwards, and we discussed the global reticence of marketeers to become involved in Y2k. He admitted we are just not doing enough. Maybe we need to start warning retailers about their Legal and Business Risks from Y2k.
I suspect that South African resellers are unaware that the NYDSC are working on legislation to make "dumping" of non-compliant equipment a criminal offence.
We also joked that nobody can complain about Service to End Users, because there isn't any.
After breakfast, at the opening ceremony, the keynote address was presented by Robin Guenier, Executive Director the UK Taskforce 2000.
Robin is well known in International circles for straight speaking on Y2k.
He started out with the old quip "Anybody who is aware of Y2k and sleeps at night, doesn't understand the problem".
The important new message he then gave was that "Y2k Must be treated as an Emergency" and quoted Tony Blair as saying this.
He went on to say "ONLY Senior Management can be involved in Y2k decisions, these CANNOT be delegated". Only those critical business functions that can be fixed should be fixed.
IT have just plain got to change their priorities.
I then went off to listen to Karl Feilder and Robin Guenier giving more detailed Y2k presentations in the Auditorium.
At which point all the power failed and we ended up in a blackout. So I am going home.
This is Chris Anderson for Tech Talk
1998-05-26 Y2k Cinderella project