The Weekly Round-Up: 28.05.04

How long does a person have to wait around in Las Vegas for the chance to marry Britney Spears? The Round-Up has been here all week and hasn't even seen the elusive Ms Spears, let alone become her latest drunken mistake.

But apart from fishing for an A-list bride (which could even be taken as rhyming slang... think about it – she was apparently completely 'A-list' the last time she tied the knot in Sin City), the Round-Up has been busy.

After all there is plenty for the high-tech industry watcher to get their teeth into in America's party capital. It's not all casinos, showgirls and cocktails.

The reason for the Round-Up's visit was to attend CA World 2004 at the Venetian and Sands Convention Centre.

While there are worse places in the world to attend a conference (Birmingham and Frankfurt spring to mind), this newsletter is at no point intended to sound like gloating. The Round-Up is aware a similar - 'foreign correspondent' offering last year - annoyed some techies facing Friday afternoon in Slough – and to those a heartfelt apology, for so many things – but for now it's on with the show.

Las Vegas is of course the conference centre of the world. The image of the city being filled with holiday makers, gamblers or even rat-pack 'cats' is now far from the truth.

Once upon a time it was just the croupiers and waitresses but now most people in Vegas wear name badges – 'Bob Smith, EDS', 'Jeff Brown, Sun Microsystems', 'Brian Jones, Computer Associates' you get the picture – and many wear the high-tech uniform of chinos, blue shirt and dark blazer which is more de rigueur than eye make-up at a Marilyn Manson concert. Then there is all the vendor-wear - lanyards, caps and bags.

It used to be the case that Vegas casinos were famed for not having any marked exits... now all the start-up execs chatting at the bar all seem to have come with their own "exit strategy" already mapped out as talk turns from poker to broker and from tables to tabling offers. Talk of fat sunbathers and thin clients living in perfect harmony.

Another insight into a country's culture is through the television screen and again high-tech plays a major part – especially during the almost incessant and frequent advertising breaks.

Heineken is the latest drinks company offering free music downloads – following drunkenly in the caffeine-fuelled quicksteps of. Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

For every box of Heineken bought, drinkers will get an MP3 download.

Which could be a recipe for disaster. Think of all those songs that only ever sounded good when drunk. Dancing along to eighties pop tunes with your 'besht mate-sh eveer!' at a friend's wedding.

The Round-Up would be very upset to wake up with a sore head and leave for work in the morning only to find a selection of Kylie songs where Morrissey used to live on the iPod mini.

(Apple should at this point thank CA for creating the influx of overseas journalists, analysts, PRs and CA staff who travelled to the US and seemingly all returned carrying at least one iPod mini.

Congratulations also to the staff at Heathrow who in the space of 10 minutes probably allowed several dozen undeclared iPods into the country because they were too busy making arrivals from India empty suitcases of flour and rice onto the inspection desks. Fair enough, the bags of flour could have been mistaken for something a little dodgy – but thank God UK customs intercepted all that rice. There's priorities for you... or perhaps just institutionalised racism – who knows.)

Technology shows in Las Vegas are huge international events. Attendees come from all over the world nowadays. According to the organisers of CA World there were 4,372 attendees from the US for example, which is perhaps unsurprising given CA is a US company.

However, the Round-Up was surprised by the attendance of people from more far-flung and remote locations. For example, there were 216 attendees from England, 133 from Germany, 83 from Sweden, 54 from Spain, 11 from Slovenia, nine from the United Arab Emirates, four from Bermuda, two from Burkina Faso and even one from Scotland, of all places.

(At this point, underrepresented Scots – who tied with Botswana on the delegate count - may be interested to hear here were only six delegates from China – so in percentage terms Scotland was far from the worst represented.)

Even the gaming side of Vegas is being impinged upon by the technology sector which spends so much of its time hosting events here.

The Round-Up was a little bemused to see an arcade game called 'Tux Racer' in which players steer Tux the Penguin – made famous by Linux marketing material – around a variety of courses.

The Round-Up wondered whether this was a detail lost on players who assume it is just a cute penguin. Or whether this could be the start of a deliberate trend. Perhaps Clippy – the Microsoft Office annoyance – could get his own game.

Players would put their coins in and take the controls only for Clippy to pop up and say: "It looks like you're writing a letter..."

Even entering the US these days you find yourself literally eye-to-eye with technology.

Holders of US visas, such as the Round-Up, now have to provide biometric info at the first point of entry – in this case Los Angeles International (LAX).

As part of the LAX security in place the Round-Up was required to provide finger prints and a digital picture for facial recognition – all taken by slightly space-aged looking equipment on the passport control desk. (See our biometric cheat sheet).

These controversial technologies are something all visitors to the States should get used to. Similarly they will also be appearing more and more in European airports over the coming months and years – whether you like it or not.

Speaking of controversy, the backdrop against which CA World's 10th anniversary took place this year wasn't exactly the ideal build-up to a party.

Computer Associates has been through a fairly rough time of late. Changes at the top meant the removal of the company's CEO and chairman amid accounting scandal and SEC and DoJ investigations... well crack open the bubbly and pull on a party hat!

As an interesting aside one very senior CA exec described the management coup which accounted for ex-CEO Kumar to the Round-Up in fairly low-key terms.

"People maybe talked about it at the water cooler for five minutes but this is business and we've moved on," he said.

'Water cooler moments' are a largely US expression applied to things which are noteworthy and likely to spark discussion in the workplace, around the water cooler (obviously) – such as 'last night's game' or the denouement of the latest series of '24'.

"I can't believe what happened to Jack Bauer last night." "I know, and can you believe those Lakers?" "...And did you hear our chairman and CEO has been ousted amid accounting scandal and we're now being investigated by the SEC and DoJ?"

Are they sure? And if so, it's a shame the powers-that-be wouldn't admit to it being a weightier subject.

The conference was kicked off by the company's interim CEO Kenneth Cron whose opening keynote was an exercise in backslapping - praising customers and employees. And while video montages accounted for around half of the allotted time the half hour Cron did have to talk to attendees showed him to be a shadow of former CEO Sanjay Kumar. Part of this may be down to the fact he had so little time to prepare but he just didn't come across as particularly charismatic.

(However, he does look a dead ringer for US sitcom star Tim Allen – if that's worth anything... which it probably isn't.)

A video clip during the keynote from ousted CEO Kumar also made for interesting viewing. It was played to convince those in the audience pining for a charismatic leader that he is happy with his post-demotion diminished role with the company.

Kumar described his job as chief software architect as "very exciting" before flashing the kind of smile which could only be described as 'half-hearted'.

In fact, it was the kind of smile you might offer a travel agent upon being told: "The Maldives is all booked up that week but we can get you a flight and half board in Kabul."

(See here for more on the opening keynote.)

The second keynote – the guest spot - of the conference threw up points of interest of a completely different kind.

In previous years major political figures, such as Rudi Giuliani and Colin Powell have taken the stage on day two.

Last year it was Dr Henry Kissinger. This year it was Dr Cliff Huxtable... better known (perhaps) as ageing US comic Bill Cosby.

Cron described the interesting change of tactics as an attempt to introduce a little humour after a rather bleak period in the company's history (presumably not referring to the recent 'bleak history' that was his own keynote).

And in a lot of respects it did the job - Cosby certainly put far more bums on seats and smiles on faces than Cron had done, even if he started a little slowly, with lengthy pauses between words and a feeling among the crowd that the slightly confused man on stage didn't really know where he was – which for a man of 66, who is used to movie studios, comedy clubs and TV shows, suddenly finding himself at an IT show, is perhaps understandable.

Until next week, enjoy the holiday weekend and you might like to check out our two latest special reports on Ageism in IT and Offshoring - hot topics dominating the news at the moment.

Ageism

Offshoring