[HPCC-Conf] Conference Report

[Tony Duell]

> 1.  It has been our policy to freely and openly discuss information that =
> falls into our hands by means other than HP controlled channels.

Agreed. And I feel strongly that this should continue, and therefore that 
we (conference organisers, club committee members, etc) should not accept 
information (presentations, etc) that can't be discussed as we see fit

> 
> 2.  I see nothing at all sensitive in Fred's presentation.  It is a =
> straightforward marketing approach, not a technology push as in the =

Alas, that's true :-(

> past.   And it will fail if HP tries to imitate TI, Casio, Gold Star, or =
> Shu-Ping Electric.

Agreed. I wish I'd though of this at the time, but I realised too late 
that the perfect counterexample to HP's ideas was in front of the person 
sitting next to me. A Hasselblad camera. Hasselblad do not make 
mass-market cameras. They make very good cameras and price them accordingly.

So what I wished I said was 'OK, please lets have real HP again. Lets 
have gold plated PCBs, dual-shot-moulded keys, proper keycontacts, real 
manuals, facilities for hacking, peripherals, and all those other things 
that mean the HP41 is still loved 20 years later. Price the new machine 
at $5000 if you have to, because somehow we'll buy them. We're not going 
to buy mass-market calculators, though'

> 
> 3.  Where do you get the idea that WE are THEIR community?  They left us =
> five years ago for greener pastures.  This resulted in stripping =
> capability out of their machines, rather than adding it.

I agree. HP are unlike to ever do anything for us again (20 years ago, or 
so, they did release useful internal information to user groups, not any 
more). So we should not do anything special for them.

As I said to the rest of the HPCC committee a couple of months before the 
conference 'If this club is no longer totally independant of HP, then I 
will certainly not rejoin'. I have little desire to pay to be a member of 
a club which is a thinly disguised HP marketing department. I don't want 
HP to tell us what we can or can not discuss (apart, I guess, from 
information that they have directly provided to us, but as I said 
earlier, we really should refuse such information). 

-tony