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Nice Town You Got There
It wasn't my breath or bad haircut that got me kicked out of SNIA's town meeting last week
April 25, 2007
3 Min Read
5:50 PM -- SNIA End User Council Town Hall Meeting... Sounds inviting and cozy, doesn't it? I thought so too when I saw it on the Storage Networking World program last week in San Diego. So I penciled it in, got there a little early, did the ooze and schmooze.
The lights go down, and Wendy Betts, chair of the SNIA End User Council, welcomes everyone, introduces the other council members, and invites everyone to grab a beer and some finger food that has just been rolled in. I'm too busy gnawing on my SNW '07 commemorative ballpoint pen to care about the mozzarella sticks and Bud Light. Then Betts really brings the meeting to order with this curveball:
"This meeting is for end-users only. All press and analysts are requested to leave the room now."
I sink down in my seat for a moment, and contemplate ignoring the invitation to leave. Unfortunately, I've already outted myself as a member of the press to the attendees around me. I gather up my stuff and skulk toward the door -- storage's version of the perp walk.
My nose is not seriously out of joint about this. I'll fill another blog sometime about the many fun places I've been thrown out of. But this was pretty ham-handed. And of course, as a publication that writes to and for end-users, it's a shame and a missed opportunity not to be able to get our core readers on the record.Fellow storage blogger Anil Gupta put this a lot more eloquently:
"[Do] you guys really think that taking your grievances from such closed meetings to vendors through SNIA helps? Security weaknesses in products didn't get addressed by vendors until they were made public."
I know SNIA's not the most beloved organization -- dispatching their social police to break up a Wednesday night cocktail party being held by a storage PR firm in the lobby of the Manchester Grand Hyatt didn't help its cause much. "Competitive event," they claimed. Whatever.
I asked the association to respond though about the town meeting exclusion. They sent back this statement, attributable to Betts:
"The SNIA EUC Town Hall meetings are developed by end users and for end users. They are specifically reserved for end-users only as the goal of the meeting is to generate an open, free flowing discussion among end users - where we are able to speak freely, without any kind of worry coming from other industry presence. We opt to keep these sessions closed door to ensure the participants are able to speak unreservedly without the possibility of them being quoted or written about in the media or outside of the doors of the Town Hall Meeting. SNIA is doing the right thing by enabling such end-users meetings with SNIA EUC's help."
Their event, their rules. But that event name really ought to be changed -- End-User Roundtable, Customer Huddle, or Pet the Vendor. The whole town's not invited, a pity given that every end-user has some kind of opinion about their suppliers. As Gupta stated, too much of it will get filtered back to vendors through a vendor-sponsored industry association.
Don't expect a lot of teeth in that report.
— Terry Sweeney, Editor in Chief, Byte and Switch0
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