I seldom attend events in Singapore because most of it are just sale & marketing event – boring. But when IDC organized an event called “IDC’s Asia/Pacific IP Convergence Conference 2005” with strong emphasis on VoIP, I thought “That’s Cool. I need to check it out”. It even promises “We are partnering with ProCurve Networking by HP to provide wireless access at the conference, please feel free to bring along your laptop.” – Okay I’m sold!
So here I am at Raffles City Convention Center. Hell! I spend the first 45 mins of my time trying to get online. When I went to the counter to ask, the IDC staff fire up his browser and then say “Yes, it is not working for me either”. Hello, fix it!
It is not until I managed to speak to the HP engineers there (who btw have to call back office to ask how to configure their ProCurve router? What the heck?) that I realized IDC asked them to disable the Internet Access during the session.
Yes, read that again. They disabled Internet access in an event called “IP Convergence Conference 2005”. Why? So I can pay attention to the speakers? Hey, can I make my own decision on that? I think I would pay more attention if I didn’t need to fight this wireless network.
Anyway, I am posting this during break where they turn on the Internet access for the 15mins.
And the event? Just another sale & marketing event – boring. I am going back to office now.
[btw, the IDC speaker just after the break said “We like to remind everyone there is a wireless network in the conference and we encourage the use of the laptop”. Ha, no you don’t!]
