Trade show keynotes: Too much light, too little heat

Ideally, I like to spend my time at trade shows on the show floor, scouting out interesting new products to review and soaking up trends. But, there’s a lot more to cover at Internet World, including a full-slate of keynote speeches.

Why do people attend keynote speeches? In my case, I want the speaker to present an assessment of where we stand today in some aspect of computing, and a vision of where we’re going tomorrow. I want to be informed of facts I wasn’t aware of, and made to think about technology in new ways. I want to be sorry when the speaker leaves the stage and the lights come up, and I want to walk out of the room energized, mulling over the implications of what I just heard.

That’s what I want. That’s not what I expect.

Instead, the trends keynote speakers tend to tell their audiences about are the ones their companies are taking advantage of-or hope to latch onto. Too often, keynotes devolve into extended sales pitches.

Take Compaq CEO Michael Capellas, who delivered the first afternoon’s keynote address at Internet World. Capellas’ vision encompassed distributed computing that adapts to rapid change, processing huge amounts of data and huge numbers of transactions, with no downtime either planned or unplanned. That’s a compelling vision, but it’s nothing new, and of course it focuses narrowly on Compaq’s high-margin products.

When Capellas branched out, he didn’t branch far. He talked about Internet access, which gave him a chance to introduce a colleague who delivered an iPaq sales pitch and a demo of its Bluetooth and wireless GSM/GPRS connectivity capabilities.

I sat among the audience, growing more cynical by the minute. I would have liked to hear him tell us what he was thinking when he agreed to let Compaq be acquired by HP. Capellas surprised me by bringing it up, and reiterating, “I am completely behind [the merger].” He provided three reasons why he thought it made sense:

* “Extending the enterprise to a full footprint”–that is, providing the widest possible range of IT products.

* Building out the services organization: Today, Capellas said Compaq has 38,000 people in services; the merged company would have 65,000.

* Improving economies of scale to enhance shareholder value.

Frankly, I didn’t buy it. Compaq has an enviable position in the race for IT dollars. Acquiring a complementary company, like Linksys or NetGear for their wireless hardware or Juniper or Sycamore for their high-end internetworking gear, would make more sense to me.

Despite the disappointing speech, I did experience a surreal-and perhaps prophetic–moment on my way to hear Mr. Capellas. As I hurried along, I passed one of the many monitors in the Javits Center providing television coverage. Usually tuned to a business channel, all the televisions were, instead, broadcasting President Bush addressing the cadets at The Citadel. I caught a snippet of the president saying, “…take their network apart, piece by piece.” Take the network apart? That’s a new strategy for a computing trade show!