Press Preferentials

Randall Newton explains why he won't be at the Daratech Plant conference: show organizers won't give him a press pass. Randall's puzzled, because he is the editor of several CAD publications and only loosely associated with Cyon Research, yet Daratech says they consider him a competitor.

I figure that Daratech has the right to determine who can attend their show, although their reasoning makes little sense to me. Would they not want as much free publicity they can get? (It costs them nothing, because Randall pays his own way.)

Daratech is letting in representatives from eight publications. In contrast, the PTC event I'm attending this week has 83 media and analysts. SolidWorks World will have over 100, and the upcoming Autodesk Press Event is sure to have several dozen, as well.

I recall the time I was banned from an event. The first time a particular CAD user conference was held, the organizers (from the parent company of a publishing firm no longer in existence) paid speakers, such as myself. This is normal practice. The following year, they contacted the speakers to speak again, but described payment terms along the lines of “Your compensation is free entry to the event, and the admiration of your peers.” I remember reading the sentence over several times, not believing my eyes.

Someone asked me on the CAD forum (on CompuServe, back then) if I was attending. “No,” I replied, and explained why. People were shocked, because they hadn’t read the invitation all the way through. I guess they began canceling, because the show organizer called me up and yelled at me for what I had "revealed". And I do mean yell; he was very angry. Which goes to illustrate how he had hoped to pull a fast one.

Needless to say, I was never invited to speak again. Which suited me, because speaking takes up way too much preparation time.

Comments

[Don]

Get ready for a shock and awe situation for Ralph if he only thinks "serveral dozen" media will attend the Autodesk World Press Day event.

[R. Paul Waddington]

Randall's, Ralph's and Evans Yare's exclusions are the actions of individuals who have so little faith in their abilities to promote that they see excluding individuals as the only solution. DaraTech's staff need an education in public relations. Even if Randall were a competitor Daratech are telling us all their staff do not have the communication skills necessary to communicate with, control or influence a competitor.
Autodesk once excluded me from an Inventor function simply because the Autodesk's presenter knew I knew of some issues with Inventor that he was terrified I would ask him about.
On the other hand Alibre and LEAP Australia allowed me to attend their Alibre presentation, and we are 'competitors', and in doing so demonstrated a level of professionalism that those who 'choose to exclude' don't have, with the net result that if I don't have a solution that I think is best for a customer I can comfortably recommend Alibre's product and LEAP as an alternative. "Co-Operative Competition" I call it.
In summary if a competitor worries you enough to consider their exclusion from your presentations, you aren't as good as you think you are or should be!