RE: This years conference

Eric and list,

It was a different conference than in past years - opening session
especially was no-nonsense, all-business in tone (unlike last year and
"MAPICS Man"). The Tech Expo was much smaller than in the past. Sessions
were excellent, as always, especially the customer-driven non-sales pitches.

The most interesting meeting I attended was the International User's Group.
The Syteline customers may be more than MAPICS bargained for! ;-) THEY are
used to running the conference, selecting the presentations, etc. And they
banded together primarily to collectively negotiate product improvements
with their old company. This is going to be interesting. There was a lot of
"eyeing each other" going on, but the Syteline people seem interested in
bringing their brand of "collective bargaining" to the XA and PointMan
customers to make the entire User's Group stronger.

I was invited to several "hotel room" demos of products banned from the Tech
Expo, but never made it upstairs to them. The strangest ones were ISE, which
had a PaperLess "kiosk" in the MAPICS area where they could only talk about
MDCC, QMPS and TMPS (MAPICS products), and Momentum/Jacana, who could only
talk about IWP, Jacana and Jacana Forms at their MAPICS kiosk. If you wanted
to talk to ISE about ATM, their barcoding, or wireless, or talk to Momentum
about inTuator, you had to go to the hotel rooms, because these products are
not MAPICS offerings (and are viewed as competition to some of MAPICS' new
business partners???). And Lexel's absence in the Tech Expo was thunderous
in its silence. (I heard they had a hospitality reception Wednesday night,
but I never heard they were doing demos upstairs.)

Meeting old and new friends is always nice; it was not nice trying to follow
the tornado damage reports near my home. (When I saw my husband's e-mail
subject "We're still here," my first thought was "You'd better be!" until I
opened and read about the storms. All is OK with my family and company, but
many have a long rebuilding before them. The DeSoto, Missouri schools, where
the junior high gymnasium collapsed, announced this morning that their
school year is over. They are fairly sure they can have the buildings
re-inhabitable by Labor Day. Both the junior high gym and the high school
gym will need to be rebuilt. It's not our school district, but adjacent...)

Enough for now, Joan

Joan McCready, IS Manager      phone:  636-479-4499
MetalTek International         fax:  636-479-3399
The Carondelet Division        www.metaltekint.com
8600 Commercial Blvd
Pevely, MO  63070                      
           

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Wolf [mailto:eric_a_wolf@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2003 9:22 AM
To: MAPICS-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: This years conference


To the list,
For those of us that could not go - how was it - sessions, tech expo, etc.?
Were there many "hospitality suites" of vendors that were not "certified"
partners?  How about attendance?

Eric
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