Wish I could have told you about Intel CEO Paul Otellini‘s keynote address to some 600 North American system builders when I was in San Diego last week at the company’s annual Solutions Summit.
I’m sure he must have been glowing, because in the last few months the company has managed quite a turn-around following the dark day in September when Otellini had to lay off 10,500 people to meet rising competition from AMD.
Since then AMD has stumbled by not having enough chips for the channel, showing preference to OEMs and recording a couple of quarters of losses.
Meanwhile in January, Intel reported fourth quarter net income of US$1.5 billion (an 11 per cent increase from the previous quarter), in part fueled by AMD’s woes and in part from a surge in sales by getting quad core CPUs to the market first.
Did Otellini chortle? Did he beam? Was he merely effusive? I can’t tell you because the session was closed to the press.
Indeed the fact that Otellini would be at the conference was kept off the agenda handed to reporters, although he was listed as speaking on a big board beside the registration table.
In some 10 years of covering IT conferences I’ve rarely come across such a ban. As those of you who’ve been to user group and customer conference know, executives use keynotes not only to reach attendees but also partners and users who couldn’t make the event.
Mary Ragland, Intel’s channel PR manager, told me that the idea was Otellini’s – he wanted to speak directly to partners about some things that couldn’t be immediately reported.
She tried to persuade the company that this wouldn’t be wildly received by the IT press (she was right on that) and eventually arranged it so global reseller chief Steve Dallman would give a synopsis to the press. But that’s not quite being there, and Dallman isn’t the company’s chief decision-maker.
I told Ragland that as an executive Otellini couldn’t say anything that would materially affect the company’s bottom line anyway — a point that was buttressed when she mentioned that Intel was in a quiet period at the time prior to release of financials. So what was it – he could say sensitive things, or couldn’t?
I made other arguments, including that an address to some 600 customers could hardly be called a private meeting. Maybe I objected too long: At one point Ragland said that perhaps next year fewer press should be invited.
Perhaps Otellini is tired of having to feel that wherever he goes a reporter is lurking. Well, that’s the price of being a CEO.
Perhaps he felt being he should be able to utter a few confidences as a reward for partners who invested time and money to make the trip. Well, I doubt those who heard him speak Monday felt it was a personal message.
At other conferences I’ve been to those utterances are left to people who are much lower on the totem pole. The heads of those organizations realize a boss of a publicly-traded company can’t be shielded. In fact, even when they pick their words carefully they’re great assets to be used.
Otellini made a bad decision.
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