Everyone here at this conference is so earnest. Conversations about the sessions spill over into the hallways, and heated discussions about the interpretation of comments made by the presenters are heard in restaurants and on the shuttle buses. I suppose this is a good thing, considering the cost of attending an event like this. $3,500 for the conference fee (although most Gartner clients get at least 1 or 2 free tickets based on their contracts), $1,500 - $2,000 in T&E, plus some unknown amount of opportunity cost. The internet stations are constantly filled and it’s tough to get a cell phone signal amidst all the technologists who have to keep in constant contact with their offices, lest something untoward happen.

Many people bring families along, shuffling them off to the parks during the day and joining up with them again in the evenings. Both parts of the family are usually exhausted – one from shepherding small children through the rampant temptations of Mickeyland, and the other from trying to absorb and filter a vast amount of data for that one pearl that will help them keep their job, allow them to come back to the conference next year, make their boss look good, or all of the above.

The conference attendees may take a day or an afternoon off to visit the Magic Kingdom or MGM Studios, but for the most part they take their time here very seriously. A few years ago I skipped out of the afternoon sessions to visit Epcot. It must have been either 1999 or 2000 because there was a special “millennial” pavilion, which was essentially an excuse for a variety of countries to sell more types of junk than they can cram into their standard Epcot showcases. I was walking through the milling crowds inside this venue and realized I was near the Scottish section, which included a place where kids could hit golf balls into a target. Just as I turned my head to watch, a boy around 9 years old took a swing befitting Tiger Woods and whacked the golf ball off the backboard of this attraction, causing it to rocket out of the cage and strike me directly on the head. I was stunned, not because it hurt that much (it did that a few minutes later), but because Disney has a sterling reputation for safety and I was amazed that such a thing could happen. I was immediately surrounded by about five Disney employees who materialized out of thin air. I can imagine that images of lawsuits and, worse yet, adverse media coverage, were dancing through their heads as they offered solicitous words, cold compresses and suggestions that I sit down. I suppose I should have held out for a lifetime pass to Disney World, but my brain was apparently addled enough that I told them I was fine and kept on going. Strange, but that’s about the time the headaches and facial twitches and voices in my head started…

Gartner is predicting that IT spending will increase 5% next year. This serves them well because they depend on IT spending and business health in general to fund their own growth. Companies pay Gartner large sums of money to help them understand the business benefit of IT, track new trends, and decipher the hype cycle of technologies (this goes through the following phases: technology trigger, peak of inflated expectations, trough of disillusionment, slope of enlightenment, and the plateau of productivity – one brave analyst added in the forks of dismal failure and used the cycle to plot his relationships with his family – his mother is continually at the peak, his mother-in-law is embedded in the trough, and his wife is allegedly climbing the slope of enlightenment). Gartner, along with the other industry analysts, is one of the watchers. I wonder who is watching the watchers to keep them honest?