World Congress On IT -- WCIT

I went o WCIT 2008 at KL Convention Center as a delegate and had to suffer a few days of "ye old boring diatribe and ego venting" almost all the way through the seminar. I mean, come on!, if you're an avid IT blog reader (and writer) and you read forums such as dzone, zdnet, theserverside, or even slashdot every single day, there is nothing new here. There are a few gems though, the "Future of the Internet" forum was really something else. The WCIT Great Debate (well, it's not much aof a debate since all the debaters agree with each other all the time) was also insightful. The final keynote by Vonton Cerf (the interplanetary internet googler) was also very interesting

My real beef is that most of the presentations touch only the surface of any particular issue and use up all the time given to retouch the same surface over and over again (and desperately hoping that the audiences would get some kind of an orgasm from this). I mean, there wasn't really a session where things are scrutinized to the nearest atom and problems are disected like dead frogs on some 15 year old science students lab table (and yeah those 15 year olds can really disect frogs). Even the CIO breakout sessions (well I attended the FIS session) didn't really go that deep.

Another dispointing thing is that, no technical session was done AT ALL. I mean, come on!. It's World Congress of Information Technology and no "technology related track was done. Couldn't they run a few tracks on some general tech issues. You know things like building next the generation of internet apps or whatever. But nothing at all, rien, nada.
Now before you jump your guns and say, "hey Azrul, this is a business seminar, get over it!" I would like to remind you that they have a PC Fair going on downstairs at the convention center. (Of course WCIT was co sponsored by PICOM whose hammer (read PC Fair) is applied to every single problem they have... What? earthquake in China? let's do a fundraiser... and throw in a PC Fair for good measure). Now, is PC Fair, full of pimple head bloggers wannabe drolling over some MP4 player, is more business related than "Tools and techniques to build the next generation of internet application"? Yeah... of course... NOT!

I was also a bit disappointed by the chief ministers trying to lure investors to their respective states. During their speeches, they were reading from a text... I mean, come on, reading?! Gosh! you guys are politicians for God sake. Use your public speaking skills (how on earth did you guys win the last election anyway?). Throw away the freaking text your secretary made the night before and speak from your heart. What can we expect from you. You track record. Your resources etc. If things are lacking what do you do to improve the situation, and last but not least... give us your phone number and email so that we can contact you. If I want to invest in a company, I want speak to the boss. Not some "account manager" you hired yesterday. The same goes with investing to a state.

Lastly, why the heck did they call WCIT as "the Olympics of IT" anyway? . Well, if the Olympics of IT consist mostly of sitting down, snorring, chatting and eating good food (and the food was good), should one wonder why IT workers are getting fatter?