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Discriminatory bribery continues: Microsoft Mobius conference starts tomorrow December 05, 2005 [General] | By Edward J. R. Möbius 2005 USA - yearly invite-only conference organized by Microsoft - takes place tomorrow in Redmond, USA (Seattle area). UPDATED: see the end of the article. Sometimes Microsoft organizes also Mobius Europe - but not in all years. Anyway the main Mobius conference and the most important one is in USA - at the end of each year (October-December). It is discriminatory because Microsoft is denying invitation to people from publications that dared to criticize Microsoft employees - even if these publications are many times more influential than those that Microsoft invited. It is bribery because Microsoft covers traveling costs and lodging (even intercontinental) and Microsoft is giving away freebies like mobile phones and gadgets - worth more than $1000. On Microsoft side, after Beth Goza (i.e. Beth Torrone) and Jason Gordon, this year John Starkweather is the organizer of Mobius conference. Officially Microsoft writes about Mobius conference: As with every Mobius event, we will host a variety of speakers, from across the industry, who will talk about general mobility issues, industrial design, new applications and of course provide sneak peeks into future products. However the best part of Mobius is having a very open and honest dialogue – and even healthy debate – about the industry, technologies and initiatives that are shaping the future of mobility. ... and one can't deny that although participants of Mobius conference are not obliged to write reports about it on their websites, such invitation to USA to Microsoft headquarters is really influencing people. And Mobius participants who are not writing about their participation in this conference, are in reality hiding this fact from their readers - in order not to be ostracized in their communities (that their accept bribes from Microsoft). In fact it happened in past that people who pretend to be Symbian supporters were participating in Mobius conference and not reporting about it on their websites - thus unfairly hiding bribery from their readers. Regarding who is being invited: officially Microsoft invites most influential writers and editors of online and paper publications - mainly those devoted to mobility and not only those from Windows Mobile area but also (among others) from Symbian and Palm OS camps. Unfortunately many unmerited people - people from publications that have very small readership and small numbers of visitors - are also being invited. Clearly Microsoft is using unfair handpicking of people who certain Microsoft employees like on personal level, instead of using some (any?) objective criteria. Microsoft also doesn't understand that there is such thing as Alexa, where one can check (objectively) how many visitors given website has. Unfortunately we (i.e. msmobiles.com) have never been invited to Mobius conference although we have number of readers and web traffic much bigger than many people who were invited - it can be objectively checked in Alexa. Clearly we are being considered "influential" by big corporations because not only they are reading our website but also sending lawyers against us (as it happened with Sony Ericsson, HTC and some others we can't mention). Some of the publications that Microsoft has invited to Mobius have published the very same information, but were not attacked by lawyers of these corporations - so clearly these corporations don't consider them to be influential. Regarding "bribery issue": some webmasters, editors and journalists are covering costs of hotel and traveling from their own money and then they claim that they were not bribed by Microsoft. However furthermore some of them are keeping the free gifts from Microsoft and then giving them away on their websites - what totally denies their claims about lack of bribery. The Mobius 2006 USA conference starts tomorrow. Some time after it will finish we will not only publish list of participants but we will also estimate to what extend these people are really influential (using Alexa and some other metrics) and to what extend their participation in Mobius conference was effective and positive for Microsoft's mobility efforts. UPDATE (from John Starkweather from Microsoft): 1) not all attendees are 'paid for'. Some attendees have policies and pay for their own airfare and lodging and do not accept the giveaways; 2) the event is not at Microsoft headquarters. It is in Seattle, but not on Microsoft campus and Microsoft is not bringing people to campus.  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 45 Comments ]
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