(Distant) Echoes from the Barcelona Symposium

While Silverlake (a vulture capitalist, with some IT notabilia on its board, including Gates, Dell and Moore themselves) is strengthening its grip on the borgs (see this post on GartnerWatch: Who says money doesn't buy influence? Joe went through the latest 63 pages of SEC filings -respect), the show goes on.

Back to the Symposium then. The event was held in the same old place as the METAmorphosis events since 2001 and the DMS team did their usual magic on logistics: well oiled event (you'd come to expect that if you paid EUR 3450...). The "gala event" was as usual useless if your goal was too network with analysts --they were off being entertained by "technology providers" (the new Gartner jargon for vendors) or trying to sell to users.
Attendance wise, they did pretty well for sponsors and garnered over 1200 delegates.
As far as one-on-ones, they were tougher than ever to book and you can only get 3 a head.

On the AR business side, we heard distant echoes of some changes (there was no InnerCircle meeting but an informal meeting between management and some happy few):

• As we announced before, Gartner will definitively increase their prices (read: buy now)
• The infamous Gartner Custom Connects will be retired
• The restriction on SAS days per vendor is lifted
• There were talks about addressing the silo approach that prevailed so far: the narrow technology focus does seem to be more appropriate for vendors than liked by users.

Overall, we have a feeling that Gartner seems on the lookout to increase its IT vendors revenue. To be continued....