D: 'flexive

Wired News is covering David Hornik's and my coverage of D: All Things Digital. ("Gag Rules? Bloggers Report Anyway," via Dave.) And now I'm covering Wired News. I fear we're going to need some astrophysical intervention here sometime soon...

Some thoughts and observations. To begin with, I appreciate Walt Mossberg's comments. Richard Saul Wurman also said something I've been thinking about all of the interviews I heard: speakers of this order are too intelligent, sophisticated and cognizant of their corporate responsibilities (where applicable) to disclose confidential information to an assembled conference crowd. As Wurman put it, "These aren't the kind of people who spill the beans. It's an artificial restriction." There's something else I haven't seen mentioned yet: non-journalists were charged (a bunch) to attend. Now, I have no idea what the conference's press pass policy was, but I'm assuming those who attended on one—and agreed to the associated terms—were exempted from registration fees. In other words, as we lawyers might say, there was consideration given for the reporting ground rules imposed on the professional journalists attending as such. And perhaps not just financial consideration. As Wurman also pointed out, some conferences are off limits to the press altogether. As a final note, it pains me to have been one of those seemingly testy people who couldn't be reached by a reporter for comment. Turns out this is the price one can pay for an agressively-set spam filter.

I have been pretty busy this week (and the baby seems to want me to sleep a lot), but my next installment of notes from the conference is forthcoming and will cover the interviews with Terry Semel, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.