This week continues what has become a spring tradition in Redmond -- the Microsoft CEO Summit, in which the company's top executives confab for three days with bigwigs from large corporations around the world.
Microsoft is traditionally pretty quiet about who actually attends, although reporters go to great lengths to find out. The Seattle Times figured out a few of them last year using one of the best reporting moves I've seen on the business beat -- going to Boeing Field and spotting planes registered to eBay, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, JPMorgan Chase, Kimberly-Clark and Kroger.
It's the Pacific Northwest's version of Switzerland's World Economic Forum. In very few places can top executives get such a sharp view into the future of technology, or see so many products poised to take the market by storm -- such as that historic moment in 2002 when Bill Gates gave them an early look at Microsoft's Tablet PC initiative.
Joking aside, the financial meltdown will of course be a hot topic this year. Jamie Dimon, the current JPMorganChase CEO, has been a past attendee, dating back to when he was Bank One's chief executive. This year he could have combined the Microsoft event with a trip to the former WaMu, but PSBJ banking and financing reporter Kirsten Grind tells us Dimon isn't expected to be coming this week.
One confirmed attendee this year is Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO of IT-services giant Infosys Technologies of Bangalore, India. The most perennial of attendees is Warren Buffett, who likes to use the occasion for marathon bridge sessions bridge with Gates. Local execs like Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Costco's Jim Sinegal also like to go.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will deliver a Wednesday keynote at the event this week.
In the early years of the event, Microsoft would give reporters limited access to attending executives, but that gradually became more restrictive, where the company would only allow reporters to watch the Gates keynote via closed circuit in a separate room, cutting off the feed when it came time for questions from the CEOs in the audience.
This year, the company won't be letting reporters on campus but will offer an on-demand webcast of the Ballmer keynote. A company representative says via email that Microsoft heard from reporters that they'd rather just watch from their desks.
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