By Randall S. Newton
Editor-in-Chief
I was informed this week that I would not be granted press credentials to attend
DaratechPLANT 2007, later this month in Houston. This decision comes after having been granted press credentials to attend the same conference in 2005 and 2006.
"Dear Randall, " says the message from Daratech Project Manager Charlie Foss, "Please don't be upset. It's nothing personal. We simply believe it is in our best commercial interest not to grant you press credentials to daratechPLANT 2007."
I have waited a few days to publish this article, not wanting this to be a case of crushing my sour grapes in public. But an industry colleague suggested it would be good to tell people, for two reasons. The first is that our collective readership deserves to know more about what happens behind the scenes; and second, to explain why I wouldn't be covering such an obviously important event for a portion of my readership. As it says on the Daratech site:
Not in living memory has there been so much opportunity for O/Os and EPCs to expand their businesses. In North America, engineering workloads have soared by a factor of three to five in the last 18 months. In Europe, workloads have climbed by at least a factor of two, and the same is true for EPCs in Japan. In China, growth is off the charts by Western standards.
When I applied for press credentials in '05 and '06, I was initially denied both time. I was told I was perceived as a competitor. Both times I replied by explaining in detail my current industry relationships and reasons for wanting to cover the conference, and both times I asked Daratech to reconsider. Both times this appeal process worked and I was granted access. This year, when I applied and was initially denied, I assumed the same process was at work. But the note from Daratech's Foss seems to be the final word.
Daratech is an analysis firm that puts on conferences.
AECnews is an online journal.
If AECnews is a competitive threat to Daratech, I don't see it. The other media organizations attending the event (listed below) should be equally considered as competitive threats. I also work under contract for
CADCAMnet, and would have covered DaratechPLANT for both publications. I attended the 2005 event under similar circumstances. At the time,
Cyon Research still owned
AECnews but I was Editor-in-Chief. I covered the event for both publications, with Daratech's full knowledge.
My work for both AECnews and CADCAMnet is strictly that of a journalist. A few times a year I do a bit of work as a paladin analyst for CADCAMnet's owner, Cyon Research, and I act as an unofficial host each year at COFES. I have never been hired to do any kind of analyst work in the plant design space. Daratech knows this, and knows my track record (the AEC/GIS/Plant CAD and analyst corps is a small group). In 2005 I recruited speakers for the initial AEC Science and Technology conference, and when I applied for press credentials to DaratechPLANT 2006, the recruiting work was cited by Daratech as a reason for denying me access to the show. When I told them I was no longer recruiting speakers for AEC-ST, they relented.
If you want to read coverage of this year's DaratechPLANT conference, you will have to track it down from the following publications which have been granted press credentials:
- Cadalyst
- CADPlus.de
- Desktop Engineering
- Managing Automation
- Chemical Engineering
- Hydrocarbon processing
- Hydrocarbon engineering
- TenLinks (has a press pass but no one will be attending)
When I attend the events of a specific vendor, transportation and lodging costs are usually provided by the vendor. When I attend an event such as DaratechPLANT or AEC-ST, I pay the entire cost myself. So, I've decided to spend my travel budget for this quarter to attend the upcoming Spar Point Research conference on laser scanning for the built environment, hosted by Spar Point's founders Bruce Jenkins and Tom Greaves. There's a fine bit of irony here; Jenkins and Greaves are two former Daratech employees who struck out on their own a few years ago and have done quite well as a result. I'm pretty sure they have an open door policy regarding press attendance.