The real confusion is MS seems to have thought Robert truely loved them for what they were, and Robert seems to think they truely loved him for what he was. But alas there was money changing hands, and try as both sides may (or may not), you can’t be objective in that situation. Noble effort, but we’ll just have to let go of that fantasy now.

I read Alfred’s original post and, yes, I can absolutely see where you being called irrelevant to Web 2.0 is both incorrect and personally upsetting. It would bug me if I were in your position, so I can’t fault you for that.

What I saw is this (bear with me while I express probable misperceptions): you posted saying you were going to MIX without an invite to lurk outside and protest not getting an invite. Alfred responded (incorrectly in my opinion) by questioning your relevance to Web 2.0.

Not to put words into Alfred’s mouth, but I suspect his real intent was to question your relevance to MIX07 (a developer targeted event), at least to the extent of providing free passes to the event. This latter point, as I indicate in my original post, is one I can agree with.

As for your point about the press being given preferential treatment at other, similar events: I’ll certainly take your word for that. If giving the press special perks at technical/education sessions is normal procedure with Microsoft, then you are absolutely right- Alfred’s target should be Microsoft’s conference team. Given his post, I have to wonder if perhaps he has already done this, and the lack of invites for yourself and Wired are the result. That would explain his response to your “why didn’t I get a free ticket” (my reading of them, sorry) posts.

As a technical attendee, I can say that I feel lucky if I can get funding to go to one conference every two years. And as I mentioned in my original post, arriving there to find that media folks are sitting up front with free tickets is not likely going to sit well with me. My support is with Alfred if he’s trying to convince the Microsoft conference folks to be more thoughtful about inviting reporters to some events.

The thing that pissed me off is that Alfred was saying I was irrelevant to Web 2.0. That, despite me doing hundreds of interviews in the industry. Despite having a sizeable audience. Despite doing dozens of interviews with MIcrosofties and people at Adobe and other companies.

Mix is only on its second year. Last year I got a free pass cause I was a Microsoft employee.

And, as to journalists making money off of conferences. That is sort of true. But, it’s a two-way street. Microsoft makes a TON more money than I do if they sell an additional copy of its toolset.

At all Microsoft conferences I’ve been to (TechEd and PDC) the journalists are given free passes and are seated in front of everyone else so they get better access than the paying customers.

Alfred should go to the conference team internally at Microsoft and ask why that is.

I don’t do event journalism, though. If you watch my show at http://www.scobleshow.com you’ll see that I never do event reporting.

I am there to make relationships with people who I then film elsewhere. Or, maybe once in a while out in the hallway.

You missed that I DID NOT ASK for a free ticket to Mix. I don’t want one. I don’t need one to do my job. I’ll get the news just as well out in the hallway.

Or, come back to my blog later tonight (at 9:01 p.m.) when I’ll break some major news from a major multi-billion-dollar company. No conference needed.

I agree re: the media attendees should pay. Some conferences are media-centric from the start: E3 is (was, I guess) an example. I could see vendors or the show itself sponsoring attendees to that kind of show.

But the conferences I generally attend are usually specific to a particular topic, and are targeted towards practitioners. When I’m able to attend, I’m paying to get a compressed technical introduction or overview: they are educational events, not advertising fests or love-ins. As I said in my original post, I’d be pretty ticked off to find that someone who isn’t a real “learner” or contributor got a free invite to a session I paid for.

Has Scoble received free invitations to previous incarnations of MIX? If so, then “weaning” him of this expectation probably needed somewhat special handling, and maybe that was lacking. Otherwise…well, he doesn’t have my sympathy.