The Wired journalist who wrote about Microsoft's Channel 9 and blogging culture and then made more of a story out of Microsoft's PR accidentally sending him a briefing document (the gist of which was that six months was enough to do the research, plus clips from his previous writing, plus a vain hope from the PR team to get to see the story before it hit the streets - plenty of conspiracy fuel) forgot to tell the PR team he wanted to go to MIX 07 next week in time to get on the press list. We were told to use our press registrations quickly, because there would be a fixed limit on numbers, so we signed up a long time back. Fred was told that the press list was full, as was the general registration list but in the spirit of transparency, the head of Channel 9 put it to the vote on Channel 9. Nice one!

And yes, he's going; the vote was just in his favour and someone from Microsoft either lost or gave up their place for him. It's very Microsoft; there will be a fixed process but if it bites you, the 'softies will work very hard to work around it and get you what you need. It's like running any other conference or convention; something unexpected will come bite you a few days or hours before the event. And it's very blogosphere; the blogging vs traditional journalist polarity is very much in evidence this month.