ShadowRAM: March 19, 2007

PALMISANO GETS BIG PAY DAY
• You gotta hand it to Sam Palmisano. Last year, the IBM CEO and chairman raked in a cool $18.8 million in compensation. Not bad for an invisible man. His last public appearance (if you can call it that) was the infamous Second Life conference that he (or whoever was running his avatar) hosted.

Now, IBM is invoking Palmisano's name in press invites to a briefing at IBM's Cambridge R&D lab.

First question for the flack: Will Sam be there? Answer: No.

We'll have to settle for Steve Mills. Again.

Palmisano is, however, on the agenda for IBM PartnerWorld in St. Louis in May. It's not exactly clear whether he will be live, beamed in or in avatar form.

In any case, I guess a "woo-hoo" is in order.

IN MEMORIAM: RICHARD JENI
• Avnet's Fred Cuen was shocked and saddened by the recent death of comedian Richard Jeni. He met Jeni when the comedian performed at the distributor's Ignition show for IBM business partners in 2005. "It's such a tragic loss," Cuen said last week from Mexico. "The thing I remember is the laughter he was able to bring to the crowd. A lot of folks spoke highly of the entertainment we had that evening."

At the time, ShadowRAM noted that we love it when vendors and disties hire comedians to take potshots at the competition. Jeni, who normally does an R-rated set, said Avnet asked him to not to use the A-word or the F-word onstage. When he asked what the A-word was, "They told me it was 'Arrow,' " Jeni said to thunderous applause. "So I asked them what the F-word was. They said, 'It's what we usually say before we say 'Arrow,' " Jeni quipped.

My favorite Jeni aphorism: "Honesty is the key to a relationship. If you can fake that, you're in."

SEEN AND HEARD
• Overheard on the elevator at XChange Solution Provider earlier this month in San Diego: "Are y'all here for the fungal infection conference?"

Seems the Manchester Hyatt hotel concurrently housed "Focus on Fungal Infections 17," a conference that host company Imedex describes as a "forum for world leaders in mycology and infectious disease management to share their knowledge of fungal infections and how to optimize patient care." Eww.

• Doug Burgum will take his official leave from Microsoft when the fiscal year ends in June, but he says he's been invited to do a fly-by appearance at the infamous Randy & Andy bash at the worldwide partner conference in mid-July in Denver.

That's Randy & Andy as in Randy Fortner of Collins Computing and Andy Vabulas of IBIS. They're quite the party givers, stealing thunder at every Convergence, Stampede and Microsoft partner conference in memory (well, 'memory' is probably not a good word to use to describe an event where so many memories have been impaired, but never mind).