Steve Jobs to speak at D8: All Things Digital, not Web 2.0 Expo

Dear John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly,

As you probably know, Kara Swisher announced today that Steve Jobs will be appearing at the D8: All Things Digital Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes in June. Apparently, he won't be attending the Web 2.0 Expo that you tried to get him to attend in San Francisco next month. Far be it from me to suggest that your press release promoting your conference thinly disguised as a call for more openness from Apple didn't have exactly the result you intended. Jobs will be interviewed at a conference...just not by you or at your conference.

As I said in a previous blog post, your open letter would have had a lot more credibility if you had just stuck to pushing Apple to be more forthcoming instead of trying to sell your conference at the same time. It also would also have had more credibility if you had shown the same backbone standing up to Microsoft in the 1990s that you showed in your letter to Apple. But, just like then, this was all about economic self-interest, wasn't it?

Better luck next time.