Champagne Taste

While overseas trips raise a series of issues with which CIOs and their employers grapple, most CIOs were reasonably comfortable with trips to the ballet, opera, sporting events and occasional lunches or dinners. The CIOs felt these were important for relationship building, and in terms of arts and sports sponsorships a valuable form of corporate philanthropy, which they were pleased to support.

But sometimes even this sort of largesse can stray a little to the excessive side of the equation.

"There was this vendor with a corporate box at the Sydney Cricket Ground and they took us to rugby and AFL games," says a CIO. "They used it once when Michael Jackson came out, and they collected us in hire cars. I live so close that I was almost written off when I got there because I had to drink the entire bottle of champagne so fast."

Life is hard.

SIDEBAR: The Comeback Kid

"Have you heard the story of the sales representative who offered to give a buyer a car as a reward for having put so much business his way?

"The buyer sternly refused, saying that it would constitute a secret commission and he was not prepared to accept it.

"The salesman thought a bit and said: 'I will sell it to you for $100.'

"'In that case,' said the buyer, 'I'll buy two.'

"I used that line once to a team of three sales guys trying to sell me $2 million worth of computer-aided design (CAD) hardware and software. It was effective, told at the right time."

- A Sydney CIO

SIDEBAR: Free Press

It is not only CIOs who are feted by the big vendors. So are the media

This reporter in two decades covering the IT sector has travelled overseas on many occasions, ostensibly to attend international launches, visit research labs and reference sites, but in the process has also been lavishly entertained.

Over the years the offers of international hospitality have become more sober as the industry has matured. This is no longer the era when reporters are put up in France's Hotel Negresco for the launch of an inkjet printer and no one flies Australian journalists to Rome for a server launch these days. Jodee Rich is too busy with other matters to host weekends at Jupiters Casino and the five-day trips to Paris to learn about smart cards are sadly no more. Long gone are the week-long "study trips" to what was then Sperry's education retreat outside St Paul de Vence in Southern France. IBM once flew posses of Australian journalists around the world each year on week-long education trips, and always at the pointy end of the plane.

Today most newspapers and magazines are stricter about the largesse reporters can accept, and also demand disclosure of any "relationship" between the subject of the article and its author.

Did the 1980s and 1990s corporate largesse affect this reporter's impartiality? Hopefully not, but it is hard to be completely objective about objectivity.

That printer launched in Nice was very nice.