May 7, 1989

IT’S ABOUT TIME: Lee Felsenstein returned from his recent trip to the USSR with a mission. On Thursday, Felsenstein was said to be meeting with engineers at the Pentagon to get the latest data on what U.S. equipment is okay to sell to the Soviets. He wasn’t available for comment, but here is the information I could glean from associates.

Felsenstein visited the Soviet Union as the computer expert for the business department of San Francisco State University. The idea, said one friend, was that they were looking to set up “a kind of Western-style business school, with Russian yuppies using Lotus 1-2-3 with PCs.”

It sounds like the plan got bigger, and Felsenstein will be helping set up the USSR’s computer industry, which is basically non-existent.

He also met many people from software collectives and wants to start the hacker ethic — that burning, intense curiosity to do things just for the heck of it — in the Soviet Union. More on this story as it develops.

SPEAKING OF HACKERS, tie down your networks. This August, Amsterdam is going to be crawling with hackers attending a Galactic Hacker Party at the tres hip nightclub Paradiso.

Organizer Hack-Tic “urgently invites” anyone who fears “the threat of information tyranny” and wants to learn what they can do about it.

Here’s a few quotes from the data sheet: “During the summer of 1989, the world as we know it will go into overload. An interstellar particle stream of hackers, phone phreaks, radioactivists and assorted technological subversives will be fusing their energies into a media melt-down as the global village plugs into Amsterdam for three electrifying days of information interchange and electronic capers.”

I can’t tell if this part is intended to be a joke or not, but I got a hoot out of it: “.Ž.Ž. If you are refused transport because your laptop looks like a bomb, cut off behind enemy lines, or unable to attend .Ž.Ž. then join us on the networks. .Ž.Ž. We can provide low-cost international communications links during the conference.” No kidding.

BABY BUGGY BUMPERS: Management shake n’ bake continues at Regis McKenna Inc., the seminal Silicon Valley public relations firm plagued by financial and staff turmoil. Jennifer Jones, general manager, was ousted from her position while on a maternity leave that began at the end of April.

Jones was replaced by Sharon Colby, former vice president and general manager of corporate and financial relations for the firm. Employees got the news a week ago Friday in a company-wide meeting where Regis Himself stated that Jones had been offered another job as vice president of the firm’s consumer electronics division, but that she “wasn’t happy about it.”

“It wasn’t done while she was on maternity leave,” Colby says. “It’s been in discussion for a couple of months.”

“A lot of discussions on various things had taken place,” said Jones, whose hands are literally full with Mason Reed McMullan, her 3-week old. “But the meeting (where the decision was made) was held last Friday, the same day the announcement was made.”

The Regis Rumor Mill (a force unto itself) is buzzing with it all, and one of the buzzwords is “lawsuit.” Jones says no. “I’m just thinking about my career and I haven’t thought about lawsuits,” she says.

OUT OF THE CLOSET: The Oakland-based United Cerebral Palsy Business Ventures is looking for donations of computer equipment — XTs, ATs, Macs, whatever you’ve got — to help train and employ people with severe disabilities. “We’ll put anything to good use,” says Kathleen Mayeda, project manager for UCP Business Ventures, a program within the UCP Foundation.

So far, about 20 disabled folks have learned to use computers for everything from accounting to computer-aided design (CAD). Some have been placed in companies (one at AT&T), others are working for UCP, making $5 to $7 per hour. “An entry-level CAD person makes $12,”Mayeda says. “But we want them to go find a real job. If we paid them $12, they might stay.” Call her at 832-7430 if you’ve got giveables.

ACT UP: I wonder if the pro-choice women who work at Apple Computer have heard the word that Domino’s Pizza owner Tom Monaghan, whose big multimedia project is being displayed prominently at Apple wingdings, has donated $30,000 to Operation “Rescue” (I use the term loosely), the anti-choice group which has been storming abortion clinics nationwide. You know what they say: The personal is the political. Maybe it’s time for the personal to be corporate, too.