August 1993, Steve Jobs had founded NeXT during his years of exile from Apple.
He agreed to speak at my “GroupWare ’93” conference and expo (At the ripe old age of 22, I’d decided PR wasn’t my thing and stumbled into the trade show business in January of that year).
On Day 1, Jobs sat on a panel chaired by the amazing Esther Dyson, featuring Alan Ashton (WordPerfect), Tom Evslin (Microsoft) and John Landry(Lotus) – really good, smart group of people.
The next day, he was to deliver an opening keynote presentation (which would then be followed by Gursharan Sidhu of Apple).
Following his Day 1 panel, Mr. Jobs asked to speak to whomever was in charge. I happened to be the 1/3 of our business partnership nearby.
He proceeded to detail his audio visual requirements. Production not being my strength, and feeling a little freaked out, I went and found our A/V guy, who listened to what turned out to be an epic Apple-sized stage set – about $150,000 in 1993 money in addition to what we had already staged.
After consulting the other 2/3 of our partnership, we explained that we were a small business, and that he certainly should understand the impact such a sum would have.
After consulting with himself, he no-showed for the keynote the next morning.
Tom Evslin gave an excellent impromptu presentation.