"That's not because either I or Microsoft chickened out, but a consequence of the fact that the CIO of Newham, Richard Steel, for whose benefit the meeting was being held, has rather suddenly and unexpectedly announced that he is retiring. In the wake of this news, I contacted Microsoft, and we agreed that there was little point holding the meeting as originally planned.
"However, I was very conscious of the huge amount of effort that people had put into this matter, and so I wondered how that might be salvaged. Since the issue of how Microsoft behaved during the ISO process is still a very live one, it seemed to me a worthwhile exercise trying to pull together a summary of certain aspects of what happened last year. Since the whole point of doing this was to hear Microsoft's response, I asked the company whether they would be interested in writing a reply to my post, and they have agreed to do so."
