The IBM Forum 2003 started at 9 AM this morning with an opening talk by Janet Ang, managing
director of IBM Singapore. Next was an address by Frank Lavin, the U.S. Ambassador to Singapore. He gave a somewhat positive view of the U.S. economy and a bullish outlook for the impact of the Singapore Free Trade Agreement. The keynote talk was given by Dr. Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Education at INSEAD. As the conference continued throughout the day, I was honored to meet with various IBM customers, including the Infocomm Development Authority and Pacific Internet, to discuss the direction of Internet technology.