It must have been this open-minded spirit that caused the gentleman at France Telecom to point me out to the huge Swiss policeman who stood at attention by the entranceway. A moment later, I was surrounded by gendarmes, and they informed me that it was illegal to distribute literature at the entrance to the exhibit hall. But, I pointed out, everybody here is doing the same thing. The others, I was informed, were handing out literature for approved companies, while I was from an outlaw, impudent organization and didn’t belong in the exhibit hall. My exhibitor badge was confiscated and two huge gendarmes grabbed my arms, carried me down the escalator, and deposited me outside the exhibit hall. It was like a scene from Curious George. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a third policeman on the radio to his fellow officers in an apparent effort to see that I was not readmitted.

I was really stuck now. I couldn’t even get back to my own booth. No matter what exhibit door I tried to come in, there were polite but implacable huge policemen refusing me entry. I was desperate. As I walked in circles outside the convention center, I suddenly had an idea—the press door! Using my American publishing credentials, I was able to secure entry to the press room. Here business journalists from around the world were drinking coffee and tapping out their stories on courtesy computer terminals. There were rows of pigeonholes where large companies could leave press releases or messages for those reporters they wanted to reach.

This, I realized, was not such a bad place to be. I immediately started filling all the pigeonholes with my literature, and when I finished that, I attempted to reenter the exhibit floor through the press corridor. It is no wonder that no invader has penetrated Swiss territory for hundreds of years. The moment I left the press room I was spotted and a phalanx of gendarmes ran to apprehend me. Naturally, I ran back into the press room with the guards in pursuit. Just as they were about to grab me, I began shouting to the assembled journalists. “They’re trying to get me. They’re trying to shut me up. They want to squelch international telephone competition. No matter what they do to me, you’ve got to get the story out.” I threw all my remaining literature up in the air, confettilike, to the reporters as I was ejected finally, and much more roughly, from the exhibit hall.

Back in the press room, however, the reporters were apparently electrified. This sort of thing may be commonplace for reporters covering wars, freedom fighters, or international terrorism, but it doesn’t happen too often at business conventions. Here was a chance for the reporters who had the boring bad luck to be there to be real reporters, not just to regurgitate press releases. The effect was immediate and seismic.

Reporters descended on Marc back in our booth demanding to know how we had broken the high international telephone rate monopoly. Others demanded to know the nature of the conspiracy against us. Some actually filed their stories from our booth using our callback system. One reporter from the New York Times went to interview the director general of France Telecom, and was told that he was forbidden to write about IDT. The French press that the director general was used to dealing with may be cowed by this kind of directive, but it didn’t fly with the New York Times.


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