The spoken word is powerful, but the written word even more so. The spoken word is full of texture, color, and nuance - but it's also of a fleeting nature and, except for the odd wire tap or reporter's bug here or there, rarely confirmable. After all, it's always, "My word against his." The written word, on the other hand, is permanent, provable, and in perpetuity. True, there can be texture and nuance in the written word as well, but it's the incontrovertible thereness of it that makes it so powerful.

Nothing could have borne out these theories more effectively than our recent visit to the Design Automation Conference in Los Angeles in June. The conference was swarming with over 17,000 engineers, designers, tool vendors, hardware and software peddlers, marketing and sales folks - and members of the press. There are lots of things ubiquitous to all conferences/conventions, and DAC had them all: keynote speeches, panel discussions, technical presentations, evening gatherings, and cocktail parties.

The difference for me this year was simple. I was there with co-workers who are also good friends and, subsequently, had lots of exciting, honest, and sometimes challenging conversations with people that I know well, admire, and whose opinions I value. The week at DAC, therefore, got off to a fascinating start when I was called to task for schmoozing at the Dataquest presentation on Sunday night. What exactly is schmoozing? Well, the friend who was pointing out the error of my ways explained that schmoozing is a kissing cousin to lying - to saying superficial and meaningless things to people that I don't really know and who don't really know me, to laughing at jokes I don't really think are funny, and to listening respectfully to people that I might think are silly.

To be fair, these criticisms were accurate and to the point. But I would argue that schmoozing is neither something that I, alone, lay claim to nor that I necessarily have philosophical problems with. In my book, schmoozing is all about being curious - about people and what they do and what they're thinking - while never forgetting that cocktail conversation is not about the state of man, but about the state of the bar.

So what does all of this have to do with the written word? Well, cocktail conversation, particularly at DAC this year, seems to have been a kissing cousin to panel talk. In a series of fortuitous chats with other members of the press in L.A., I heard about a comment made at one of the week's panels, by one of the panel members, with many members of the press in attendance. I was not actually at that panel, but in a poor piece of journalistic judgement turned around and quoted, in an article, what I had heard had been said by the person I had been told had said it.

As things always turn out in B movies (after all, we were only a stone's throw from Hollywood), I met the person that I had quoted just after I filed the story, which included the quote from that very same person - the quote that I had reported on third hand. Not surprisingly, the person I had quoted - now standing in front of me - was extremely agitated at the news, asked angrily who had told me that he had said that, and insisted that the comment had been totally off the record.

This piqued my curiosity. I asked if his comment that I had quoted had not, indeed, been made during a panel, by this very panel member, in front of members of the press. The answer was, of course, yes. But, it was also true, as I was told then and there, that I was quoting out of context and not playing by the rules since I had not actually heard the quote myself, in its original time and place. He argued that by quoting him out of context, I was actually misquoting him, holding him culpable for comments that he had not actually made because the texture and nuance of the original setting were lost in translation to the written word.

Having myself been recently chastised by my co-worker, just days before, for comments that I felt were unfairly taken out of context - the context of curiosity and cocktails - I could fully understand the anger and agitation of the person standing in front of me. He felt that his comments, though technically accurate, were taken out of context and therefore their meaning obscured and misrepresented. In fact, from his point of view, those comments were indeed off the record, as with all cocktail conversation. His spoken word had color and nuance that had been completely lost in translation to the written word.

I thought his point was very well taken. I rushed to my computer and sent off a revision to my article immediately, withdrawing the quote, and relieved to have avoided the perpetuity and thereness of the written word.