NOT BAVARIAN CREME PIE.

Some things just aren't as good as you imagine they're going to be, like Bavarian cream pie, or the perennially disappointing New Year's Eve. As I imagined our first CEO E-Conference, I tried to keep my expectations low. After all, who knew how 150-plus CEOs gathered together from all over the country for two days of hard work and fun would behave? Would they work hard? Would they have fun?

As I looked out at the sea of faces to begin my work as M.C., I knew it was going to be an extraordinary event. The room had BUZZ. The room had electric BUZZ. It wasn't just that the speakers were awesome...like Fred Smith and George Conrades and Marleen McDaniel. It was that the audience was awesome...like Barry Sternlicht and Bill Lenahan and Ann Drake and Bill Lear and dozens more like them. Combined they run companies worth billions and billions of dollars--traditional companies mixed with dozens of dot-com companies--and here they had gathered to share and learn. Here was a classroom where the teachers and the students could switch places and learn from either direction. And that's exactly what they did. They worked hard and they had fun. And this magazine is their glorious result!

So steal their ideas about remodeling our companies in the face of E, and come to our next CEO E-Conference...become the BUZZ.

Carol Evans. COO/Publisher, Chief Executive Magainze