The first word Is it just me, or was this week absolutely crazy? From Gartner`s conference in Cape Town to Sacccom`s (the contact centre community`s) in Johannesburg, to Icasa`s ADSL hearings - the industry did its favourite thing: it converged, confabbed, conferred, and in some cases, even concurred.

Not so Telkom and Icasa, or Telkom and MyADSL, or Telkom and the SMME Forum, or Telkom and any number of mailing lists.

Telkom is at loggerheads with Icasa over its findings, with broadband users over a supposed misquote, with the SMME Forum, which called its Internet bundles "anti-competitive", and finally, I suppose, with the geek media, which is organising itself in mailing lists, meting out contempt as the mood takes them.

I`ll just watch from the sidelines and enjoy the spectacle. (Spectating is, at any rate, something I`m planning to revive in my household, with rugby season in fairly credible swing.)

Another conglomerate being picked on by somebody far smaller is Cisco. A security researcher felt it necessary to resign from his job, reports Wired.com, because his employers allegedly wouldn`t let him disclose a dangerous vulnerability in Cisco`s gear. The flaw, he reckons, could bring the Net down.

Interesting ethical questions follow from this - what shape should disclosure take? Should you blab if enough time passes and not all danger is removed? Or can you argue that one should let sleeping dogs lie?

Then there`s the exciting development of Absa`s absorption into Barclays, which follows multiple threads of rationalisation and optimisation - of platforms, products, channels and much more. We investigate the integration of, especially, systems, platforms and offerings.

Signs are that, despite all the good signs in terms of GDP growth, direct foreign investment, interest and inflation rates, currency health and other fundamentals, the local industry nonetheless isn`t growing as spectacularly as one would expect. Still, there are good reasons, and one mustn`t conclude too much from it.

Something that does, however, put a dampener on proceedings is the frankly appalling outcomes from a number of GauntengOnline projects.

Well, it can`t be all fun.