Will the Wrong Stephen Baker Please Stand Up?

Another DEMOfall has passed. It was a busy couple of days with on-stage presentations, business and press meetings, dinners and numerous TV camera crews dancing about. BusinessWeek's Stephen Baker stopped by one of my client's booths, or at least that's what his badge said.

I happened to see his press badge before I saw his face, so went to shake his hand and say, "long time no chat" (since I KNOW the Stephen Baker from BusinessWeek who lives in New York). Until I looked up. I did in fact shake his hand but with a confused look on my face. "Hmmmm, you don't look like the Stephen Baker I know," I said.

His reply? "There are two of us at BusinessWeek," and even went so far to say that he knew the other Stephen Baker. Later, I ran over to him at another booth and asked for his business card but to no avail. He said he didn't have any or carry them with him. Not an unusual journalist response to a newly introduced marketing or PR flack.

Yet, something continued to bug me about this and since I didn't see Steve Wildstrom in close vicinity at the time, I emailed the other Stephen Baker to let him know that I ran his "buddy," a buddy Baker confirmed he didn't know. The 'real' Stephen Baker did a blog post about it, with another update more recently.

I heard that the imposter was thrown out of the conference. But the real question is: who is this person and why go to so much trouble and risk for a conference badge?