An Offer He Didn't RefuseAn Offer He Didn't Refuse

You might think incoming IBM chairman Sam Palmisano would be a tough act to follow, but Francis Ford Coppola, the Academy Award-winning director of The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, accepted IBM's offer to speak after Palmisano's keynote at the company's PartnerWorld conference in San Francisco last week.

Coppola told the crowd that he knew in the late '70s that technology would revolutionize filmmaking. Not only has that happened, but technology has given the artist more tools to illuminate life, he said.

Why was Coppola asked to speak? Perhaps because he's known as a big fan of IBM's Lotus Notes.