As information technology (IT) guru for the 24th annual conference of the Pacific Telecommunications Council he has about 1,500 expert-delegates who are looking over his shoulders. They want their conference IT to work, and want to be able to talk to their offices in about 45 countries around the world, right now. Instantly.

"Actually, in the end they are a pretty forgiving bunch," he told the Earth Times, "more forgiving than the general public because they have to deal with this stuff all the time."

Fortunately, because of exhaustive preparation by Lawler and his 30-person it team, the IT has been running smoothly, with, he said no major complaints so far.

New this year's convention is a Lawler-invented presentation system that allows all speakers to pop into a speaker preparation room, load their presentations into a laptop, and feed it to laptops stationed in every conference room in the Hilton Hawaiian Village complex.

"They don't even have to carry around their own laptops," he said. "They can just walk in to the room and begin their presentations. No waiting."

Lawler's team is also running a wireless communications system that enables users to contact each other in the conference complex and tap into the Internet from anywhere, without using a telephone system.

Lawler carries around a tiny laptop with the wireless card in the side and through it can watch any presentation, or correct most problems that might pop up on the Power Point, or any other presentation software.

He also set up several dozen computers with full access to the Internet, and an intra-convention message system.

"This year we are using Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which should improve reliability," he said. A previous system failed a few times last year, he said.

"If the delegates can't get messages to each other and around the world," he said, "they are very unhappy."

In the event of a cross-cultural technical problem, Lawler can handle it in at least one foreign language: he is fluent in Japanese.

He spent two years as a Mormon missionary in Japan and has a degree in Japanese literature. A native of Vermont, Lawler has been in Hawaii for 26 years, serving previously as IT manager for the state's visitors' bureau, and a Pacific airline.

"Interestingly, " he said, "most people expect the telephone to work 99.99 per cent of the time they pick it up, but they don't have such expectations for the internet-based communications.

"Our goal is to make the reliability that high."

So far it has been about 100 percent.