Last month, in Scott Adams' cartoon "Dilbert," a pair of venture capitalists tell the character Wally they want to invest in his Web-based business.

"I don't own a Web-based business. I'm just an engineer with a cool ponytail," Wally replies.

"That's good enough for us," say the venture capitalists, proffering fistfuls of money. "We like to get in early."

In an 18-month period that saw the stock price of Amazon.com, the online bookseller, increase more than 1,000 percent, despite never having made a profit, Wally's experience hardly seems an exaggeration.

But not all members of the business community are as gung-ho as Wally's starry-eyed benefactors. When it comes to business, the Internet raises as many questions as it does expectations, and business people everywhere are eager to have those questions answered.

Providing insight into these issues, or at least a forum where they can be discussed, is the object of Cyberposium 1999, a conference on business and technology organized by students at the Business School. It will take place on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 19 and 20.

"This year, we're focusing on the Internet," said Bea Wray, M.B.A. candidate at the Business School and co-president of the High Tech and New Media Club, the primary force behind the conference. "We're trying to make it an educational event for students, a way to understand new technology and its application to business."

The first Cyberposium took place in 1996, but last year was the first time the event attracted national attention. This year it is being billed as "the premier M.B.A. conference on business and technology." A volunteer team of more than 125 M.B.A. students drawn from the top 30 M.B.A. programs worldwide is helping to solicit speakers, manage conference activities, and organize online panels.

More than 25 technology, service, and financial firms are serving as sponsors, and more than 120 corporations are serving as participants, including Internet start-up firms, leading hardware and software manufacturers, content providers, venture capitalists, and consulting firms. Altogether, there will be more than 60 CEOs and company founders on hand to deliver talks or participate on panels.

So far, more than 1,000 students have signed up for the conference, representing top M.B.A. programs including Harvard, Wharton, Northwestern, Stanford, INSEAD, London School of Business, Tuck, Georgetown, Darden, and others.

In addition to the live conference, Cyberposium hosts a Web "conference" (accessible at http://www.cyberposium.com< /a>) at which participants can exchange ideas through online chats, discussion threads, and interactive polls. This virtual conference also provides live video of the day's proceedings as well as special "virtual" panels.

Featured speakers include Carly Fiorina, president of global service provider business at Lucent Technologies; Guy Kawasaki, founder and CEO of garage.com; and Bob Lessin, chairman and CEO of WIT Capital.

Panel participants include Warren Adams, president of PlanetAll; Paul Cooper, founder and CEO of Perceptual Robotics; Jason Olim, founder and CEO of CDNow; Salman Malik, director of Internet products for Siebel Systems; Erik Rydholm, co-founder of Motley Fool; George Orban, chairman and CEO of Egghead.com; and Julie Wainwright, CEO of Reel.com.

Among the many events planned is a talk by Kawasaki titled "Rules for Revolutionaries," a series of entrepreneurial workshops, a discussion of competition in a rapidly evolving digital marketplace, and a lunchtime array of product demonstrations in which participants can take a look at some of the hottest new technologies that are having an impact on the business world.

According to Wray, these talks and discussions should help to throw light on some of the baffling problems confronting businesses that seek to do business on the Internet: What is the best way to attract traffic to a Website? Does e-commerce eat into a company's conventionally generated revenues? Which technologies will dominate Internet development? How will software be delivered in the future, by mail or through downloads?

"I don't know the answers to these questions," Wray said. "No one does. But the Cyberposium is a good place to battle it out."