Subject: Linux Expo 99
From: "Edmunds, Keith" <[email-masked]>
To: "Laurie Brown (E-mail)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1999 16:02:52 +0100

A brief summary - feel free to pass it around or whatever.

Overall it was fairly crowded in a relatively small hall at Olympia. I had
the distinct impression that some vendors were there to either jump on the
bandwagon or as insurance "in case" Linux takes off. These would include HP
and IBM. 44 exhibitors in all, ranging from Allied Dunbar offering a free
financial health check (ie, FA to do with Linux) to the obvious Red Hat,
SuSE, etc. The (few) stands I spent any time at:

Corel: hosted by Americans, showing Corel Linux in beta, which is
essentially Debian + KDE + tweaks. So basically they were showing KDE. Very
popular stand. I thought it was in poor taste to staff the stand with
Americans - the message I infer is "no UK support". Corel appear to be
jumping on the bandwagon too, but as they - unlike IBM and HP - have little
to fall back on they probably mean it. Perhaps the greatest benefit of Corel
Linux is the raising of Linux' profile and credibility (plus some marketing
expenditure and their involvement with Wine, of which there appeared to be
no mention on their stand).

Debian: very small stand, packed. Flogging single CD copies of Debian for a
fiver. Two T-shirts hanging up behind the stand. Gave the impression of
being fly-by-night (which I don't believe they are) - but, as I said, very
popular.

Definite Software: No-one had name badges on, just company ones. Jason was
therefore presumed to be a fairly big guy, looking stressed, about mid-40s.
Lots of PR around the whole exhibition about Definite, but the stand was not
very busy.

Hummingbird: small stand crowded with about six staff. Giving out demo
copies of their Linux products. Busier than one might expect.

IBM: huge stand with no discernible message.

Magic software: giving demos of how great their development software is. I
had an enthusiasm-generation failure when they were touting for audience
over their PA, so didn't watch it.

PC Bookshop: probably the way to make money at these shows. Always packed,
and good selection of Linux books there. 

Red Hat: the most professional Linux distributor there, if indeed not the
most professional site of all. Big stand, smart-but-casual staff, all
wearing red baseball caps. They had some PCs with certain apps on (one was
Informix, but there were two or three others too) with a person from that
company with the Red Hat on demoing. Very good.

SuSE: extremely busy stand, very hard to get on to. Selling SuSE 6.2 at £26,
but PC Bookshop (qf) at NEXT DOOR STAND were selling it for £24.95! SuSE had
some good PR material.

Overall: it will be much better next year. I would have liked to have seen
more commercial apps (eg, network monitoring under Linux). Borland/Inprise
advertised in the exhibitor brochure, but didn't have a stand. Probably a
smart move: they have nothing to show yet, but retain visibility. About four
of the stands were staffed by suits, and they were all quiet stands. One of
today's lessons is that Linux is more relaxed.

Keith

Keith Edmunds
European MIS Manager
Tel:	+44 (0)118 918 3445
Mobile:	+44 (0)467 664889