Donnie Barnes On LinuxExpo

pjones writes "Donnie Barnes has posted a longish explanation about the fate of LinuxExpo on the 'real' LinuxExpo site. This helps clarify the situation quite a bit." Read more below.

Turns out that there's really an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Linux conferences, and Donnie Barnes has decided that making them better is more important than making them more numerous, so the LinuxExpo folks are joining forces with the Atlanta Linux Showcase, and the future looks bright.

Donnie's explanation also sheds some interesting light on the growth of Linux as reflected in the attendance at shows like these. Says Donnie: "I still remember the line of almost 100 people at 9 a.m. when the doors were to open on the first event." Times change.

Comments

Re:computer shows have only one purpose

[stripes]

An Internet old-timer (he was in his *gasp* 50s) once told me that computer industry trade shows were good for only one thing: forcing companies to release products on time. Given the OSS idea of releasing early and often, do Linux trade shows serve this same purpose?

Trade shows have a few nice qualitys:

• You get to see people and talk to them, rather then only being able to read them.
• You have an "excuse" to focus on reading tech. papers for a few days, and not focusing on other immediate aspects of work.
• If your work pays, it's almost a free vacation with payed meals :-)
• If you have a good idea for a change it is sometimes far easyer to changes someone's mind in person (where you can see facial expreassions and change your "argument"'s focus)
• While good questions get asked on email lists, some people with good questions don't participate thare. A confrence is a good place to hear their questions.
• It's your chance to take your favroite OSS author out for dinner, or drinks (I'm not implying romance here)
• OSS releases software early and often (idealy at least), but it has a lack of focus on papers, and other explanations. A confrence has some focus on tutorials, and paper presentations. So it does push those things to be "finished up".
• Speaking of tutorials, um, there are tutorials. Sometimes they are fantastically useful in getting enough knolage about something to let you go back on your own and survive on the meger documentation that it comes with ;-)
• And did I mention the papers? Usenix has some really nice papers. The papers on the Freenix track arn't allways so good (many are just an abstract or slides), but they were better last year then the year before. So let's hope they keep improving.

I have never been to one, so I'm a bit curious...

They are fun. They are useful. If my company didn't pay, I would probbably pay to send myself to Usenix. At least if I could find a way to keep my wife from killing me. Damm, allways a catch.

If you have never been, try to get to one. Try to find one that is technical enough for you (Usenix's genneral confrence is quite technical; Comdex isn't very technical at all). You might want to avoid ones that are more technical then you want -- you don't want to be bored, and you don't want to be afarid to ask questions at the Q and A. Your best bet is to try to get the procedings from the previous year and see if the papers are intresting. Also look at the tutorials (if you can afford them) and see which shows have ones that intrest you (or your employer if they will pay). In my opnion deciding on which confrence to go to because of who the keynote speaker is, is, well, lame. After all the keynote is only 30 to 90 minutes of a several day event. On the other hand the keynote speaker makes a great tiebreaker. Then again, so does location.

computer shows have only one purpose

[eries]

An Internet old-timer (he was in his *gasp* 50s) once told me that computer industry trade shows were good for only one thing: forcing companies to release products on time. Given the OSS idea of releasing early and often, do Linux trade shows serve this same purpose?

I have never been to one, so I'm a bit curious...

Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?

I know where he's coming from.

[jht]

I had a chance to go to the ALS in 1998 - it's a good, well-run event. If Donnie thinks joining up with them is the best way to handle things, that's fine by me. Unfortunately, I can't go - the reason I was able to go to ALS '98 was because they had it coincide with Interop that year, and I can't realistically get my company to send me to Atlanta twice in a month. Like it or not, if I have to pick one, it's got to be Interop.

I understand why Linux Expo is going away, though. I was the president for several years of a large user group (BNUG, a networking user group in Boston), and we used to regularly plan trade shows in order to raise our operating funds for the year. It also filled a gap for a while after the original NetWorld pulled out of Boston and combined with Interop. The trade show was incredibly difficult to manage and coordinate, since all the planners were volunteers with full-time jobs in addition to their duties with the group. A lot of details would get dropped through the cracks, nobody had time to make sure the cash flow was there, and promoting it in the days before everybody was on the Internet was a mess.

Our largest event was a summertime trade show/dinner cruise we called "LAN Ahoy". We'd use a big harbor cruise ship and hold an all-day trade show on board, followed by a keynote in an adjacent hotel (while that happened, we'd frantically clear out the trade show gear and load the dinner tables), and then we'd do a 4-hour dinner cruise with about 250 people. The trade show was free, the cruise we charged a little below our cost for.

It was a lot of fun, but the logistics of coordinating a trade show are incredibly difficult. The last time we did it we nearly lost our shirts, even though we filled most of the booth space and sold the dinner tickets, because of the cash flow problems. We had to threaten several vendors with a public shaming in the end to get our last checks (I won't say who they were, but they're _very_ big companies). LAN Ahoy was a nightmare to plan, and it was puny compared to the Expo. I'm amazed and impressed that they kept it going so long and so well.

- -Josh Turiel

Is joining with ALS is a good idea?

[joshy]

Combining with Atlanta Linux Showcase will pool the resources of the two conferences and make it into something clout of Linux World. I worry, however, that ALS may be getting too big. I was there last year and was amazed at how large it had gotten. Having been at the 0th ALS in 1995 it was quite a shock. It was still fairly cozy though. Everyone seemed pretty loose and a lot of interesting discussions happened. LinuxWorld, on the other hand, was huge and very corporate.

I'm all for the Linux community being expanded and supported by businesses, but I think it's good to have a conference that is just for the geeks and techies. A place where we can discuss what's on our mind and really connect with eachother instead of concentrating on the business aspects. If ALS attracts more geeks from the south east area by merging with Linux Expo (and uses Atlanta's more ample convention space) then I'm all for it. But if ALS is just going to become LinuxWorld, (and therefore be on the road to another Comdex) then I'd rather just call the whole thing off. The geeks still need a place of their own.

• -joshy