LinuxWorld Canada Report.
Brad spent the day on the LinuxWorld Canada
conference floor today, talking up the jSyncManager and seeing what's
interesting and new. Here's a report and what he saw.
I spent the day today at LinuxWorld Canada. I
went to see what companies have coming down the pipe, and to talk up the
jSyncManager to whomever would sit and listen (and, of course, to see what swag
I could come home with :) ). Here is a brief opinion piece on the things I saw
there today.
The Show Floor:
I was somewhat surprised at how small the show seemed. I haven't been at a convention at the Toronto Convention Centre in some time, but the ones I have attended in the past have typically been of much bigger scale. Somehow, I was expecting more. Still, many of the big players in the world of computers were there -- Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Novell, RedHat, and Sun all had booths. I sat in on presentations by Novell, RedHat. and IBM.
Novell:
The first presentation I sat in on was Novell's about their Linux products and strategy. Novell gets my prize for having one of the best handouts -- they gave everyone a pack with 7 DVDs of Linux products. I haven't had a chance to look at any of them yet, but they include Novell Linux Desktop, ZENWorks, SUSE Enterprise Server 9, Open Enterprise Server, Nsure, exteNd, and GroupWise. Good job Novell.
RedHat:
RedHat/Fedora are typically my most used Linux (although not the only Linux I use), so I sat in on their Enterprise Server presentation. It was a bit late starting -- when I sat down, they were showing a video of some guy at a white board )I'm guessing it was some high-up RedHat muckty-muck (I missed the introduction).
Regardless of who he was, it was the message of this video that interested me the most of everything RedHat had to say: RedHat was advocating not only using Linux to lower your TCO, but to take that cost savings and use it to invest in Open Source. An interesting idea indeed, and the message makes sense: by investing in Open Source, you can continue to reduce your overall TCO by benefiting from improvements by the community.
Out of all of the vendors I saw and talked to, RedHat by far understood Linux and OSS best. They didn't have any swag unfortunately -- I wouldn't have minded coming home with some RedHat stuff (indeed, I didn't do terribly well in terms of swag at all at this show, but more on that later).
IBM:
I sat in on IBM's presentation on CloudScape/Derby, their pure Java database product they donated to Apache. I personally like the idea of a small, SQL, pure Java database for embedding in programs, and have thought how we might leverage this with the jSyncManager.
While I like the concept of CloudScape/Derby, the presentation wasn't terribly impressive. Indeed, it barely seemed to work at all. I don't know if this is indicative of the product, or just a bad demonstration set-up (I did notice when they queries the database parameters that the username for the database was db2inst1, which is the user created by the DB2 installer (for those who are not aware, I used to work for IBM in their DB2 development group). I've been on the other side of a presentation, and I know how they can go wrong -- but that doesn't change the fact that the presentation suffered from several failures. IBM didn't give away any freebies either, although everyone got a CD in the bag given to them during registration containing stuff from IBM, including CloudScape. I'll have to look at it again sometime in the future.
TLUG:
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the guys at the Toronto Linux Users Group booth. Every time I had nothing else to do, I went and hung around their simple booth, because that was where all of the cool people were. Everywhere else on the show floor was suits and business casual (as I was dressed -- after all, I was there to promote the jSyncManager), but the TLUG booth had total geek chic, and was where anyone who was anyone went to hang around and talk Linux and other technologies without it boiling down to a sales pitch. This was where you got to hear about some cool uses of Linux well beyond how to use it to run your database and e-mail servers. Good job guys.
Apple:
I was a little surprised to see an Apple booth at a Linux conference. The guys there weren't even showing off Linux solutions. It had nothing to do with Linux. Apple themselves weren't really showing anything off -- there was no Tiger. They had one Xserve on display, a Mac mini system, and an iMac G5, and one or two other systems vendors brought in themselves. Indeed, the entire booth was staffed almost exclusively by Apple partners, showing off their applications that run on the Mac platform (as well as elsewhere in some cases).
Darling of the Show:
Here's the really big surprise (well, to me at least). While this was LinuxWorld, there was a lot of buzz about one vendors operating system in particular.
It's not Linux.
And it's not SCO or AIX.
It's Apple's Mac OS X.
I was surprised at the number of vendors that extolled Mac OS X support for their tools. IBM mentioned Mac OS X in the CloudScape demonstration. A few other vendors (besides Apple) actually had Macs in their booth (one had a 15" PowerBook front and centre demonstrating their web portal software in action). A few people in the TLUG booth were gushing about all the great things their Macs can do. One of the managers at Sun Microsystem's booth told me he is a huge Mac fan at home. I would up giving a few people impromptu Mac OS X demos off my PowerBook when they asked (which in itself isn't completely unusual. The 12" PowerBook really turns heads, and I get asked about it a lot. No dates from it yet, however :) ).
It was an odd undercurrent at a Linux conference, but everywhere I went, people were talking about the Mac. I actually felt guilty enough that I kept telling people that Macs are also great Linux machines in their own right (I keep an Ubuntu LiveCD for PowerPC in my laptop bag).
Oh, and of course everyone and their brother was having draws for iPods. I was actually happy to fill in HP's survey, because at least their draw was for a digital camera (nothing against the iPod, but I already have one. But I don't have a digital camera -- yet :) ).
Swag:
I haven't been to a computer conference in a few years, so my touch was a little off: I didn't come home with much in the way of really good swag today, other than CDs/DVDs and magazines. I got two clear rubber balls with LEDs inside them which I gave to my nieces. Xandros was reportedly giving out Skype headsets at the beginning of the day, but I didn't go straight there and they were out by the time I got there (I did get a certificate for 30 minutes of free Skype to landline and mobile phones, however).
The one little stand-out I did get was from HP: a Tux coin bank.
A perfect likeness. On the back it says "You can bank on Linux" (well, that and "Made in China"). By far the best swag I came away with from this show.
Conclusion:
My legs are tired and my feet are sore. I don't see any reason to go tomorrow, although it would be nice to pop in around closing time to see what leftover swag I might be able to pick up, it's not particularly worth the trip just for that. The show floor was smaller than what I was expecting, and there were a lot of organizations which were selling closed-source applications, and in a few cases things that have nothing to do with Linux in general (like one booth selling air conditioning equipment -- although it was nice to stand in front of their demo model, as it was a hot day in Toronto today :) ).
For me, the lasting things will be with the two companies that are interested in the jSyncManager -- one that is interested in integrating it with their product, and another that is very interested in potentially shipping it with their Linux distro -- but more on those items and those relationships progress.
The Show Floor:
I was somewhat surprised at how small the show seemed. I haven't been at a convention at the Toronto Convention Centre in some time, but the ones I have attended in the past have typically been of much bigger scale. Somehow, I was expecting more. Still, many of the big players in the world of computers were there -- Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Novell, RedHat, and Sun all had booths. I sat in on presentations by Novell, RedHat. and IBM.
Novell:
The first presentation I sat in on was Novell's about their Linux products and strategy. Novell gets my prize for having one of the best handouts -- they gave everyone a pack with 7 DVDs of Linux products. I haven't had a chance to look at any of them yet, but they include Novell Linux Desktop, ZENWorks, SUSE Enterprise Server 9, Open Enterprise Server, Nsure, exteNd, and GroupWise. Good job Novell.
RedHat:
RedHat/Fedora are typically my most used Linux (although not the only Linux I use), so I sat in on their Enterprise Server presentation. It was a bit late starting -- when I sat down, they were showing a video of some guy at a white board )I'm guessing it was some high-up RedHat muckty-muck (I missed the introduction).
Regardless of who he was, it was the message of this video that interested me the most of everything RedHat had to say: RedHat was advocating not only using Linux to lower your TCO, but to take that cost savings and use it to invest in Open Source. An interesting idea indeed, and the message makes sense: by investing in Open Source, you can continue to reduce your overall TCO by benefiting from improvements by the community.
Out of all of the vendors I saw and talked to, RedHat by far understood Linux and OSS best. They didn't have any swag unfortunately -- I wouldn't have minded coming home with some RedHat stuff (indeed, I didn't do terribly well in terms of swag at all at this show, but more on that later).
IBM:
I sat in on IBM's presentation on CloudScape/Derby, their pure Java database product they donated to Apache. I personally like the idea of a small, SQL, pure Java database for embedding in programs, and have thought how we might leverage this with the jSyncManager.
While I like the concept of CloudScape/Derby, the presentation wasn't terribly impressive. Indeed, it barely seemed to work at all. I don't know if this is indicative of the product, or just a bad demonstration set-up (I did notice when they queries the database parameters that the username for the database was db2inst1, which is the user created by the DB2 installer (for those who are not aware, I used to work for IBM in their DB2 development group). I've been on the other side of a presentation, and I know how they can go wrong -- but that doesn't change the fact that the presentation suffered from several failures. IBM didn't give away any freebies either, although everyone got a CD in the bag given to them during registration containing stuff from IBM, including CloudScape. I'll have to look at it again sometime in the future.
TLUG:
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the guys at the Toronto Linux Users Group booth. Every time I had nothing else to do, I went and hung around their simple booth, because that was where all of the cool people were. Everywhere else on the show floor was suits and business casual (as I was dressed -- after all, I was there to promote the jSyncManager), but the TLUG booth had total geek chic, and was where anyone who was anyone went to hang around and talk Linux and other technologies without it boiling down to a sales pitch. This was where you got to hear about some cool uses of Linux well beyond how to use it to run your database and e-mail servers. Good job guys.
Apple:
I was a little surprised to see an Apple booth at a Linux conference. The guys there weren't even showing off Linux solutions. It had nothing to do with Linux. Apple themselves weren't really showing anything off -- there was no Tiger. They had one Xserve on display, a Mac mini system, and an iMac G5, and one or two other systems vendors brought in themselves. Indeed, the entire booth was staffed almost exclusively by Apple partners, showing off their applications that run on the Mac platform (as well as elsewhere in some cases).
Darling of the Show:
Here's the really big surprise (well, to me at least). While this was LinuxWorld, there was a lot of buzz about one vendors operating system in particular.
It's not Linux.
And it's not SCO or AIX.
It's Apple's Mac OS X.
I was surprised at the number of vendors that extolled Mac OS X support for their tools. IBM mentioned Mac OS X in the CloudScape demonstration. A few other vendors (besides Apple) actually had Macs in their booth (one had a 15" PowerBook front and centre demonstrating their web portal software in action). A few people in the TLUG booth were gushing about all the great things their Macs can do. One of the managers at Sun Microsystem's booth told me he is a huge Mac fan at home. I would up giving a few people impromptu Mac OS X demos off my PowerBook when they asked (which in itself isn't completely unusual. The 12" PowerBook really turns heads, and I get asked about it a lot. No dates from it yet, however :) ).
It was an odd undercurrent at a Linux conference, but everywhere I went, people were talking about the Mac. I actually felt guilty enough that I kept telling people that Macs are also great Linux machines in their own right (I keep an Ubuntu LiveCD for PowerPC in my laptop bag).
Oh, and of course everyone and their brother was having draws for iPods. I was actually happy to fill in HP's survey, because at least their draw was for a digital camera (nothing against the iPod, but I already have one. But I don't have a digital camera -- yet :) ).
Swag:
I haven't been to a computer conference in a few years, so my touch was a little off: I didn't come home with much in the way of really good swag today, other than CDs/DVDs and magazines. I got two clear rubber balls with LEDs inside them which I gave to my nieces. Xandros was reportedly giving out Skype headsets at the beginning of the day, but I didn't go straight there and they were out by the time I got there (I did get a certificate for 30 minutes of free Skype to landline and mobile phones, however).
The one little stand-out I did get was from HP: a Tux coin bank.
A perfect likeness. On the back it says "You can bank on Linux" (well, that and "Made in China"). By far the best swag I came away with from this show.
Conclusion:
My legs are tired and my feet are sore. I don't see any reason to go tomorrow, although it would be nice to pop in around closing time to see what leftover swag I might be able to pick up, it's not particularly worth the trip just for that. The show floor was smaller than what I was expecting, and there were a lot of organizations which were selling closed-source applications, and in a few cases things that have nothing to do with Linux in general (like one booth selling air conditioning equipment -- although it was nice to stand in front of their demo model, as it was a hot day in Toronto today :) ).
For me, the lasting things will be with the two companies that are interested in the jSyncManager -- one that is interested in integrating it with their product, and another that is very interested in potentially shipping it with their Linux distro -- but more on those items and those relationships progress.
Posted: Tuesday - April 19, 2005 at 08:47 PM
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