August 2006

Someone asked me Wednesday of LWCE whether I was disillusioned.  I don’t think that’s the word for it overall.  More like disaffected or perhaps tired is a better word.  I’ve been wondering if I would somehow reach the point where I started considering other things to do or become.  Its my vision that we all have to change, re-arrange, and redo ourselves and often that re-arranging is tumultuous and dangerous and stressful.  The show approaches the same.  I think it wants to change and I think there will be casualties.  One will be the community pavillion and the dot.orgs in general.  If I were IDG, I would question but unfortunately even when IDG questions they don’t know where to find the answers.  Its not board meetings and corporate sponsorship.  I have a different idea for them.  Let the LWCE grow and mature and become some corporate venue for open source.  Attract the sponsors and membership that will attend.  Many of the community types will simply steer away from things then and find their own venue.  Perhaps a show like SCALE which offers that blend and with control.  I like the blend of community and corporate when its done right.  When done right, the two can complement each other and the past SCALE shows I’ve gone to have shown that blend with diverse and exciting exhibitors, presentors, and attendees.  I also have met the show organizers and they grok the need.

So, I see LWCE changing and re-arranging and many of the people that do the show will do it for a different reason or just not.  Its the real truth that many of the people I always look forward to seeing attend things much less these days.  They just don’t have “the time, effort, or energy” to drive a few miles to see the MOTO-HP-Dell-Intel-AMD show.  This is not a slam or insult because there is a reality on the other side too.

I’ve decided I’m done with a few things around the show including the lunches.  The Linuxcare Labs reunion lunches had a great run and we had some great guests; but I’m done.  I may be done with yet other things in the short-term if I don’t see some change there too. I’m done with LWCE because I’ve outgrown it and its changed past what I want to do.  I’m gonna go find another venue for my attendance and SCALE is gonna be it.

Thanks to IDG really for showing me what they think the show should become and what my participation level will be.

Over and out for now.

Unfortunately, I cannot do the last day; but I wanted to catch up on things from the second day.  The overall impression I have is that its a good show but attendance is down or at least traffic to exhibitor booths is.  I have a few reasons for this:

• The show is changing its venue effective this year.  People want a common show that provides all of the goodness
• IDG really does not capture mindshare with the show at all and their messaging does not resonate to potential attendees or contributors
• The organization of the commercial entities and the free ones don’t align.  Huge Motorola booths and the little dot.org.  Somehow we have allowed an imbalance in the force
• No one doing Linux or developing tools or applications really cares anymore and they want something else.  Perhaps a grassroots show like SCALE?  Or maybe more focused regional shows that showcase various advances in open source

My overall impression of a show at Moscone is that its better than a show in Boston; but I also really liked the New York shows.  Someone asked me at the show, “why even attend if you are not a large enterprise looking for something?”  That’s a troubling question because open source goes beyond all those commercial solutions and really starts and ends up back the dot.orgs.  Unfortunate that IDG cannot see the forest for the trees and cannot seem to build a show venue that will be more things to more people.  Truly unfortunate that people that sell, presell, manage, and delivery solutions only see the Motorola booths and the HP booths and think that is Linux.  To be successful and make a difference doing Linux solutions, one has to at least acknowledge that the community solutions have simply outlasted many of the commercial ones.  And long after Novell dusts off SuSE and retires it, the community distributions will continue.  Why?  Because they are simply better and don’t rely on the kindness of strangers to even have an existance.  When I started with Linu there were umpteen commercial vendors of Linux.  Now there are umpteen thousand community ones instead.  No big marketing deals, no co-branding, no sales imperatives.  Take the Gentoo, the Debian, the others for a spin.  If you want to make a difference in Linux; siupport them in a way that leads more to their doors.  Its where Linux will be after the show hype.

I am not going back to the show today primarily due to family issues; but I think I’ve seen enough for yet another year.  Thanks to Art, Ned, Greg and the group that did the lunch yesterday for Linuxcare Labs.  I don’t know that I will organize another one.  Perhaps the time has run out on that endeavor as well.

Today was the first day of the exhibition part of the trade show and here are my unbiased and overly positive comments.  Debian guys!  Finally a cowsay t-shirt.  Whoa!!  Its about time.  Cowsay must be the unofficial mascot of Debian and its cousin “SL” which is a great joke on the standard way to list files (ls) on a Unix system always is good for a laugh.  Perhaps the funny man pages also come in there somewhere.  Thanks Debian for reminding me that life is indeed moo.  Secondarily, IDG in their infinite corporate wisdom managed to get the dot.orgs in the right place almost.  Now they’re stuck in a corner when they should be in the middle.  If anything leads Linux its the work of these dot.orgs.  A bit of remembering where all this came from is probably called for IDG. 

The show is good and that’s probably because its in San Francisco and there is rampant Linux and open source running around these vallyes and peninsula towns and east and south bays.  Its also good because there is a lot of big influence on open source out here as well. 

There is no Redhat booth and I’m glad.  There is just something about Redhat which distresses me most times.  Its not the quality of their enterprise or community products because I think products that have to have the name enterprise really should be called something else.  Novell included.  You Novell guys with SuSE Linux with YAST and all its meandering GUI-ness should remember the KISS principle.  I don’t particularly and personally care for Linux in those flavors at all; but I understand why others do and I work at supporting and servicing those that do.  After all we cannot all be so enlightened to use Debian .

The show floor was busy today and people came and went in waves.  I ran into lots of people I wanted to run into and none that I did not.  That’s a good mix.  I tried to get our sales guy to go to the dot.orgs but he seemed clearly uncomfortable about that trip.  Perhaps he sees no benefit in that walk.  Don’t know.  But all of this Linux gooey goodness springs from somewhere.  Perhaps tomorrow he’ll relent and go visit that mountain with me.

Finally, the show was just plain fun.  I walked the floor, talked with some folks I had not seen in awhile.  Its fun because many of the people I see like Clay I know I will only see once per year at a show and then its really good to see them.  Some folks I would love to see at the show just don’t go anymore.  That’s too bad.  I separate out the shows when I want to see a grassroots community thing I head to SCALE.  When I want to see a corporate, enterprise driven fling its LWCE.  Dig that SCALE has announced their 2007 venue.  I am so almost there and will be there totally in Feb 07.  Thanks to the guys at SCALE for doing it.  Its a show to do if you want good papers, reasonable costs, etc.

Well, even more significant than two blogposts in two days; its also time for the San Francisco chapter of the Penguin at the Moscone Center.  The big OEMs and the dot.orgs are lining up for their respective but unequal places.  I’m hoping that this year IDG gets it right with the dot.org pavilion and actually gives it a place and not a few feet of carpet like last year.  So, I always ask the big questions:

• what will I do this year at the show?
• will the show provide new and interesting Linux hardware and software?
• will there still be free beer?

While all these are definitely important and have their place, I mostly go these days to meet up with old friends from other times and places.  I always think back to other shows in my checkered past like giving away a car, getting a cease/desist order for a poster, having some of the most unusual show giveaways (like bugsuckers), and the people that transformed the shows into events.  Linuxcare back then was fun and it was destructive and we let most of it come out during the shows.  We gave away stuff, we actually did deals at the show.  I remember a deal went down with a certain OEM at the show in one of those small meeting rooms on th exposition floor.

If you’re heading to the show, stop by the dog.orgs and give something in your wallet to them.  They need it because of the work they do.  Most of all, if you need a quality Linux distribution there is no real need to go to a Green Lizard or a Red Hat.  There are distributions made for people.  My forecast of the current crop of the less than admirable consumer distributions is there will be one less by the time next Linuxworld SF rolls around; yet the people distributions will continue and be more popular.  Choose Ubuntu if you want a nice Debian.  I could almost recommend Fedora; but I travel in different directions since I alway seem able to break a rpm distribution with minimal attempts.

I’ll be there at the show Tuesday and Wednesday checking out stuff.  I will also probably write a blogpost each day kinda summing up the great stuff.  Perhaps a gratuitous link or two to old friends and their home places.

See ya there!