The following was written on Friday, December 11th:
Alan Robertson
writes:
Last night was the first ever Boulder Linux Mini-Expo.
This event had around 20-25 exhibitors, including the Linux
Weekly News, LinuxMall, a COMPAQ distributor (showing off Alphas
running Linux), several consulting firms, Xi graphics (X Inside X
servers), and several non-commercial exhibitors (including me).
There was no cost to exhibitor or attendee, and no budget :-).
The advertising was by email, web sites, posters, and
word-of-mouth. The posters were put up on the web, and printed and
distributed by individuals as they were so moved.
As you can see, it was an informal event.
However, it was smashingly successful. We had probably a total
of 300 people attend. Normal attendance at a BLUG meeting is around
40. From 8-9:45 PM people were shoulder to shoulder. From opening
until 8 PM, there were more than that. Good thing no fire marshalls
showed up 😉 My wife said that she saw quite a few people leave
because they didn’t want to wait to get in.
We had the expo in a small auditorium probably 40 feet on a
side. Minimal expectations were for 100 people, and we had thought
200 would be a good number. We had as large an event as the
facility could have conceivably sustained. No one would
deliberately schedule so large a crowd there.
We were pleased, to say the least.
I had thought that I might give out 60 or so flyers on my
High-Availability Linux software, but I ran out after an hour or
so. I probably used another 50-100 after getting more copies. My
demo ran pretty well with the requisite number of failures 🙂
(fortunately I knew how to get around them).
Thanks to Wayde Allen of the BLUG for hosting the event, and to
the National Institute of Standards and Technology for graciously
providing us the space.
— Alan Robertson alanr@bell-labs.com