By Emmett Plant
Editor, Linux Today
Today was a slow day. On the expo floor, it seemed as though
there were no attendees; only exhibitors. This feeling was shared
by a great number of people on the floor, occasionally walking by
and saying ‘Hello’ for the thirty-fifth time. While the
illuminati of the Linux community got a nice opportunity to
converse and discuss amongst themselves, there were very few
attendees to speak of. The standard crowd that’s created when free
items are given away barely existed.
In the long list of great things about the Linux community is
that it will continue to be interesting and do amazing things, even
without a crowd to watch them. While students from the Beacon School shot down Linux
community luminaries and hired entertainers with Nerf guns, the few
attendees that funneled through the door were presented with
interesting presentations and in-depth conversations with
exhibitors, something they wouldn’t be able to do at a show with a
bigger turnout.
One of the advantages to the show is the incredibly nice
attention given to technical detail for the tutorials. Everyone
sits at a very fast IBM workstation, and gets to business quickly.
You know they’re doing something right when my colleague Paul
Ferris is impressed with the workstations. He attended a Perl
tutorial this morning, and seemed very satisfied not only with the
systems available, but the teaching style, as well. The tutors seem
very well organized and I caught a few Java guys working hard
tonight making sure things would go smoothly at their tutorial on
Thursday. Usually, preparations like this are made fifteen minutes
before the presentation, and it was good to see that there was
ample room given to the tutors to do their work.
Some of the community’s finest came out for the show, even if
they weren’t keynoters. Userfriendly.org‘s J.D. ‘Illiad’
Fraser was on hand, autographing copies of his O’Reilly book, and
Brian Behlendorf was manning the Collab.Net booth. Benjamin Cox from
The Linux Fund was there,
taking applications for the Linux Fund credit card, and Kurt
Granroth was there from KDE.
The halls are nicely arranged, with open spaces in the
appropriate places. Unfortunately, some of the exhibitors faced a
challenge that they hadn’t counted on; Rain. Water was falling from
the ceiling above on this grey New York City day, but the
conference organizers made quick work of solving the problem. All
in all, it was a slow day at The Bazaar, with most exhibitors
hoping for a better turnout of attendees tomorrow.