LinuxWorld’s Move to Boston Spawns Another NY Event

By Jacqueline Emigh
Linux Today Correspondent

With this week’s announcement of the LinuxWorld New York Summit,
the Northeast Corridor of the US will now have not just one but two
LinuxWorld conferences, possibly for many years to come.

The large winter LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, previously
held annually in New York City, moves to Boston this February. It
will remain there as a permanent fixture, according to Mike
Sponseller, public relations director for IDG World Expo.

But IDG also holds long-term hopes for its newly unveiled New
York Summit, a smaller conference that–unlike its
predecessor–will not include an expo component.

Meanwhile, in conjunction with the move to Boston, the bigger
LinuxWorld show is being re-engineered this year to focus
specifically on “business value”–or in other words, “how to make
money from Linux,” Sponseller said, in an interview with Linux
Today.

Why did IDG relocate the East Coast expo? According to
Sponseller, Boston turned out to be a handier location for some key
LinuxWorld exhibitors, as well as for lots of Linux customers.

For example, Novell–now the owner of SUSE Linux and Ximian–has
moved its headquarters from Salt Lake City, Utah, to the Boston
suburb of Waltham, Massachusetts. “And Red Hat has a development
facility in Massachusetts,” Sponseller added. Boston–aka “The
Hub”–is also home to many smaller Linux-oriented start-ups, such
as Black Duck Software, for one.

Sponseller also anticipates that, by taking place in Boston, the
larger show will become a stronger draw among the many colleges and
universities situated in New England.

But on the other hand he said, IDG also wants to keep offering a
conference for New York-based Linux users, particularly in the
financial community who might not find it that convenient to travel
to Boston.

Consequently, IDG has decided to present LinuxWorld New York
Summit 2005 from May 25 to 26 in New York City. Conference tracks
for the one-and-a-half-day event will include The Business Aspects
of Linux and Open Source; Systems and Application Management; and
Security Issues: Inside and Out.

Sponseller expects attendance this year of about 7,000 to 10,000
for the “big” expo in Boston and between 300 and 500 for the summit
in New York.

If the New York Summit is a success, it could become an annual
tradition, he told Linux Today. Moreover, IDG might adopt the
“summit” concept in other cities throughout the world.

Beyond these two East Coast events and a West Coast extravaganza
each summer in San Francisco, IDG already puts on LinuxWorld events
in a number of other nations.

The Boston show–slated for February 14 to 17, 2005–will
revolve around the following tracks: The Business Case for Linux
and Open Source; System and Application Management; Security
Issues; Integration and Mixed Environments; Kernel and Cluster
Issues; Emerging Technologies; Client Side Linux; and Data
Center.