By Brian Proffitt
Managing Editor
The city of Milan, Italy, is known for two things: fashion and
finance. It is this latter industry that has attracted organizers
of the first Italian LinuxWorld Expo to open its show doors this
month, in hopes of attracting potential enterprise users of the
popular open source operating system.
LinuxWorld Expo Italy in scheduled in Milan (Crowne Plaza Milan
Linate) from September 22-24. While it is a smaller version of its
predecesors in the United States and United Kingdom, LWE Italy is
planned to be a focal point for Italian large enterprise and SME
firms as they explore and expand their knowledge of Linux.
The model for LWE Italy will follow a similar pattern to the
recent international LWEs in Tokyo and Beijing and provide local IT
professionals from across Italy and adjacent Switzerland a chance
to discover open source capabilities in several channels, including
ERP, e-commerce, education, embedded, real-time, and
telecommmunications.
“We expect mostly Italian people, but with some coming probably
from southern Switzerland,” explained show spokesman Marco Comelli.
“We have a couple or three Swiss exhibitors and speakers, and I
myself been interviewed on Swiss public radio regarding LinuxWorld
Expo.”
Cormeli works for Wireless, an Italian promoter and organizer of
wireless technology and applications-related conferences and expos
that was selected by Massachusetts-based IDG World Expo to run the
Italian version of LWE.
“All of us at IDG World Expo are very excited to begin this new
cooperative venture with Wireless to bring our successful
LinuxWorld event series to Milan for the Italian market,” said
David Korse, President of IDG World Expo, “We know that Wireless is
a very professional and experienced Italian event organizer and we
believe that our joint efforts will ensure a successful debut for
our LinuxWorld event in September.”
Like other LinuxWorlds, the show will feature an expo show floor
accompanied by a series of conference tracks that show organizers
hope will attract both the business- and technical-minded. Tracks
will include “Linux for E-Gov,” “Linux for Executives,” “Linux for
SMEs,” “Linux for System Integration/Migration,” “Linux for
Embedded and Devices,” “Linux for Desktop Integration,” “Linux for
Banking and Finance,” “Linux for Multimedia,” and “Linux
Security.”
A final, “Open Source? Made in Italy!” track that features Zope
and project Amberle will also be presented.
All of these tracks will be free to registered attendees, save
for the “Linux for System Integration/Migration,” “Linux for
Embedded and Devices,” and “Linux Security” tracks.
The free conference tracks and admittance to the expo floor will
be free if registration is completed before Sept. 17.
Much of the conference will focus around Italian technology,
business, and commerce, though some major international community
members will be speaking, including Franco Roman of Sun
Microsystems, Scott Handy from IBM, and FSF Europe’s Christopher R.
Gabriel. Cormeli described an Italian marketplace that’s
well-suited for a Linux conference.
“[Linux is] taking off right now in some vertical markets.
Compared to, for example, the German market, Italy is lagging
two-three years,” he explained. “We have a good enthusiast base,
many LUGs, and a surprisingly large number of open source code
projects. The topic is much talked about more from a
cultural/social/political/whatever point of view than from a
technical/economic one.
“This is why we decided to do LinuxWorld Expo in Italy,” Cormeli
continued, “To provide a forum to steer the discussion to the
business side too. As far as we’ve gone, companies and the public
are buying into our idea.”
The show will be held at the Crown Plaza Milan Linate, Via K.
Adenauer, 3 San Donato Milanese, Milan, from 10 am- 6 pm (CET). For
more information on the event, visit http://www.linuxworldexpo.it/.