Linux World / Network World 2006

[Evan Leibovitch]

Tony Abou-Assaleh wrote:

>Yeah .. I know. The trade show is free and mostly useless (from previous
>experience).
>
Whether the show is useless or not depends on your expectations.

If you go expecting to find people with kernel smarts news on the next 
big OSS development project you'll be badly disappointed. If you're 
looking to see what vendors have done in the past year to make open 
source more palatable to the mainstream you'll find that in abundance. 
If you want to see how *you* can make money in open source, sometimes 
tradeshows offer good opportunities to either partner with existing 
participants or get some ideas of your own.

If you're an open source advocate, a tradeshow is a place to counter the 
FUD that has inhibited its growth, since shows attract plenty of the 
curious and tire-kickers. Since a user group is not typically seen as a 
vendor, LUGs are often valued for the independence of their responses 
since they don't care if the best solution to a problem makes someone money.

Having said that, TLUG does have a bit of a reputation from the past of 
being little more than a hangout for Linux "consultants" who can't 
afford their own booths. I would urge the organizers of the next show's 
participation to have a policy against having any brochures or business 
cards around that aren't directly related to the collective. If someone 
wants to talk up their own for-profit capabilities, that's fine but it 
must take second place to the goals of advancing the interest of 
{T|GTA|NewT}LUG, which is (very generally stated) the growth of the 
community.

Also, shows tend to be well attended by the media, so announcements made 
at the show have immediate reach to reporters in the field.

- Evan

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