LinuxWorld San Francisco Update
So here I am on the show floor of LinuxWorld 2006 in San Francisco, and I have broken away from the hectic pace to provide an on-the-scenes, uncensored update. Let’s start with the positives: the weather is true to form, a slight chill, great sun and a gentle breeze. San Francisco is my second favorite city in the US and it is always a great time, and this trip is no exception. Went to a great party last night courtesy of Splunk and Mainline, and hung out with some interesting and fun people. Had a small trip to Napa on Sunday and hit some great wineries in our rented PT Cruiser convertible, which was also quite fun. Decided to venture out of the tradeshow quadrant of the city and we stayed in Japantown at a great, economical hotel, the Miyako, which has proved to be a smart move since JTown is interesting and a nice change. By in large, the trip to SF has been great.
By now you may be asking yourself if this an update on LinuxWorld or is this a diary of another boondoggle? Well, the truth is that this is that the show is, once again, a little disappointing. Attendance, while way better than Boston, is still continuing the downward slide and IDG’s lack of focus to get the show back on track is painfully obvious. There are notable holes in the exhibitor list, such as Redhat and Sun, and a total defection by leading security vendors. Our focus is email security, and in this space there is a paltry showing as well, with Barracuda being the sole email security vendor to make the show. They have a big RV as their booth, BTW, but they won’t show off the inside for some strange reason. A few antivirus vendors showed up such as BitDefender, Sophos and Nod32, but besides these companies plus Astaro and, of course, Message Partners (us) in the IBM booth, there isn’t much of a security focus.
Of course, the server vendors are here - Dell, IBM, SuperMicro, Pogo, etc. - the chip vendors and the OS vendors are here along with .org folks and book hawkers, but there is no real excitement to speak of. One of the most notable observations to me is that there are very very very few venture guys walking around. In Boston a few venture guys were walking around, but here, in the VC central, there seems to be zippo, or next to zippo.
Unfortunately, I am standing at my booth or yapping to partners so I don’t get to the keynotes so I can’t comment on those, but I have not heard any great excitement for the keynotes either. So, I certainly want to be too negative because, LW is not much different than many trade shows now-a-days and somewhat reflects the reality of Linux as well. Linux was a big story in the 90’s and as it became a force it was interesting, but now it has arrived. Now it’s time to use Linux and a show that is not solution focused, such as this, has minimal value for business customers. We all know that Linux is here, it works, it is reliable and it is business ready. We all know that servers can run Linux and that servers are incredible now-a-days. Linux is no longer the story, the story must be on applications and solving business problems. Until LW can figure this out, and figure out how to organize the show in such a way that it excites business users to actually show up to learn things, I’m afraid that the downward trend will only continue.
I will enjoy SF for the rest of my stay and I welcome anyone to stop by and say hello in the IBM booth. A BIG thank you to IBM for helping us out so much as always. We love Kathy C., Dave M., Sam Q. and all the folks who are so nice to us, thank you!
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