On Sat, Jan 12, 2002 at 12:15:51AM +0000, Malcolm Herbert wrote:
BETT had two out-and-out Linux/Open Source companies, Fen and Look Systems, who booked late and didn;t make the brochure. Sorry i didn;t a get chance to talk to Michael Brown, but heard good reports etc, well done Michael.
BETT is v. expensive and difficult to justify for Red Hat (as Suse) without a partner (is that sugar daddy) to pay for the stand. However, you have take their line (IBM,Dell etc), but so did Toshiba on the Microsoft stand.
Following on from Ian's comments, some form of 'open source village' with Red Hat, Suse, (IBM), etc along with the key developers like Fen Systems, Look, ComputerPark, Ateb, Optimus would be the way forward. It would need the support of the hardware companies,and also the show organisers, EMAP, BESA etc. They would be leant on by RM and Microsoft not to draw attention to it my making it a unified area.
That sounds like an excellent idea. As you say a few developers should show up too. Having a wild stab in the dark ;), I guess most of the BETT stands would be inhabited by sales droids & if I was looking to buy, or investigating what's an offer, I'd far prefer to talk to somebody at the coal face who actually understands software then somebody flogging a webserver who's never even heard of Apache. Ditto it would help if people like Chris who make extensive use of oss in schools also turned up.
However there would be great press and community support. Red Hat (ie me) will be at the NAACE conference in Torquay between 5-8th Feb, a far better networking event which also has some exhibition space for 1 day (i think). This is a key event for LEA IT Advisors, DfES, Becta and the like. if anybody wants to put something into this let me know asap and i'll see if i can get Dell (or someone) to fund some of it.
Even if they just funded beer & sandwiches it would encourage people to show up & do their reputation no harm.
thoughts on BETT 2003 and NAACE 2002 asap.
also, i can also recount the story of my meeting with David Burroughs (Head of Education for M$ UK), very brief as i had a train to catch, nice guy, but i didn't know what to say to him :-)
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