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. 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. 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 :-) Malcolm On Fri, 2002-01-11 at 22:42, Christopher Dawkins wrote:
Did I miss some stands? I could only find Michael Brown's Fen Systems stand. Were SuSE there? Were anyone else there? Perhaps I had my eyes shut - I didn't get round all of it.
I got round most of it, and was upset - there was less Linux than last year. Only Michael really. The man at the IBM stand had heard of Suse but wasn't sure about it. There was one Cobalt Qube, and there was NetBSD on the Precedence stand, and of course a few other stands (such as Atomwide) were powered by OSS servers.
It is unfortunately very expensive to lay on a BETT stand, but it is really the premier UK education event. I was approached by many software sellers, most of whom were bemused when I asked them for a KDE version. One salesman selling software based on IIS/ASP had never heard of Apache and clearly didn't believe me when I said it powered more web sites than IIS, because he knew that Microsoft had 90% of the market.
I think we need to rally behind Michael, Ian and Roger for next year. There needs to be a bigger presence, with more oomf - in particular, with an expensive line so external sites can be demonstrated. In this respect I think a few wireless portables could be extremely useful. I was carrying a Nokia 9210 and was able to demonstrate my site while on other people's stands - very useful indeed on two occasions. With two stands cleverly located we might cover a good 50% of the area, and the battle can be carried into the opposition's territory. Like looking up, live, the statistics for Apache vs IIS servers.
But where are the funds and man^H^H^Hpersonpower going to come from?
-- Christopher Dawkins, Felsted School, Dunmow, Essex CM6 3JG 01371-822698/821076 or 07798 636725 cchd@felsted.essex.sch.uk
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-- -------------------------------------- Malcolm Herbert Red Hat Europe t: +44 1483 734955 m: +44 7720 079845 --------------------------------------