LinuxWorld Hangover, pt. 2 (the end?): Poster Children

Author's note: Jason Schumaker's Going for the Gold came up on Linux Today while I was working on the second draft of this article (Sad confiession: I edit, re-write and sweat these articles and this is as good as it gets.). So what? This article is fundamentally different because.... OK, maybe it's not that different, but why come up with a new topic? After all, I don't get paid for this stuff.

Hard to believe it's been a week since I left LWE. Of course, I've been exhausted, sick, and asleep much of that time, but the glow from the show has followed me to Chicagoland anyway. I can hardly wait for April COMDEX (with the Linux Business Expo). Should be an interesting counterpoint.

Time lends perspective to every human endeavor. In that light, I now award my first annual (or however often) Linux Poster Children awards. These are the people and/or companies and/or products and/or freebies that have stuck in my gooey little mind. Fair warning: This was my first LWE and I'm no clued-in insider. These choices come from a bumpkin's eye's view. In spite of the big signs and big booths, I couldn't get that worked up over the major doings from IBM, VA-Linux (well, maybe the Andover thing) and the like. Don't get me wrong: I love what the big Movers and Shakers are doing for our world. I just have more fun watching the guppies swimming in their wake. Linux means opportunity as much as freedom, and some of those guppies will grow into groupers and ocean cats, not to mention barracuda and shark.

With no further ado:

The I know it's my job, but I'm having fun anyway award.

Former lawyer-style disclaimer: I didn't actually ask anyone if they liked their job, so employers are advised not to sue me for misleading them in the event someone goes e-postal. No, I just talked to folks. Some of them seemed very clearly to enjoy what they were doing and to be very proud of what they did.

The winners: Dave Whitinger of Linsight, Paul Ferris of Linux Today.

It was great to meet Dave face-to-face after so many webunications under the auspices of Linux Today. It was also great to hear him evangelize his new venture, Linsight. Dave impressed me with his sincere desire to provide the best and most useful web experience possible. It's hard to believe he's so young, and easy to forget that he's already on his second major Linux undertaking. AND his business card is cool, a rather neat adaptation of the Linsight homepage. One thing, though, Dave. What's with the join (@us) || die where the date should be?

Somehow, it doesn't seem quite right for Paul Ferris, Linux Today editor, to be serious. He does it quite well, mind you, His showfloor report on LinuxOne (Special guts award to LinuxOne for showing up?) makes that abundantly clear. Paul seems to have a bit of the Munchkin in him. and more fun than a serious job should allow. Hey Paul, maybe you should ditch that silly binary "Rant Mode=1" and replace it with a short int. Rant Mode=32,768? The possibilities are mind-boggling.

Honorable mentions: Bill Schoolcraft, the Tech Support Engineer for Linuxcare who spoke with me at length on the rigors of video consoles and concluded that I had screwed mine up royally; David Faure of KDE, who made me really want to see Konqueror when KDE 2.0 debuts (for real. I don't put anything called krash on my machine); Lynne Jankowski, of OpenSales, who gave me a cheerful, cogent and Open Source clueful rundown on her company's e-commerce services while waiting to play ping-pong at the Linuxcare party; pretty much everybody at The Linux Show, but especially Jeff Gerhardt.

The This is Why we'll win award for the booth, company, product, whatever that seems to exemplify some aspect of Linux and Open Source software that is clearly superior to proprietary software.

Commercial product(s): Everybody else.

Wow! The IBMs and Red Hats and VA Linuxes get most of the press. Their efforts are appreciated and their success is wonderful to see. The real story, however, is everywhere else. Lots of people (objectivity disclaimer: yours truly is one of them) are trying to find their spot on the Linux opportunity train. I'm not talking about the LinuxOne's of this world. For example, it was great fun to see the little rebel NetWinder and to hear the rebel.com rep talk about a print shop whose server is on a shelf (not a rack: a book shelf). The new new rack-mount model is something else. Who else delivers two - count 'em - two complete servers in a single 1u form factor? Cobalt is nearly mainstream these days and I'm still steamed that I never got to lay my fuzzy old eyeballs on one of those Atipa penguins.

There was a trio of former Tandem engineers pitching a fault-tolerant Linux box and Code Weavers knitting with Twine. User Friendly folks with strange little antennae smiled and bobbed and sold things beside the world's largest Dust Puppy (Congratulations, by the way, for entering the 1,000 top websites.). The Linux Show broadcast just about everything. You couldn't buy a blender, but you could render one with Blender. Games, e-commerce companies, specialty hardware, consulting services, etc. lined the small outer booths, all drawn by the opportunities that Linux so clearly creates. Some will make it big, some will make it small to medium, some will fail outright. That's part of what makes Linux fun and part of the fuel for continued growth that will shock the GartnerGroups and IDCs of this world.

Non Commercial Project: Livid

Matthew Pavlovich and company stayed pretty busy at the Livid booth and elsewhere (such as the nearly impromptu DMCA panel session on Friday morning). The Livid folks make for a neat threefer. They have a cool project in its own right: Video on Linux is a great addition to the mix. Much of the time, though, they were answering questions and talking to expo-goers about the ongoing legal assaults by the MPAA and the DVD-CCA on our rights to reverse-engineer the DVD standard. In one booth, you got a very cool project, a little Free Software Foundation and a little Electronic Frontier Foundation. Some very serious challenges to individual rights are on the line here, including Constitutionally protected rights of free speech and due process. If you haven't paid much attention so far, it's not too late. Things are just beginning to heat up. Check out OpenDVD.org. Good work, guys.

Combination Best Freebie and Chill out, you can't blame a guy for trying award to the Compaq flashy ball and the Compaq flashy ball giver outer persons.

Very cool gimme, indeed. Translucent bouncy balls with little electronic flashers inside. They begin flashing red when you bounce them. The early vintage (as in first day) also made noise. These very hot items that ran out early and had to be replenished. A certain unnamed shameless writer, fearful of bringing a single flashy ball to his multi-child household, annoyed the heck out of one flashy ball giver outer person. He did, however, snag the coveted second ball.

Honorable mention: AppGen candy bar. Chocolate still works, baby.

The That's what happens when you've got a monopoly award:

Javits Center concessionaires. Three bucks for a 20 oz. Coke? Bill Gates may wish to invest.

The Hey Rudy, I'd vote for you award.

The Cross Town bus. Picked me up by my hotel, dropped me off at the Javits Center. $1.50. Two rides for the price of a Javits Center Coke. Good deal.

---

Sorry, We don't have talkbacks yet, but you can drop us a line.
Other articles by Dean Pannell (a.k.a. dinotrac), check it out!