Having long teeth in the Linux market place — due mainly to my lasting associations with SuSE, Novell, the former Linux innovator VA Software, and a boatload of small Open Source firms — I attend LinuxWorld every year, to see old friends, make new ones, and monitor the state of the industry.
My recommendation to you is to go to LinuxWorld while you can. If it exists two years from now, it will be a community-only event.
Linux (and LinuxWorld) are victims of their own success. Now that Linux is thoroughly mainstream, vendor need to attend LinuxWorld is reduced to those in negative competitive situations, or those kick-starting a new venture. Red Hat is now a permanent no-show, and the major infrastructure vendors are cutting back on booth space. The community booths ate up a larger share of floor space than ever before.
Regardless of the state of the show and its future, there are amusing and sad things to note about the event and the exhibitors. Between Novell taking center stage on the exhibit floor, hoisting the SuSE gecko colors, and everyone sporting an “enviro-friendly theme”, the floor was awash in green. I felt like I was walking through a salad bar.
As is my habit, I stopped to examine booths , analyzing the presentation and messaging provided by the vendors, and sadly it is getting worse. First, I have to metaphorically slap Unisys for being outright sloppy. Aside from being a tiny prop-board display, their booth was completely unmanned each of the several times I passed by (click the pic for a bigger image). The first rule of trade shows is to staff the booth with enough people that you always have someone there to great prospects and reporters.
Another strange booth (and not alone in its marketing deficit) was this waste of space from Applied Watch. Notice the large, evil looking lizard, and the cryptic slogan (click the pic for a higher-rez shot). Also notice that there is nothing else on their backdrop that tells you what they do, what their value is, or why you should stop to chat. 
This explains why their booth was devoid of visitors both times I walked by on the 2nd day of the show. At trade shows you have less than 15 seconds to motivate someone to stop and talk. With nothing to encourage a conversation, stopping foot traffic is nearly impossible (this is why both babes have always been a popular tool at male dominated geek fests like LinuxWorld).
Speaking of women (my favorite topic), there were a lot at this LinuxWorld, but not as attendees. PR teams are heavily staffed with women. When I see a show where the vendors have brought scads or ladies, and most talk like PR agents, then I know an industry is approaching stagnation, since PR is the first resource to bump-up flagging sales. Phrased differently, interest in women is a sign of maturity for both men and trade shows.
One of the bigger news items was Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian’s keynote, in which he all but begged the community to establish a one-stop point for application certification on all Linux distros. This is a sure sign that Novell is painfully lagging their main competitors Red Hat and Microsoft in getting applications certified on SuSE. They want to level this playing field and Ron wants the community to force the issue.
Good luck. The community wants Linux to win, but they have zero vested interest in making Novell’s work easier. Not only is there a lack of motivation for founding, establishing, promoting and managing such a project (how would you get Red Hat to participate?), knowing such a project raises Novell’s prospects may be repugnant given their dealings with Microsoft. It would be good for Linux in general, but as long as applications are piling-up on Red Hat, the community likely cares little about how they are not piling up on SuSE.
My last observation about this year’s event was the overpowering presence of embedded Linux and associated development tools. The embedded market is huge and growing geometrically as consumer goods adoption grows and competition drives affordable components. But like most nuevo markets, this one is horribly fragmented with specialists claiming to accelerate development in one niche or another. It is a good time to make money, but expect a lot of victims in the coming two years as the smaller embedded players get bought or die from financial blood letting.
One of the possible exceptions is a niche player called Virtual Logix, who make a virtualization system for embedded devices, as well as some real-time OS support. At first I didn’t get the value proposition of virtualization for embedded operating systems. But the keyword is “insurance”. The fact is that vendors want to add features to embedded devices in the field. There may be time when adding a parallel OS or even a micro OS in parallel is the fastest/cheapest/stable way to add functionality. By building virtualization into your products, you open an avenue to add capabilities without having to force your customers into a switching decision. I cannot vouch for the Virtual Logix products, but the idea is interesting and potentially powerful.
