It's offtopic but I'll throw you a bone. Apple is realizing what Novell and other companies realized earlier this year and even earlier:
Trade shows are pointless. Everyone knows who Apple is. If they want to announce a product all it would require these days is to post up a video with Steve Jobs showing off the new must-have item with some direct communication with the trade press and key blogs. The fanboys and the press will spread the good gospel. Novell canceled Brainshare this year according to Slashdot. Not surprising at all. Why bother traveling when you can get all the content you wanted from a free webex conference that is less than an hour long? Do you really need to pay for renting part of a building when the trade press ends up scraping content from your press releases anyway? It's easier to talk a potential customer into reviewing a couple PDFs and maybe attending a 30 minute webex then trying to get face to face time these days. Trade shows focused on a particular companies products are little more then a way to bill work for goofing off in another city for a couple days. Hell, "conferences" dealing with specific fields are of questionable value. Add in the current economic environment and people start questioning if that trip is worth it. Every once in a while I decide to attend one of these shows and conferences and end up feeling like it was a complete waste of time. HOPE has been the best technical conference I've been to so I'm not exactly going to shed a tear over these tradeshows dying. -- Bruce A. Locke [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Dec 3 - Lightning Talks & Swap Session
