Open Expo
Thank <insert deity of your choice here> that they moved the Open Expo to the back hall. More room and you can actually walk three feet without either bumping someone or playing the waiting game. The food lines don’t completely snarl traffic, there are more spots to actually sit and eat and more buffet stations to be had. Well Done!
And the MyItForum Party Button line didn’t choke off the entire expo this year. W00t! As usual, I was not in enough of a hurry to score one.
Lots of new vendors this year, with a couple I’ve never heard of and a couple more I’ll be getting back to more in-depth later in the week (thereby upholding the second rule of geek conference-dom: Swag first, tech talk later).
I’ve got ask, though, what you think about Intrinsic’s show. Crazy, or crazy like a fox? They certainly caught your eye as you went by. The big thing for me is that if you are thinking of a massive desktop deployment, Intrinsic should be on your list of folks to talk to anyway. If you’ve never seen their Swimage product you are missing out on what may be the slickest imaging solution going.
And the poor folks at Novell. I walked by their booth and thought it was empty, unmanned and forlorn. Turns out you had to walk behind the booth to see any activity. I’ll stop by later in the week to see what’s up their sleeve this year, but mostly for old time’s sake. I occasionally dust of the old CNE cert and rail about NDS versus AD, but not so much anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I think they are doing what they’re doing well, and some of the Platespin acquisition stuff is pretty compelling. But we’re a M$oft shop and will be for the far foreseeable future.