[NTLUG:Announce] CTS Wrapup.

[announce@ntlug.org]

Well, I finally got enough free time, so I figured I'd let everyone know
how the CTS show went.

Over all, it went really well.  It wasn't a huge show by any means, but
we had good traffic to our booth.  We did get one or two who didn't
quite comprehend how Open Source works or the benefits it provides, but
most were enthusiastic about OOS and Linux in general.

The SCO mess was largely ignored, although there were a couple of
mentions.  But, overall the awarness could be summed up as, "SCO who?"
:-P

More importantly I feel was the number of companies exhibiting products
built on or at least supporting Linux.  Two products stand out in my
memory.  One is a portable barcode scanner/data collection terminal by
AML that uses Linux as it's OS.  Check them out here:
http://www.amltd.com/  The other was a firewall built on top of using
SuSE by Astaro.  Although proprietary, they have a free version for
personal use, check it out at http://www.astaro.com/  I must confess,
they stand out most since they were right next door to us. ;)

I'd like to thank the following people for their help with the show:

Terence Shelton printed up a giant poster for our booth.  It really
looked great, Terence you really don't give your creative abilities
enough credit. :)


William Jones was there for setup and teardown, and also manned the
booth for a while.  Thanks for all your help.

Ralph helped me man the booth both days.  He also "lent" us some CD-Rs
so that we could burn some copies of Knoppix to give away.  That was of
great help.  Thank you.

Rick Holzer of SuSE managed to get us some stuff to give away, despite
the short notice, many thanks to him.  Hopefully, next time we do a
show, we'll be able to get word to them sooner.

Many other people helped out at least a little, thanks everyone, every
little bit helps.

Finally, many thanks to our fearless leader, Chris Cox, who tortured his
printer to print out 400 copies of our NTLUG flyer with a Debian flyer
on the opposite side, and IN FULL COLOR.  He also gave two
presentations, helped out in the booth, and paid for the electrical.



It was a lot of fun,

Stephen Klein
2003 NTLUG CTS Booth Coordinator