SCALE doesn't measure up

Went to see the exhibits at the SoCalLinuxExpo (SCALE) on Saturday and was particularly underwhelmed.

First impressions are important, and I had a hard time finding the hall due to bad signage. Secondly, I expected more people & booths--the place had a strangely under-filled feeling. Perhaps Saturday afternoon was not a peak time.

Before I get bogged down in the negativity, let me say that my favorite part was getting some of the latest Linux/BSD distros on CD-ROM. Some were free and others asked for $1 donation to cover media cost.

Another cool one was the $100 PC from some educational group: http://www.solarlite.org/ although it won't be ready for release until later in 2005.

But the majority of the other vendor booths were most inexplicably-bland. Now I realize I shouldn't be expecting ComDex-style song-n-dance, but there were two basic categories (aside from the distro-CD-R-labelled-with-magic-marker-for-a-buck):

1. the hardware vendors with expensive-looking RAID arrays, or 1U rackmount servers

2. the open-source projects

And it was the OSS variety that mostly mystified as to the purpose of their presence. The good booths had decent signage/flyers, and staffed with multiple people, at least one of whom acted friendly and interested.

The inexplicable ones had either 0 or 1 person (often nearly comatose) and no/ultra-terse signs. Typical scenario:

me: "hi, I see your booth is about [reads sign]."

exhibitor: "yup, [repeats sign content]"

me: "I've heard about that before and it sounds neat."

exhibitor: "yup, it is."

[... crickets chirp, tumbleweeds blow ...]

me: "ok, thanks."

Then I wander away wondering what they could possibly hope to achieve?

http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/