Day 1 at LinuxWorld 2008 - A Solid Start

Setup problems

Just before the event started, Jorge and I struggled a bit with my equipment. A few things simply weren't working as expected - first with my desktop machine "freezing" (it seemed to be USB related, as the keyboard and mouse stopped responding, but the clock was still updating), and next with live queries not working properly on my equipment. For the latter, we opted to use Jorge's tried-n-true HP laptop for the live query demos. This worked quite well in fact.

Initially, we were able to gain internet access via the WRT54g running dd-wrt in client-mode. This fizzled out shortly after the event started, as there is an additional charge for internet access for exhibitors during the event, and every browser navigation ended in a login prompt.

People and more people

Jorge, "Lefty", and Urias

At 10:00AM, just as we settled on the purpose of each machine for demos, the people started rolling in and asking questions. While many had not heard of Haiku, most had in fact remembered BeOS and were quite impressed that Haiku has progressed as far as it has in reproducing such a great OS.

I'll have to admit, the day was mostly a blur of demos and talking with people. There was some recollection of stuffing food in my mouth around 1:30PM, but that was short-lived as the people didn't stop coming.

Pete Goodeve (a Haiku/BeOS user involved with the Ruby port) stopped by the booth a few times during the day (I can't believe I neglected to get a picture with him! Hopefully we'll see him again before the end of the week.) He played with Haiku some and chatted with some of the attendees.

We received a visit from a couple of ACCESS people, notably David "Lefty" Schlesinger whom we were fortunate to capture a picture with.

Wrapping up for the day

Around 5:00PM, the crowd started to die down a bit, and we decided to pack up our stuff and head out for some dinner and rest. The first day felt long and exhausting for me, as I am not a seasoned exhibitor at conferences like Jorge is :)

Overall, I felt the day went very well. We had very few problems, and Haiku demoed very well. It was my impression that the majority of people we spoke with were genuinely impressed by the progress Haiku had made, and the design and speed/responsiveness of the system in general. I'm definitely looking forward to tomorrow, even though I'm mentally and physically exhausted from today.