Bagheera's Journal: Macs at LISA

Ok, ok, been over a week since I got back from the LISA 2002 conference in Philly. Overwhelming impression is "Where the hell is everyone?" While I ran into a few old friends from previous years, the real surprise was how FEW people were around that I knew.

The other minor surprise was how many people were using Powerbooks and iBooks. All running OS/X. Most of them running Jaguar. Three out of three tutorial sessions were done from a Mac, and at least half the technical presentations were Mac powered. I didn't take a scientific survey, but it appeared that Apple was the single most heavily represented manufacturer at the conference.

Attendance was down from last year in San Diego, and the Vendor room was slim. Surprise of the vendor room was RedHat NOT being there. (though KDE and Ximian were, and the *BSD folks were there as always) Surprise #2 was the total lack of hospitality suites. Not even NetApp put one on! Though Freshwater Software sponsored the reception/event at the Franklin Institute.

May be a good thing they had most of the displays closed. Otherwise they'd never have gotten the Geeks out of the place.