taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) (09/16/89)
So did anyone go? I was there all week, and in addition to catching
some pretty interesting product announcements (including the new 960
board upgrade for the MPE-XL universe, the new Apollo 2500 under $4K
workstation, and the 9000/808 8-user Spectrum machine!) I thought it
was a very well organized, well executed conference.
Most surprising to me, having a background of going to Unix related
conferences rather than HP related, was that there are a heck of a
lot of REALLY ENTHUSED HP customers out there! People that walked
around using words like "exciting" and "powerful" in their talks
about the show...
Also, HP did a very nice job with their end of the production, including
arranging for not only Dave Packard to talk, but for John Young (CEO)
and Joel Birnbaum (VP) to make presentations too. And, after the keynote
on Monday morning opening the conference, the most un-HP-like of all, HP
had a really cool laser light show/computer graphics film/rock'n'roll music
bit with the theme "HP ... the next 50 years...". Most exciting!!
Sunday evening, before the show officially started, there was also a well
organized party at Fort Mason in San Francisco, with lots of good food,
loud bands, and *no hype* at all. Just a real good party for three or
four thousand of HP's best customers and friends...
Overall, the most significant aspects of the conference to me were the
international scope, and level of enthusiasm of the HP customers. Though
it was predominantly HP MPE customers (e.g. the 3000 MIS systems), there
were also a number of HP-UX users present and accounted for.
The worst part, frankly, was the lack of HP-UX knowledge that was
demonstrated not only by the speakers (HP and non-HP alike, alas) but
most shockingly by the HP-UX roundtable panel members. Consensus from
attendees and HP employees that I talked to was that the panel did a
very very poor job, and left more people annoyed and confused than
enlightened and excited. C'est la vie. At least Wim Roelandts and
Dean Morton had interesting things to say about HP-UX...
So who else went? What did you think? What was the best/worst aspect
of the show to you??
Inquiring minds and all that...
-- Dave Taylor
Intuitive Systems Unix Editor
Mountain View, California "The HP Chronicle"
taylor@limbo.intuitive.com or taylor%limbo.uucp@decwrl.dec.com
{uunet!} { decwrl, apple } !limbo!taylorlinebarg@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Steve Linebarger) (09/16/89)
In article <120@limbo.Intuitive.Com> Dave Taylor writes: >So did anyone go? I was there all week... Yes, some 3500+ attended. I was there with a new product for MPE customers and found it quite exciting. >Also, HP did a very nice job with their end of the production, including... I think HP is finally getting some marketing savvy. Here it also showed up as a effort to please customers. > >Sunday evening, ... [description of one party deleted ...] >four thousand of HP's best customers and friends... I missed this one (came in Late Sunday night) but I thouroughly enjoyed the exploratorium bash on Tuesday night. It was similar in scope. >it was predominantly HP MPE customers (e.g. the 3000 MIS systems), there >were also a number of HP-UX users present and accounted for. > >The worst part, frankly, was the lack of HP-UX knowledge that was >demonstrated not only by the speakers (HP and non-HP alike, alas) but [stuff deleted...] >taylor@limbo.intuitive.com or taylor%limbo.uucp@decwrl.dec.com > {uunet!} { decwrl, apple } !limbo!taylor There were a few nice HP-UX things there. Not that many vendors. I wasn't able to see any seminars. I liked the HP vendor area presentation of some of HP software development tools (pant,pant). I lust after `SoftBench' ( uncertain about name ). I heard that one seminar about porting programs from the MPE environment to HP-UX was rather obviously biased against HP-UX. Having done some of that for my own fun I think it is no more difficult than doing the MPE to MPEXL migration( which ranges from trivial to tedious ). I was VERY pleased to hear that efforts are underway to make MPEXL posix compliant. Even though the MPE environment gave birth to my professional career I've been much the UNIX bigot since `84 and Really enjoy seeing HP move that direction (Who else lets you run slightly modified UNIX binaries on a commercial OS?). Any other fans of both MPE and HP-UX (and other UN*Xes) out there? S. Linebarger -- S. Linebarger. attctc!Hactar!srl. linebarg@attctc. ci$73157,1323. Irving TX. Has a disclaimer ever helped anyone stay out of trouble? 'Begin at the beginning, the King said, gravely, and go on til the end: then stop.'
gentry@kcdev.UUCP (Art Gentry) (09/18/89)
In article <120@limbo.Intuitive.Com>, taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com (Dave Taylor) writes: > So did anyone go? I was there all week, and in addition to catching > some pretty interesting product announcements (including the new 960 > board upgrade for the MPE-XL universe, the new Apollo 2500 under $4K > workstation, and the 9000/808 8-user Spectrum machine!) I thought it > was a very well organized, well executed conference. Yes I was there, but unfortunatly was unable to attend the product announcments. HP was unable to let Interex know untill very close to conference time that there were to be any announcements, and that didn't give enough notice to rearrange schedules. At the same time as the announcements were being made, the tutorial "Future Directions of HP-UX" was also being presented, which I was the session host for. I contacted the HP rep for the product announcements and he was unable to find anyone to come talk to the 150+ people in the tutorial, about the products. I guess those interested in HP-UX aren't supposed to be interested in hardware?? > > Most surprising to me, having a background of going to Unix related > conferences rather than HP related, was that there are a heck of a > lot of REALLY ENTHUSED HP customers out there! People that walked > around using words like "exciting" and "powerful" in their talks > about the show... Yes!!!! We did get many positive comments about both the content and organization of the show. When the conference was originally planned, we expected 2000-2500 attendees, we ended up with 4000+!!! My hat off to the entire Interex staff for handling things very professionaly. > > Also, HP did a very nice job with their end of the production, including > arranging for not only Dave Packard to talk, but for John Young (CEO) > and Joel Birnbaum (VP) to make presentations too. And, after the keynote > on Monday morning opening the conference, the most un-HP-like of all, HP > had a really cool laser light show/computer graphics film/rock'n'roll music > bit with the theme "HP ... the next 50 years...". Most exciting!! It was a rather lavish show, wasn't it!! :-} Overall, I was very impressed with both the personel involved and the content of their talks. Who would have thought when we started the HPIUG many years ago, that some day we would have a show like this! > > Sunday evening, before the show officially started, there was also a well > organized party at Fort Mason in San Francisco, with lots of good food, > loud bands, and *no hype* at all. Just a real good party for three or > four thousand of HP's best customers and friends... One sad and VERY poor PR note from the party, the theme was the history of HP; did ANYONE see any HP1000 equipment there???? I know that the first hp2116 was in the garage display at the show, but I thought it was very dissapointing that there was no representation of hp's first computer line at the party. > > Overall, the most significant aspects of the conference to me were the > international scope, and level of enthusiasm of the HP customers. Though > it was predominantly HP MPE customers (e.g. the 3000 MIS systems), there > were also a number of HP-UX users present and accounted for. While there definetly were more 3000 people than others, there were more 1000 and 9000 people than was readilably noticable. The little yellow stickers they gave us to identify HP-UX users, were damn near invisible!! One of the changes recommended from a couple of SIGs to Interex, is to make multiple machine shops able to register that fact. As it is now, a shop (or person) registers strickly as a 1000, 3000 or 9000 user. In the future, you will be able to register ALL the different type systems you work with. Plus, it is planned to return to having table markers at the luncheons, so HP-UX and RTE users can more easily find other like users. > > The worst part, frankly, was the lack of HP-UX knowledge that was > demonstrated not only by the speakers (HP and non-HP alike, alas) but > most shockingly by the HP-UX roundtable panel members. Consensus from > attendees and HP employees that I talked to was that the panel did a > very very poor job, and left more people annoyed and confused than > enlightened and excited. C'est la vie. At least Wim Roelandts and > Dean Morton had interesting things to say about HP-UX... Hear, hear!!!! I was the moderator for the HP9000 Technical Roundtable, and while the panel we had was very knowledgable in their respective fields, we didn't get any personel in areas we had requested, ie: X, databases, migration and a few others. The panel was very reluctant to delve into any type of futures questions, which made it extreemly difficult to answer questions like, when is HP going to fix this, or when will such-and-such be implimented. I have participated in many 1000 tech roundtables, and they have always been lively, informative and fun. This one was boring, not very informative and at least for the moderator, not much fun (I kept wanting to use the line "I know you are out there, I can hear you breathing! :-}) > > So who else went? What did you think? What was the best/worst aspect > of the show to you?? All in all, I feel this was probably the most succesfull show we have had. I was very impressed with the number and quality of the vendor exhibits, the number and quality of papers presented and the professional manor that the entire Interex staff presented. Best part? (patting self on back a little bit) when I was presented the Hall of Fame Award, quite a shock! Worst part? Unable to attend all the papers I would have liked to, too many good papers being presented at the same time. By the way, did anyone else notice the small number of vendor hospitality suites this year? Personally, those were always nice places to unwind after a busy day and have a chance to go one-on-one with some of the vendors. I was unable to attend the couple of larger events, which I did hear some comments on that they were so big, there was no chance to talk with the vendor reps. Well, those are my comments. I hope to see all of you next year in Boston! -- | R. Arthur Gentry AT&T Communications Kansas City, MO 64106 | | Email: attctc!kcdev!gentry ATTMail: attmail!kc4rtm!gentry | | The UNIX BBS: 816-221-0475 The Bedroom BBS: 816-637-4183 | | $include {std_disclaimer.h} "I will make a quess" - Spock - STIV |
daryl@hpcllla.HP.COM (Daryl Odnert) (09/20/89)
I was only able to attend one day of the conference (Thursday) but I did get the impression that it was a very well organized conference. Congrats and thanks to all the folks at INTEREX who made it happen. Although I wasn't part of the process, let me apologize for HP's shortcomings at the HP-UX technical roundtable. I was on the panel for the technical rountable at the 1988 conference and thought we had problems there as well. (My area of expertise is the s800 compilers and languages, but most of the questions had to do with networking, the UX kernel, system backups, etc.) I complained last year to the HP co-ordinator for the roundtable that we needed to get more UX experts to the roundtable. He agreed with me, but I guess he didn't follow through. Keep the comments and suggestions coming. I will make sure to forward a summary to HP's INTEREX liasons. Thanks to all the users who came to the show. Your feedback and enthusiasm help us to make better products, which in turn make you more succcessful. (Gee... I'm starting to sound like a marketeer! :-) Daryl Odnert Hewlett Packard California Language Lab daryl%hpcllla@hplabs.hp.com