Into.the.Void.

Most of you probably won’t know what infosystem is. Quotting their site:

The 18th I.T., Telecommunication and Digital Technology Exhibition, INFOSYSTEM 2004, is about to take place once again, at the International Exhibition & Congress Center of HELEXPO, in Thessaloniki, Greece.

I visit this exhibition every year for more than 10 years now and I can assure you that it’s getting worse every year. A major reason for that is that there’s now a Comdex exhibition in Athens, Greece while 5 years ago there was no other IT exhibition (in Greece). So, most companies prefer to “show” their products on comdex than infosystem due to the more visitors going there…

So what was this years’ Infosystem about ? Hmmm…to be sincere…nothing…nothing new was presented. The “new” word on this year’s exhibition was “ERP”…while last year it was “SOHO”. Every year new words are presented to the IT market…but very few customers can understand and use them. But the greek companies still persist on these stupid marketing techniques. Well presenting the same software with different “name” every time doesn’t help the market nor the companies.

What was I doing there ? Meeting friends mostly from Hellug and TWMN mostly. Not as many friends as I expected came…but it was fun meeting the ones who came. I helped a bit at the hellug pavilion by explaining to ppl what Linux is, how to install it, how to overcome problems, etc. I was surprised by the number of ppl that had already some experience with linux, through live cds, installations, presentations, etc. It was the first time I ever saw that many people getting interested on Linux. Hellug and TWMN was co-hosted under the same pavilion and I can say that we surely had the most visits than any other pavilion, even from companies like Microsoft. The highlight was when a couple at around 30-35 years old came to the pavillion. The male asked me some questions about linux..I gave him some cds (Knoppel and Suse 9.1 Personal Edition) and then his wife said:

“Let’s go…these are freaks” and he answered
“They are not freaks honey…they are users”

That trully made me think…what are we ? Why do we want to promote Linux ? And why some people see us as freaks ? what’s so strange about us ? Why is it “bad” to have the will to get the max out of your pc ?

Anyway…another bad exhibition is over but a new “force” is rising again. The greeks are again forming communities and that had many many years to happen (maybe since Fido-net).

Filed by kargig at 02:45 under General
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