Just a quick report from the Chicago COMMON conference … and some first impressions.
- The expo seems bigger than before, but kind of spread out in an awkward pattern.
- Attendence seems to be up a bit. Although I haven’t seen any figures.
- I’ve run into a few people wearing the old (black) MIDRANGE-L buttons … and of course gave them a free upgrade to the latest version 🙂
- The opening session was quite interesting … although I didn’t necessarily agree with all the comments. The speaker, John Patrick was dicussing the future of the internet. He even mentioned blogs (although not this one 🙂 )
- I had a very interesting discussion with Guy Vig at the IBM booth about the new command documentation generator. It looks quite interesting. Of course that’s more work related than anything else.
- The “iSeries Nation Town Hall Meeting” was quite enjoyable … they ran a number of the TV spots for the iSeries and gave everyone a a copy of the Wall Street Journal ad slick. They talked about the new investment in ISV and advertising budget (300% increase in the advertising budget, which is a very good sign). I’ll be very interested in seeing how the plans are implemented.
I’ll try to mention anything that particular interest that I encounter.