Weblog Archive May 2008

WWDC Sold Out!


I signed up to attend the WWDC this year back in March.  I'm certainly glad I did as it appears that WWDC has actually sold out (http://www.macworld.com/article/133468/2008/05/wwdcsoldout.html).

Makes one wonder if there will be a market for scalping WWDC tickets.

So far, I've attended two previous WWDC's: 2005 and 2007.  The 2005 WWDC was pretty good and manageable with about 3,000 attendees.  Last year, however, it was a bit crowded with closer to 5,000 people.  It will be interesting to see what numbers "sold out" will translate into.  Seriously, Apple needs to consider splitting the WWDC up into multiple conferences for the different areas (i.e. iPhone, IT, and Dev).

And the hotel rates!!! Wow have they gone up since last year!  Last year I settled on the Parc 55 at $190US / night.  This year I had to scramble to get a hotel for about $340US / night.  I'm in a bit of sticker shock on that one.  After a bit of investigation, I found that the WWDC is overlapping a diabetes scientific conference by two days (Monday and Tuesday) and for those two days, hotel rates are way up.  Way to go Apple. 


15-May-08

Interop


This web blog has been quiet for the past two weeks as I needed to attend the Interop conference in Las Vegas last week.  It is always interesting to see what is going on in the wonderful world of networking.  I must admit, however, that the Interop show is getting a bit tiresome for me.

My first Interop show was over 10 years ago (either 1995 or 1996...I can't remember which).  Back then, I remember there was a lot of excitement and variation in broadband solutions.  ATM, Sonet, Frame Relay were all there every bit as strong as Ethernet.  Money, as well as optimism, was plentiful.

The Interop of last week seemed to be more raft with pessimism.  Shrinking budgets in most IT departments has the show a place for bargain hunting.  The IT people I have talked to are trying to do more with less and are all hoping that Open Source solutions will come to their rescue.

Where does this leave the commercial networking solution companies which tend to be my biggest customers?  The next few years will certainly be interesting if not challenging.


6-May-08

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