This is a quick review of what has gone on during the Gitex trade show held
in Dubai, UAE (Oct. 19-23, 2003).
Day 1:
The first day was chaotic. It was a chance for a lot of us to meet each other
for the first time. I got to meet several of the Saudi Computer Society people
and the Saudi LUG. It was strange at first, but we got a long fairly quickly.
We did not have any sign/poster to let people know who we were. It was a bunch
of guys with gitra and 3ugal sitting around laptops for the entire first
day. People did come by and talk, but it was very light. Arabbix CD's weren't
all in yet, but we had about 300 of them at the time.
We later found out that the presentation slots we thought we had have been
changed. So, instead of having daily 45-minute slots there was only one
30-minute slot. I'm not sure who was in charge or arranging and changing
the schedules but it seems to be out of anyone's hands from the SCS.
Some of the people who were there were: Yousef Raafa, Muath, Ahmed Al-Tawairjy,
Dr. Abdulrahman, Dr. Khaled.. just to name a few that come to my mind.
Oh interest, an Oracle representative came by. He said something about
supporing non-profit organizations like ours. When I pressed him for what
he meant by support and whether there was something material the he was
able to back it up with he eventually said that they are more interested
in helping out with the educatinal institutions (university level at first
and then schools). So there you have it..
Oh, I was there ;)
Day 2:
This was a much better day. The poster arrived, a huge sign with the tux
wearing his Saudi gitra. That certainly attracted a whole lot of attention.
We were literally swamped. People were coming by all the time. CD's were
being passed around and we were running out of CD's. More arrived later
during the day.
There was one person who asked whether this was IBM's Arabized Linux. I
don't know how many of you know how I feel about the subject, but Yousef
was standing next to me and asked me to take it easy ;)
By the way, the same person did say that he did not like the fonts and that
he thinks a dedicated company should probably take on this project instead
[of a bunch of volunteers] so work can be done at a quicker rate. I simply told
him that I strongly doubted a company would be able to go as fast as
Arabeyes has gone, but if that was possible why not? Find the company ;)
I met Isam Bayazidi for the first time since we have been on this project.
Well, actually we met the night before, but that was outside of Gitex.
I also got to meet some very interesting people. Among them is the director
of Information resources at Dubai government. He was very interested in
switching the desktops to Linux. He was also interested in helping support
the project in any capacity possible (and yes, that did including funding
quantified projects).
There were lots of companies that were interested in making the switch and
wanted to know if we were able to help support/maintain/etc. We had to
explain that we were not a business but hoped that businesses can flourish
because of our existence. We pointed them to several of the linux solution
providers around.
There were a lot of Saudi LUG related questions from people in Saudi.. but
since I am not directly involved, I simply forwarded questions to Yousef
or Ahmed (and they fwd'ed questions regarding Arabeyes to me).. We were almost
like a government agency, telling the client to go from that person to the
other ;)
Day 3:
I did not go. But apparently Arabeyes was on page 5 on the "Gitex Times"
magazine. That is some kind of magazine that they are putting out on
a daily basis specifically for the trade show. The title reads,
"Arabeyes Pushes Linux with KSA LUG", with a picture of Yousef holding a
bunch of the Arabbix CD's. I will try to scan it and put it up as soon
as I get a chance.
However, I had a long meeting with Intel. They were the ones who initially
contacted us so I was curious to know what exactly they were hoping for.
To make it very short and brief, they didn't know what they wanted from us.
They didn't know what we were exactly. I helped explain that. They are willing
to support us by providing us access to some of their new hardware as it
comes (although that still seems to be on the server side, which we are not
involved in).. but they did say it would be possible to give us remote access
to compiler farms and possibly some physical access to some new hardware.
Funding is not possible. They simply said, "we have never done that and we
don't know how to do it. We invest in companies but as far as non-profit
organizations we are not sure how to go about doing it." So in short, it is
not possible. Seminars/workshops, they were fine with, but they didn't want
to be the prominent sponsor (they jokingly said, they are never the prominent
sponsor of anything).
Aside from that meeting, I ran into the General Manager of Sakhr. 30 seconds
were enough to exchange cards. Me, being the blunt person that I am, said
"yeah, Sakhr, we have always wanted to establish contact but it seems that all
our emails go and never come back". He pointed to his email on his card and
said that it has worked for the past 4 years so I should use it ;) Now I am
certainly that whatever we sent to Sakhr has never reached any of their
decision makers, but hey.. we will try again, why not?
Day 4:
I didn't spend a lot of time there. There were lots of CD distributions. There
were also lectures/presentations that were done ON the stand. They kind of
crowded people around our area, taking up space from the KOFAX people (Kofax
is an awesome company if you have ever had to work with their products by
the way.. I had to read tons of their manuals at my older job ;).. Anyway,
so I did do my presentation bit. I had to hurry it.. so 45-minutes were shrunk
to 8 minutes. The English presentation was done in Arabic. It was possibly
the worst presentation I have ever given in my entire life. Sorry folks,
I have never given a presentation in Arabic before.. and I doubt I would like
to re-live the experience. Thanks to Muath who asked me to do it in Arabic ;)
Nevertheless, there were people interested. Even developer types.
There was a lot of genuine interest. And a lot more interest in switching the
desktop to Linux in a _lot_ of companies. Folks, I am a skeptical Linux user.
I did not anticipate this kind of interest. Okay, maybe I thought people
were interested in Linux in general.. but people wanted to SWITCH and just
wanted to be sure that it was ready and that there was someone out there
who could support them. I am talking at the enterprise level here, not just
you and me wanting to use Linux at home.
Isam and I went around MS stands and passed out Arabbix CD's just for laughs ;)
Day 5:
Well, I did not go. I'm at work right now. I hope someone else can fill in
the gaps, since I am _very_ sure I am missing out a lot of details.
Regards
--
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| Mohammed Elzubeir | Visit us at: |
| | http://www.arabeyes.org/ |
| Arabeyes Project | Homepage: |
| Unix the 'right' way | http://fakkir.net/~elzubeir/|
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