Comments on: Novell cancels its 2009 BrainShare conference

Software company puts on hold its annual event, designed to educate customers and partners, citing potential attendees' difficulties in getting travel expense approval.

[Penguinisto]

Matt - I fully expected BrainShare to die 5 years ago... (I used to live in Salt Lake city, up until 2007). It's not like it presented any value these days anyhow (considering that it was founded back in the days when Internet access was rare at best, impossible at worst).

[Matt Asay]

Well, I didn't like it much when I was a Novell employee, but that's largely because the technical material went over my head.

Regardless, I wonder if Novell and others will use the 2009 budget crunch to get out of the habit of throwing expensive parties (aka "conferences") in 2010 and beyond? There really must be a better way to get the word out about new products, provide training, etc., and that way is likely online.

[Penguinisto]

Actually, considering their target audience (let's face it - Geeks), there is. Slashdot stands out first and foremost, but I'm sure that most tech news sites and such will happily carry Novell press releases.

That aside, I remember seeing Novell and their rather huge booths at other trade shows (well, not so much anymore), and they're still very prominent in Linux circles.

[MMC Racing]

Does Novell have a business plan besides suing Microsoft?

[JustSomeGuy2]

Yes. And you'd know that if you hadn't been living in a cave for the last 18 months, and checked your news feeds occasionally...

[sysadmin1138]

I've been at the last 4 BrainShare conferences, but not this year. Budget woes prevented me going, and will prevent my going before 2012 due to how my work's finances work out. And yeah, it has been getting bigger every year. It has transformed from a NetWare conference to a Linux conference with IDM, GroupWise, and some other stuff conference. Hearing that registrations were way down is very telling about overall economics, but not at all telling about Novell's market position.

[ssampier]

Too little, too late. Novell needs to get its act together and talk to business people; not techie geeks that already use Novell products. Real business people are trying to do more with less. Microsoft is winning the marketing battle. Novell is not even a player.