Lulu Tech Circus: A Review

[James Brigman]

Folks;

I was at the Lulu Tech Circus on Friday so I thought I'd send you all a bit
of a review. I have no connection to the Circus itself and I don't think I
have any prejudice, pro or con, regarding the event. I apologize in advance
if this comes across as spam, my intent is merely to report and provide
information. My point in sending this message to you is simply to say that
we (NC*SA) had a table there and if you yourself are debating on whether or
not to go, this review might help you decide.

There is a fair amount of interesting stuff to see. If you want to find out
about some of our "sister" organizations, (TNTUG, TriLUG, Triangle Lotus
Users' Group and the IEEE group) it's a great place to go and do that all at
one time. There is a good assortment of somewhat-technical seminars put on
by the Lulu people. The vendors seemed interesting and able to talk about
their products. There is a LOT of robot stuff.

So, in numeric bullets, here's my take:

1) You pay $20 and it gets you a paper armband that's good for the whole
day. There's some deal about buying "peanuts", an extra cost item, which I
didn't pay any attention to. If you have been planning all along to go, do
not go toward the end of the day: you'll miss the seminars and not get the
value back out of your $20. I think the admission armband is good all day,
so better to go early and give yourself enough time to take advantage.

2) The only food vending inside is the cafeteria that's built-into the Jim
Graham (JG) building. I've only been in there once or twice and can't say if
it's good or bad. If you (or your kids) have a restaurant or fastfood place
you really like, you might go there beforehand or plan to go right after.

3) It's hot. The Jim Graham building is not air conditioned, so wear shorts
and a comfortable, lightweight shirt. They open at 10am, so if you want to
go, do so as early as possible. Tomorrow (Saturday) might be a good day if
it's going to be cool or overcast.

4) The show itself seems to be well-staged. There's lots of very helpful but
busy Lulu staff there. The decorations of the building are nice, considering
the JG building is primarily used to show livestock, gun shows and big
swapmeets. The strategic use of the partitions to guide the crowd is good.
The show is both "larger than  expected" and "smaller than expected". It's
smaller in physical size because they did not totally fill the entire Jim
Graham building, more like 2/3rds. However, it's larger in participation by
local and national vendors than I expected. Mars Music has a well-staged
"music room". WRAL has two big flat-screen HDTV's which are spectactular.
Lego is there in a big way with their Mindstorms product. If you or your
kids like robots, there are many of them there, and you can see a
"battlebots-style" robot up-close. If you have teenage kids who are into the
newer, complicated first-person-shooters, they will enjoy the Tech Circus.
They have an Unreal Tournament-style setup that got high marks from my kids,
it was an "arena" of what looked like maybe 20-or-so computers set up and
everyone played. The winning player I overheard won a video card, but the
play is brutal.

5) There's lots of robot-oriented stuff. I mentioned Lego Mindstorms, they
have a big display and you can buy that product at the Lulu Bazaar. I saw at
least one "triangle robot group" and what looked like a school group.
(Students and teachers got in free on Friday, a VERY nice nod for Bob Young
to make in the direction of the schools.) The "triangle robot group" has one
robot that bashes old computer and office equipment inside a floor ring,
which is actually more entertaining than you'd think, like the different
robot rockem-sockem shows on TV. Anyone who's been abused by a piece of
office equipment, particularly a FAX machine, will get a kick out of seeing
one destroyed by a robot. I don't know if they let you actually drive the
robot or not, I didn't see any attendees doing that.

6) The Lulu Bazaar had some very interesting things for sale, but the prices
seemed high to me. $32 each for juggling pins (ie: a set of three would cost
$96), $8/each for juggling balls. They had a small selection of O'reilly
books (which I didn't price-check) and you can get Robert Young's "Under the
Radar" book for free. They also had the Sharp Zaurus for sale (the
Linux-running PDA) for $450. They did have a really neat little BASIC-stamp
robot kit (which included a TV-style remote control) for $59 that looked
very interesting. I was extremely surprised to see very, very little
participation by computer parts shops. (For example, I did not see Intrex
there.) I saw no computer components at all for sale. I hoped to have the
opportunity to shop parts at computer-show prices, but that wasn't at all
what the show is about.

7) Giveaways are very important, and there were some good giveaways. Mars
Music had decent tee shirts, but they were all in XL size, I think. I saw
people carrying around goodie bags that seemed to have a fair amount of
stuff in 'em. I got free CD copies of the "Sun ONE Starter Kit" (a J2EE
developer kit) and IBM "developerWorks" (WebSphere and DB2) software. These
were trial versions of "portal development kits" that look pretty good. You
may also be able to get these packages from
http://www.sun.com/sosftware/sunone/starterkit or
http://ibm.com/developerWorks/linux, but if you have a dial-up or just don't
want to do the download, go quickly over to the user group tables to get
your free copies when you get there.

8) I didn't get to sit in on any seminars, but our table is right across
from one seminar, so I got to overhear three of them and they were good.
There were four across from me today, each about an hour or more in length.
They had three "classrooms" with seminars going simultaneously. They give
you a program booklet when you walk in from which you can pick which
seminars to go see. The seminars which incorporate computers are very well
equipped. If you go and find a seminar topic which you need, you might find
that a good use for admission price.

9) I watched the TriLUG guys loading Mandrake 9.0, fresh off the 'net, on
one of their systems. It looked interesting enough to make me want to load
it up, even though I just recently downloaded fresh RedHat 7.3. I envied the
TriLUG guys their hardware: they had at least three systems to demo with.
They had quite a "manly showing" there.

10) There were indeed circus aspects to the show. Typically someone would
roam the floor doing a circus-style act. I saw jugglers, a unicycle rider, a
person who was doing a kind of "stick juggling" and several people doing
circuslike things in costumes.

I could "feel" the spirit of RedHat, but other than Bob Young's free book, I
didn't see any hugely overt influence. I saw one of the founding members
walk quickly by the table at least once and I saw Bob Young walking around
the show often. I saw two of the red Fedoras but I didn't know the wearers,
they could have been RH originators, employees or just afficiondos. I did
not recognize other RedHatians, although I'm sure there were probably plenty
of current RH employees there in some capacity or another who I do not know.

I'm proud that we (NCSA) had a table there. "Anybody who's anyone" in the
triangle's technical and computer groups have tables at the show. If you are
going, go by the table and say hello.

I could say more, but if you hunger for more information, then take that as
a sign that you should go, as this message is already much longer than I
intended. :-) I am trying to report to you the happenings of what went on,
not to offend or patronize any parties with this message.

Bob's idea is a little different, but I do think he's on to something here.
The show encapsulated not only technology with a circus-style entertainment,
but it captured well the flavor of our "geek culture", and I found it
refreshing and interesting. Mind you, the attendees were a big part of that
flavor, and in that respect became unwitting yet vital participants in the
show itself.

JKB

PS: Our next NC*SA meeting is Monday, October 14th at 6pm in Dreyfus and is
on securing Solaris systems. See you there!