The 1988 Sun User Group Conference In Review The 1988 SUG Conference and Exhibit took place December 4 - 7 at the Fontainebleau Hilton in Miami Beach. In retrospect the event was extremely successful both in terms of attendence and positive feedback from conference attendess and the Sun User Group Board of Directors. ATTENDENCE ---------- Attendence was a sellout. The hotel conference facilities maxed out at 1200, and on Monday, day 1 of the conference, there were over 1200 registered attendees. Additionally, the exhibit was a sellout. Of the available 120 exhibit booths all were sold out 6 weeks prior to the event. With exhibitors included, the total attendance is estimated at over 1500 people. Conference attendees bought out a block of 800 rooms at the Fontainebleau and spilled over into two other adjacent hotels. EXHIBITS -------- The Exhibit area was open each day of the conference, and allowed conference attendees to view over 100 products that run on various Sun platforms. Of the 120 booths over 100 different vendors were represented. Of these, over 80 were Catalyst members. Most booths had Sun equipment running. The set-up and support floor was provided by members from Sun Marcomm and Sun Corporate Technical Support with the help of some 20 Technical Support Engineers from Sun headquarters and various parts of the country. This year Sun Microsystems' Quality members came up with the idea for a Sun "Listening Booth". Located in the Exhibit area, this booth was staffed by members of different entities within Sun at different times of the day. They were there to hear the inputs, reactions, complaints, and praises of the user and vendor communities. The results and answers to many of the questions will be summarized and published in the next quarterly issue of the SUG newsletter, README. This effort on Sun's part to formally listen to the SUG members was very well received by the conference. PROSPECT SEMINAR ---------------- Separate from the conference but occurring on Dec. 6 also at the Fontainebleau, the Sun Southeastern Region hosted a Prospect Seminar. Approximately 200 invited guests heard the Sun story and were then invited to view the exhibit portion of the SUG Conference. The prospects also joined a packed house at the end of the day to hear the Keynote Speech given in a general session of the SUG Conference by Scott McNealy. KEYNOTES -------- Highlights of the conference and exhibit included keynotes from not only Scott, but also Bernie Lacroute, Bill Joy, Joe Roebuck, and William Pratt, giving exceptional executive representation at the conference. Eric Schmidt was also a keynote speaker for the Prospect Seminar. Also, Mr. Jon Slater, Computer Scientist from Loma Linda Radiation Research Labs in southern California, presented a slide presentation on how computers are being used in the fight against cancer. His talk resulted in a Special Interest Group Meeting later in the conference from many interested attendees. During the opening ceremonies, a newly completed version of the acclaimed "Tin Toy" video was presented by Pixar Corporation. SPEAKERS & SESSIONS ------------------- Overall, the conference included over 130 speakers from both inside and outside Sun Microsystems. Members of Marketing and Engineering from most divisions at Sun hosted sessions. Users and vendors also gave talks about real life applications and solutions. There were also Special Interest Group meetings on over 30 subjects. Some of these groups meet annually at the conference and keep in touch during the year on common topics of interest such as X.11/NeWS, and in fact establish on-going Special Interest Groups. Other ad-hoc groups met to discuss current topics of interest such as Internet Worm. Conference Speakers received free conference admission in exchange for their contribution. The conference sessions were either technical or business in nature. This combination was used in an effort to attract both technical and business executives to the event. This new approach seemed to be well received since attendees ranged from knowing little about Sun to being more than experts on our hardware and software. In fact, the general feeling seemed to be that in the future SUG needed to do more of a variety of "tracks" that would range from high level marketing overviews to low level very technical specifics. Altogether over 90 workshops, user/vendor sessions, and SIGs were presented in the 3 official days of SUG 1988. SUN TUTORIALS ------------- A pre-conference day, Sunday, was devoted to Sun Microsystems' Educational Services, who hosted tutorials. These classes were scheduled and organized by ESD who also gave a special 40% discount on classes. Classes included an Introduction to NeWS, Introduction to C-Shell Programming, Site and System Security, and System Admin. Changes for 4.0. All classes were well attended with 50-75 attendees each. DEVELOPER'S PANEL ----------------- Perhaps one of the most popular events of the conference again this year was the Developer's Panel. During this evening event, ten Sun representatives from Engineering with expertise in the areas of Sun's Operating System, Graphics, Networking and Hardware, sit on a panel that is open to questions from the audience. Beer is served and there seemed to be a direct correllation between the interaction between audience and panel going up as the amount of beer consumed did too. It was a very positive information exchange and thanks goes to the Engineers who hosted the panel. SOCIAL EVENTS ------------- Information exchange is not complete without the opportunity to get to socialize with other folks with common interests. A reception on Monday evening allowed all paid conference attendees and conference speakers to have some fun with music and food, entertainment and even a bit of audience participation. After sitting in sessions all day long it seemed a welcome chance to shake out the kinks. NEXT YEAR --------- The next SUG Conference and Exhibit is already being planned and the site has been chosen. It will be in December in Los Angeles, keeping consistent with the practice of alternating east and west coast locations. Conference planners are already considering how to improve and enlarge the event based on what we learned at the 1988 conference. We appreciate your suggestions. If you have any, please send them to margie@dejavu or dhoward@sugcentral. Hope to see you all in December in L.A.!