Linuxtag 2005

Oryx attended Linuxtag 2005 in Karlsruhe, Germany, from June 22–25 (stall E2).

This was our first notable public event. We hoped for some visibility, a better understanding of what real users want from our software, and we wanted to learn how a company like Oryx should exhibit.

Although the attendance at Linuxtag this year was unexpectedly thin, we're very happy with our visit.

Oryx released 0.95 just before the show, with several new features, including an experimental webmail server. At Linuxtag, we demonstrated various IMAP clients working with a mailbox containing 50,000 messages. Following the old open source tradition, we fixed most bugs on the spot. The webmail server, with some coercion, performed well enough to impress people.

Operating the stall taught us a great deal, especially as Perforce (with whom we were sharing a stall) were experienced enough to make everything look easy.

Our design for the artwork worked surprisingly well. Many visitors stopped after reading the big "Email belongs in a database" poster, and the schema diagram served well as a focus for our conversations. We had many more visitors than our larger neighbour. Unfortunately, the posters weren't flexible enough to properly accommodate a last-minute booth change, so in the future, we'll need a bit more flexibility. We also need better printing quality.

We've learned that laptops — although stuffed to capacity with RAM — aren't suited to demonstrations of resource-hungry server software. Demonstrating a 350,000-message mailbox wasn't practical.

We're looking for a suitable server: light and robust enough to transport, quiet enough to permit conversation in the stall, and yet powerful enough to host a suitably impressive Oryx installation. The Soekris net7501 looks promising, except that it's vapourware.

When we exhibit next time, we'll bring something better for visitors to take away. Hopefully our product will have stabilised enough that we can print brochures that aren't instantly obsolete. Perforce handed out very cool Balsa gliders, which attracted enough attention that we are considering some Oryx-branded goodies.

We were pleasantly surprised by the level of interest in integrating Oryx software into CRM (and other) systems. Although we've always known that our schema makes such integration easy, we didn't realise (or emphasise) its importance enough. It's something we'll look at more seriously in future.

Our adventures with demonstration have strongly influenced the development of 0.96, which includes a bulk migration tool and fixes for many of the problems we discovered while demonstrating. A GUI administration program is also approaching usability.

We are grateful to Perforce, who were kind enough to share their stall with a fledging open-source company, and were cheerful and helpful companions throughout. Even when we hijacked their prospects.

Relevant links

If you have any questions, please write to info@oryx.com.