Novell Makes Smart Move and Cancels BrainShare 09

^{The news wasn't a surprise but it still came as a shock. After 20 years, Novell has suspended BrainShare 2009 in Salt Lake City Utah.}

^{Novell has been reducing their events around the world. A few years ago it was BrainShare EMEA, then this year they changed their Global Sales Kickoff into a virtual event. In addition, they announced they were pulling out of CeBIT in Germany for 2009.}

^{Now with BrainShare 2009 suspended, Novell has made a tough but smart decision.}

^{To be clear, I love going to BrainShare. I attended my first BrainShare in 1996. In 1999 I brought 5 H1 Hummers up from California and drove BrainShare attendees around SLC, giving them rides as they walked from their hotels to the convention center.}

^{We took the five Hummers out into the Utah desert and several of my employees promptly got them stuck in two dry lake beds. Took us 8 hours to dig, claw, and push them out. Since the vehicles were secured with my Amex card I was sure I was buying three Hummers that were going to be buried under a foot of mud.}

^{A couple of years ago, I brought another Hummer in from Las Vegas and got John Dragoon to stand in the back tossing out Canada Night t-shirts.}

^{Every year I spent hours of preparation coming up with ways to make BrainShare a memorable experience for everyone who came...and it wasn't even my conference.}

^{I have to admit, it has always been a dream of mine to stand in front of those thousands of BrainShare attendees and deliver a rousing keynote address that would have people screaming, chanting, throwing chairs, and randomly kissing strangers.}

^{But that dream will have to wait. Novell, with their decision to suspend BrainShare, joins a growing collection of vendors who are finding that the downturn in the economy is making it extremely difficult to bring people together.}

^{It is a smart decision by Novell. BrainShare was taking up a lot of resources. It is expensive to put on a conference. Even though I have loved the event and have had a great time getting people to scream while I tossed t-shirts off the GWAVA booth's second deck, as a marketing event it was becoming less effective.}

^{I expressed to John Dragoon two years ago when he was the keynote speaker for GWAVACon that I felt BrainShare should change. That they should take the millions of dollars and go own LinuxWorld.}

^{Having marketing funds to take the new Novell message out to the market rather than addressing the new Novell message to the old customers is extremely important.}

^{Purpose of GWAVACon}

^{I created GWAVACon to help Novell out of a dilemna. The company is going through a transition. Most of Novell's revenue and customer base are running many of their traditional products, including GroupWise, ZENworks, and OES. These products are viable and strong, providing good solutions for companies looking for cost optimization. But Novell's strongest future is tied to Business-Driven Linux. Taking advantage of the growing open source movement as well as the need for leveraging technology to offset raising costs and human resource downsizing.}

^{GWAVACon was designed to give a venue to talk about Novell's traditional products. To bring the community together to talk about GroupWise, ZENworks, and Teaming. To spend 100% of the time addressing immediate needs and challenges.}

^{We have succeeded in that. GWAVACon is in its fifth year, and its tenth event worldwide. Tightly focused, it has been able to succeed and grow, where many other events and conferences are suffering.}

^{Ironically, the announcement of the cancellation of BrainShare in 2009 will allow GWAVACon to expand and reach a wider audience by working closely with Novell to take the conference to the people rather than bringing the people to the conference.}

Comments

[Howard Tayler]

Richard, I'm sure that whatever you decide to do in the vacuum that is "no more BrainShare," it will be brilliant, and people will be richly rewarded for being a part of it.

(Do you need a guest Keynote from outside the industry?)