##May 2001
After the rousing success of our first CTS Expo, Event Management invited us back for one on 30 and 31 May 2001, at the Harborview Center in Clearwater. This time, they gave us a 20' by 40' booth and a "Linux Pavillion".
As before, Bill Preece and Diana Lenko did the lion's share of the work, aided and abetted by NKS. They managed to get Jon "maddog" Hall of Linux International to attend and give the keynote speech. Ralph Cooley, of IBM, and a couple of other speakers also attended, as well as Robin Miller of NewsForge. Unfortunately, the Harborview had made no arrangement for high speed internet access, so we had to make do with 33.6K through Harborview's PBX. But NKS hooked it all up to their very impressive rack system, and provided internet access to any machine that needed it.
This event coincided with the release of Microsoft Office XP, which took place upstairs from the show floor. Microsoft had a large blow-up replica of an Office XP box at the entrance to the Harborview on the second day. So of course, some penguinistas decided that Linux deserved equal time. They stood outside the entrance and handed out Linux Journals until someone from Microsoft got upset and called the show's organizer. The penguinistas made a deal where they would move inside, which they did. Now they stood at the escalators and handed out Linux Journals. Even though the Microsoft people had agreed, apparently this was not enough. So they contacted the Harborview Center directly. Now the penguinistas were forced to return to the show floor. But they'd made their point. And somewhere in all this, Maddog got into it with the Microsoft people as well. <Grin>
Many many SLUGs came out and assisted, and we handed out approximately 5000 distros, along with a lot of other free stuff. And as always, SLUG was the hit of the event. We had the most lively people, having the most fun, with the most activity around our booth. See here for pictures.