Evan and I went to the Expo at Web Services Edge 2002 at the San Jose Convention Center. The economy’s bad, I know, but even so attendance was amazingly low by both visitors and vendors; maybe 25 booths and less than 150 people, maybe closer to 100, walking around and I’m not sure how many of them were vendor staff wandering around out of boredom.
I did visit with a few interesting companies. In particular, DreamFactory and Vultus had very interesting tools for developing front-ends to web services and Actional had superior management solutions. Far too many of the vendors were showing me-too products that seemed like attempts to stretch J2EE-related products to cover a new buzzword.
I did run into two old friends from pre-Sun NetDynamics days, which was nice. One (now the Marketing VP) was staffing her company’s booth; the other said he was a walking booth (he’s the CTO of his company). Both are working hard, really hard, to get business done in this tough sea.
Strangest of all: I saw a woman I would swear is my ex-wife. But I haven’t seen her in over five years and she didn’t seem to recognize me though she looked straight at me. I couldn’t see her badge and the face did seem a little different. Even if that was her, I have no clue what we would say to each other.
BillSaysThis 