Special review of the Colmar show

Hello fellow Amigans,

I?m back from the Colmar show and I have a feeling I would like to share with you. Here is a short story of how was the show and how it was made possible.

The show

This computer show was made of 60 stands mostly filled by companies. They had their product demoed be it Windows, Linux or Mac-based. The visitors were individuals or complete families, almost no professional people were there. Thus the target audience was clearly the home public.
We, Amigans, had only one stand. Only one presence of Amiga in the show wouldn?t be enough to create enough interest in the visitors mind. It means they would left the show without even remembering the Amiga name. But ? this is not what happened!

We had a Minimig showing A500 demos (State of the Art, Desert Dream?) and games (Xenon II, Lotus?.). We had 2 Sam boards showing AmigaOS 4.1. We had a kiosk with a touchscreen and a Sam board that everyone could try.
But we had more. We had Amigans.

Almost all people that went near our stand didn?t understand what we were showing. You could read on their face a feeling which means ?Huh??. This is where our work began. We explained them what is the Amiga, where it comes from and what it can do today. We showed the OS, we showed the apps, we played videos. Well, we did what one could expect from an operating system.
All of us on the stand didn?t stop for 3 days long, showing and explaining the same ideas all over again. When one people left the stand, another one came and we did it again.

The people that already knew the Amiga thanks to its history were surprised to see it running again, and with modern features too. Those that didn?t know the Amiga were surprised to learn there was an alternative platform to Win/Linux/Mac. Of course they asked what would be the benefits to use such system compared to the big players. Answering that Sam power consumption is only 20 Watts and that OS4 boots in 25 seconds was more than enough to create the ?Wow? effect on them. Our kiosk with its touchscreen was also very useful to show them it was possible to control an operating system with just one finger.

Be sure the people left the show with the name ?Amiga? engraved in their mind. They probably won?t buy an Amiga but the keyword in this sentence is ?probably?. It means some of them will now check the web sites for more information about our system. They may be attracted by what they will see, as we all were many years ago. So it is possible they start to like our system and in the end they join us.
Other people will forget about the Amiga name until, maybe in 2 years from now, they see this name again in a magazine, on a web site or on another computer show. At this time, they will remember their visit to the Colmar show and they will remember how fun the Amiga stand was. Again, they may become new Amiga users.

Do you understand what I?m talking about? The more we speak about the Amiga, the more we build a future for it. We must be in everyone?s mind for the moment where they will be ready to jump into the Amiga train.


What made this possible?

A lot of you think that ?if you are not a developer then you can?t help the platform?. This is plain wrong! Let me give you some details about what made the stand at the Colmar show possible.

Yoda, a French Amigan, managed to have a stand. X-Ray from Relec Switzerland brought many stuff to show on the stand. I spent many hours doing a presentation and drove 400 Kms too. Guibrush did many interviews on the show. ACube Systems sent me a Sam and a Flex to show it on the show. Tony ?ToP? Pascoal (Kiosklinea) drove for 500 Kms to bring his kiosk. Voxel and Amigacenter drove many Kms to join us. Niels Bache came from Denmark with a two days trip!!!
And guess what? None of us is a developer.

Three weeks before the show, X-Ray told me that ToP could bring a kiosk to the show. I had a Sam board which was suitable for doing a multimedia kiosk running OS4. Now the only problem was having a driver for a touchscreen as having a kiosk without such screen would have been like having an Amiga without responsiveness. I remembered I read somewhere that Rigo had already such driver since a long time on OS4. I then contacted both Rigo and ToP to understand how we could manage having a driver for the touchscreens ToP could provide. We came to the conclusion that the only way to know if it would be feasible would be to try. So ToP sent his touchscreen to Rigo. The date of the show became very close and after several tests, Rigo understood that it wouldn?t be possible to write a driver for this touchscreen in a few days. He then packed again the screen ready to send it back. After a day (and maybe a few beers), he decided not to just give up and he gave it another ? winning try.
Rigo then drove for 11 hours (!!!) to bring the touchscreen in time for the Colmar show. Directly on the place, we built the full product: the kiosk, the Sam, the touchscreen, the driver and OS4.1.

At the conference I held about AmigaOS and the ACube products, there were 30 or more people, whereas other conferences - one of them being about MacOS X - didn?t attract more than 10 people! Of course many Amigans attended the conference but what do you think everyone will remember? The Amiga conference was the biggest of the show. Plain and simple.
Also, the guy doing the organisation of the show came at the end to congratulate us. He said that our Amiga stand was probably the one with the most visitors.

What should you learn from this story? As you see, every action counts, every move, every ideas. Making a platform a success does not mean only developing programs. You can do important actions even doing simple things as meeting together, joining a user group and showing the fun you have when using your system.
Many people of the outside don?t even know that using a computer can be fun. Maybe they have so many problems that they hate their computers. Maybe they feel alone in front of their problems and they have no choice to pay to have support. :-/
But we ? we have a community of helpful people, ready to help anyone.


Your turn now

I would like all of you to advertise all around you this peculiarity of the community, the responsiveness of AmigaOS, the low consumption of Sam, the fun that comes out of using our operating system.
Each of you can play an important part in building the future of our platform. Let?s all work together, let?s move as a whole, let?s build our future.

Thanks for reading. Now go to work

@Elwood

Encore....encore!

Simon

@Elwood

Very nice report. Thanks for writing it up.

This is encouraging to see. The response you saw to your presentation makes it all worthwhile.


Cheers!

Hi Elwood,


THANK YOU and to everyone else that attended/worked hard and made it so amazing!!!!


That was incredible! Read every word!!

Brought a tear to my eye, seriously!!!

Just imagine had a NatAmi been there as well!

The Amiga computer, is just a plain weird strange experience that has to be used to be understood.


How was it done just "so right" oh those so many years ago?!?


I have thought many times, gee, their HW lures me, seduces me, the Ghz, the GHZ,.... but then, the APPALLING user experience..... it destroys ANYTHING that is offered, that it touches!!!!


I'm here for the long, long, l o n g run!

@Elwood
well done to all of you who worked so hard on our behalf. We will indeed see the benefits in kind if more people become interested in Amiga again. A great report too.

@Elwood

Nicely said sir! We sing from the same page!

@Elwood

Too bad you wrote this in English instead of French first.

(Unless the French version is reserved for Amiga Power).

@K-L

What's wrong with him writing it in English first?

@Mikey_C

Well, since it was a French show, since Elwood is French and French community brought him a lot of support, I would have prefered his review to be in French first before in English.

I would have find this more correct for French Amigans.

What's more, not all the French Amigans can read English.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad to see a report of the Colmar Expo, it's the way it is done that disturbs me.

Anyway, Colmar was a great show, too bas I could not attend it.

@K-L

I think that you missed his underlying message to the whole Amiga community. In short he was saying that we can all play our part in reviving and pushing the Amiga and that you don't have to be a developer to do your bit.

His use of the English Language means that he can get his message across to more Amiga users world wide.

@Mikey_C

Quote: No1 No! No!! I've heard your singing.

@K-L

Quote:I would have thought that anyone would post on an english language site in english, and a french language site in french. But what do I know!!

@K-L

The Amigans are worldwide so English was obvious.

Now everyone please translate this and post it on every Amiga website.

Thanks.

@Elwood

Great report! Wish I had been there!

Come to think of it... It was probably good that I wasn't! I might have gotten so exited that I would have bought a SAM!

And then my girlfriend would leave me...

But if she did... I would have a Sam... hmm

I would have thought a non-french report would be best because french users would have been more able to visit the show.

@jahc


I agree. The logic that the show should have been reported on this web site in the French language because the show occurred in France is ridiculous. That is like saying that because something newsworthy happened in Russia that it must be reported in the Russian language. It just sounds like another troll who has a Napoleon complex.

Thanks for the report. Smile on my face for some time now :D

Hi Elwood,


And. . . . .

We have unoptimized SW, lack SW of all sorts, very few coders (but many are truly experts, as good as exist!) have a few HW bugs, have NO budget and virtually no corporate backing (I speak of the phantom "AI", here), resistance of ALL types from many quarters, relatively slow HW, and low, and even dwindling user base, and YET a stunning display was possible!!!!!

W O W !!!!!


Thank you again! for doing all that was possible under such daunting circumstances!!!


Amiga, I can see will not vanish ANY TIME SOON, and therefore I predict*, it WILL return to the mainstream!!!!!!!!



* Based on, law of averages, stubborness of coders/users, excellence of system's principles, new HW and falling prices vs. increasing performance, growing userbase (happening just now), etc.

@Elwood

Good work, great report, excellent show!

Rude!

@Elwood

Thanks Elwood. That was a good injection of optimism.