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

Last edited by elwood on 02-Nov-2008 at 07:34 PM.
Last edited by elwood on 31-Oct-2008 at 06:31 PM.
Last edited by elwood on 31-Oct-2008 at 06:28 PM.

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

@elwood

What can I say -- brilliant piece! And absolutely true.

I definitely don't regret taking the trip, for many reasons. One important one was the chance to be together IRL with fellow Amigans, but I also found it very interesting and special to see how people were magnetically attracted to the stand with all those people (us) and not least to that great toy, the touch-screen Sam kiosk.

As for the bit about spreading the word, yes! And it can be done without getting into silly wars about "whose is the biggest/fastest/loudest/whatever". All we need to do is enjoy using our Amigas, and show it in public. As more and more people see our enjoyment, they will want to know more, so tell them. Calmly show and tell what you can do with your machine and how you enjoy it. Don't start shouting that it is better than everything else, just let it be obvious that it pleases *you* to use it. Others will want a part of that pleasure.

Best regards,

Niels

@elwood

Congratulations for your good job elwood to you and your friends, now we have continue for the people hear the name Amiga and thinking in our system as a true alternative.

@elwood

What a truly uplifting report... well done!

_________________
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Mmmmhh, exactly what i think. Positive attitude is the key...

Great job, guys...

Would have loved to be there...

Last edited by steril606 on 31-Oct-2008 at 08:18 AM.

@nbache

Quote:

Calmly show and tell what you can do with your machine and how you enjoy it. Don't start shouting that it is better than everything else, just let it be obvious that it pleases *you* to use it. Others will want a part of that pleasure.

I understand and agree but I just can't resist to say the OS boots in 25 seconds

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

@elwood

Excellent report! Well done to all involved.

TrevorD

_________________
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@elwood (and others)

Good work!!!

@pavlor

A really great example what joined people can do!

No big company to do the work anymore ...

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@elwood

It's nice to hear that things went well. Did anyone give them website URLs for any of the online Amiga forums? I'd expect that ACube and Hyperion's websites were advertised, but I'm curious as to whether we should expect a few new users turning up here, or on French Amiga sites.

Hans

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@elwood



@Hans

We see also new amiga users on french forum, like here also (when I see numbers of users here increase slowly, on french forums also).

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@elwood

Quote:

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

This is a true meaning of being an Amiga user: the community.

Here we do not buy a "ready to Vista computer"... ALL the people here are beta testers (the best example is Sam440ep and AmigaOS4.x .

Hyperion who is truly looking at the response from the people. People who give a constructive criticism etc.

The AmigaOS have a chance to be a system "made by users for the users". I can say much more. When we look at the software which is created here. Most of it is created by SINGLE people. This is AMAZING. We don't need 100000 people to hava new DVD player, web browser, word editor, system etc.

Even people like me who have NO ANY IDEA about programing, hardware development etc. can find here a place where I can "express myself :D", buying a Sam440ep and AmigaOS4.x I/we can tell that I/we support the whole community, registering single programs, sending money for bounty I/we can create opportunities.

Ok, I'm done

Last edited by kreciu on 31-Oct-2008 at 06:07 PM.

_________________
I change my mind. Now when I know AmigaOS4.1 is legal... :D. Thank you Hyperion!

Very good report.

A good example to follow.

Thanks!

_________________
Glames / Boing Attitude :)

@elwood
Hoping we get a little bit of that magic at a certain event on Saturday 1st November

_________________
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@Elwood

Nice review, seems you all had a great time there

With hardware finally being available again we might even attract some of the people who didn't get an OS4 capable machine to begin with.

I'm sure many will like to get a first hand impression on how SAM and OS4.1 looks and feels. So I hope there will be many more usergroups/companies arranging events like this in the near future.

_________________

@elwood

Great job Elwood & friends!
I did meet you in Empoli this year and I really liked your attitude: practical but at the same time religiously (does exist this word?) attached to the amiga platform. The perfect mix to spread the "Word".

I personally really love using AOS4.1 on SAM and I'm looking forward to use new apps expressely made on the platform for the platform.

Me too I've tried to attract fresh new people at the Brusaporto Retrocomputing with mu new SAM440+OS4.1, but after a very positive approach, people saw me rebooting for a couple of gurus and went away thinking that not that much has changed in the Amiga world. The biggest issue, they said, it's that nobody wants today an unstable system: I couldn't reply.
I hope that the OS4.1 for SAM will get soon a final realease that will be bullet proof. Is that too much?

Last edited by virgolamobile on 31-Oct-2008 at 09:43 PM.
Last edited by virgolamobile on 31-Oct-2008 at 09:41 PM.

@virgolamobile

I agree. The PC sold a lot in a work environment thanks to its stability i.e. Memory Protection. It's very rare a Windows 2000/XP crashes in my office.

I want MP on AmigaOS as soon as possible.

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

@elwood

> It's very rare a Windows 2000/XP crashes in my office.

here, on my portable pc, XP crashes often and when not, it starts to do something I don't want it to do ant it eats all the resources of the pc.

Sometimes I even had to take the battery away from it in order to be able to shoot it off (system totally frozen, HD going mad) !

Last edited by lucaricossa on 01-Nov-2008 at 07:42 AM.

@elwood

Thanks for writing this, I have asked around about prices for tiny stand at Norwagen trade show, cost about 50 000 NOK, thats not pocket cash for me, but I love demonstrate AmigaOS4.1 and my Amiga.

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@elwood

Nice report! Good to see things being handled in a civilised constructive way, rather than trying to ram things down everyone's throats in the typically rabid fashions of some "hardware fanatics"

You also highlight one important aspect (well several, but this one shows the most) and that is of the community coming together for a common goal.

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