Choosing the right computer exhibition to suit your needs

Johnny Stovall, Contributor, Jakarta

Hunting season, harvest and Thanksgiving were yearly events in times past. Now computer shows get equal or greater attention by moderns.

The Chinese like to begin the new year with a new shirt. And people all over the world have started putting more emphasis on how to make their schools or businesses better. Computer shows happen all year long but there are more of them and the attendance is better this time of the year.

In fact there are so many that you can't attend them all. So how do you choose from among all the exhibitions?

Comdex in Las Vegas and CeBit in Hanover during the spring have become the largest events. But you may want to attend a little local computer show in addition or instead.

Neither Las Vegas nor Hanover can accommodate everyone in the world. Both places are expensive. IndoComtech, which is staged in Jakarta and which just finished on Sunday, is free -- if you can resist emptying your wallet on all the bargains inside. Even computing magazines like the Jakarta-based InfoLinux were on sale.

I had been spending a lot of time downloading stuff from the Internet in order to build my own customized Operating System (OS). This was a lot faster than writing every line of code and debugging it for a year like we did back in previous decades.

But the May issue of InfoLinux has the most complete easily modified OS I have ever seen and it is on sale for only Rp 15,000.

You will spend hours downloading and learning all of the stuff necessary to modify it to take out all of the games and foreign languages you don't know, in order to put in all the things you want so that you can carry your own self-booting OS on a CD with whatever programs and data you need most.

I got the October edition of InfoLinux with the CD and concise instructions on how to do this for only Rp 20,000, which is Rp 3,800 less than the list price.

One of my greatest interests is in teaching. There were workshops at such a low cost that I couldn't resist. Even when you know something, you know it better after you have had someone else teach it to you again.

In the 1970s and 1980s, I solved several of the world's most difficult computer problems. One of the solutions was showcased at two of these big computer conventions.

But in the fall of 1977, I made the biggest mistake of my computer career. Richard Stallman was a young professor at MIT and he had just written the emacs editor.

He invited me to spend the afternoon seeing the MIT computer lab. But we spent nearly all of the time looking at emacs. I thought I needed more money to help the world solve more difficult problems. He wanted to give software away free.

I thought it would be impossible to attract the talent necessary to make a great contribution if the software was given away free. I also thought there must be many things in the MIT computer lab more important than a text editor that could also function as a programming language, an OS shell and who knows what else.

I was really wrong. Thousands of the most brilliant minds in the computer business have put the very best of their abilities into making open-source free software better than most commercial products.

I purchased the commercial editors running under DOS and Windows, which were most like emacs but they weren't as good at the start and every year emacs' improvements far outstripped the commercial products.

The contributions Stallman and the Free Software Foundation have made are growing like the light of the rising sun. By comparison my contributions are like a few grains of sand casting small shadows.

Why? Because I just did a few disjointed projects while they orchestrated a unified movement in a single direction.

What does all this have to do with computer shows? I spoke with Stallman and other members of the Free Software Foundation at the last Comdex. That is why this article is being typed and spell checked using emacs.

At Comdex, I also met the leaders of AMD and Tiger Direct. They helped me get on the best path in the area of hardware.

The bottom line is this. If you need to solve world-class problems go to world-class conventions. It is the best place to meet world leaders showcasing the best that they have.

But if you just need to solve local problems, go to local conventions. You are sure to find some of the best local people showing off some of the best they have, answering quick questions and offering discounts.

If you think you can solve all of your problems yourself, go to the conventions. You may find that you can get even more accomplished more quickly by being part of the best movement with the best leaders going in a single direction.

Johnny Stovall, PhD, is the former director of Yayasan Pendidikan, Pelatihan dan Sosial Doktor Stovall.