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From: thomsen@spf.trw.com (Mark R. Thomsen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: USENIX Summer 1991 and the absence of NeXT
Message-ID: <285A9E85.740C@deneva.sdd.trw.com>
Date: 15 Jun 91 23:11:01 GMT
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Steve C Donahue writes
  
  NeXT is not completely absent from the conference.  Thy just don't have a
  vendor booth demonstrating the machines.
  
  I took a tutorial Monday that Avadis Tevanian, Jr. from NeXT taught.  It was
  a Mach overview.  Quite informative.  But he only mentioned NeXT a couple
  of times.  But then a tutorial on Mach is hardly the place to plug NeXT
  products.
  
  There is also going to be a multimedia demonstration from 2:00-3:30 on
  Thursday.  It is entitled "Software Technology at NeXT".  It will be
  presented by Avadis Tevanian, Trey Matteson, David Jaffe, and Bryan
  Yamamoto (all from NeXT, Inc.).  This should be interesting.  However an
  hour and a half of exposure at a one week conference is just not 
  enough (IMHO).

This is not that bad of a representation for a small company.

But it does bring another question to the fore. When will NeXT start
advertising at a higher level? They plunk an ad in a magazine from time
to time and let the press do the rest. Now that the press is almost
universally positive (or at least non-negative) and they are selling,
shouldn't they raise their profile a bit? Showing up at trade conferences
is part of the profile game.

BTW, last week Steve Jobs did show at Digital World in L.A. to give a
speech and NeXT did have a booth for all three days. I suffer from the
same bias as most of you, but the NeXT machines did make most of the other
equipment and software look, well, a little bit bland. When I happened
to attend the NeXTs had 15 people. Any other booth I practically could
walk up without seeing anyone but the company folk. NeXT could help
themselves by being present.

Mark R. Thomsen