Warpstock Europe 2000 - Six Minutes Video Mix

By Christoph Vogelbusch

Warpstock Europe 2000 is over. And it really was some event. Now also the video is finished and I asked some people if they wanna have a preview. The answer was YES at people who were there an NO at people who have not been there. The reason for this behaviour was simple: The people who were not there didn't know what Warpstock Europe 2000 or even a video could give them. So I decided to write down what is in the video and what is no.

What is in the video?
What you can see is a summary. Three days summed up in 6 minutes of film. You can see parts of the location and then parts of the non-commercial exhibitors. Next you see the very few parts of the presentations that where helt followed by the commercial exhibitors. Last but not least the Saturday night event.

I tried to put in as much information as these 6 minutes could take and tried to make you feel like you where there too. I'll show you unpublished programs and the crowds around them. And I let you learn a bout what do the people around OS/2 look like. Did you ever wanted to know who are the persons I wrote to or who wrote this or that great app and is fighting for OS/2 all the time. Now you have the chance to see: Andreas Linde, Daniela Engert, Bob St.John, Holger Veit.

And I hope after all you feel like you should be there and support such a event if possible.

What is NOT in the video?
The hole content of Warpstock is missing. This is a very sad story, because not only people outside, but even people using OS/2 think it is dying. So do I think a few hundred people at Warpstock Europe 2000 could change that: NO.

BUT IBM and Serenity Systems were there and told us why we were right with staying at OS/2: IBM had the first audience, where they told us that finally IBM found a place were to put OS/2 into their strategy. All believe that the future with computers is less complicated and without OSes and the future is eCommerce etc, but what to do so far? Live as OS independent as possible. And IBM officially said they will try to make OS/2 the BEST integrated platform till we don't need any (non real Network) OSes any more. This does mean IBM is not investing into native OS/2 apps (others have to do so) but they will investigate into OS/2. Serenity Systems had the most visited audience on this event. They will publish their eComStation (Preview is already out) which looks like "only" a product bundle, but it is VERY worthy for OS/2. "Their OS/2" will not have it's own codebase or something, but it is not aiming big customers instead it's aiming Network Offices and SOHO. This does mean for example it can included features produced by IBM that are not available for business customers as IBM doesn't want to support them. This does also mean it includes things like DANIS-IDE driver and XWorkplace. And it means they're aiming also NEW "OS/2" customers. And it does also mean you can have direct contact to your distributor (www.serenity-systems.com write to Info@... or BStJohn@...). Tell him what is missing in the OS/2 distribution, what is wrong and what you think should be changed in the next release (did you ever try that at IBM). And with them we're one big customer at IBM. And last but not least we get all the fine stuff bundled, like OS/2, SmartSuite, Desktop On-Call.

Of course you also don't see all the information that was floating that days. Knowledge about developing, nearly unknown software, hints for problems and discussions about future plans.

Video

 * YouTube