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3]WORLD OF AMIGA CHICAGO SHOW
3]By Brad and Royan Webb
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     Folks, your favorite computer is doing much better than are its
Midwestern computer shows.
     The first Chicago World of Amiga was Oct. 5-7 at the Rosemont O'Hare
Exposition Center, just across the highway from O'Hare field near Chicago.
The location is easy to reach though plagued by constant jet noise and poor
acoustics in the hall.
     All of 27 exhibitors were there. More than one suggested they had
threatened to leave the show before it started when they arrived and realized
how small it was going to be. There was strong evidence some vendors were
virtually given booths to secure their attendance. The floor could be toured
fairly quickly. There is no doubt the simultaneous and successful AmiExpo at
the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, CA, hurt WOA badly. A senior executive from
AmiExpo, wearing a huge smile, was spotted on the WOA floor the first day.
     JUMPDISK attended for most of the three days. Despite the small number
of vendors, there were interesting things to see and do, and even a few items
not available at AmiExpo out Disneyland way. The show did have many show
specials in various booths. And there were plenty of chances to pick up the
coffee mugs, T-shirts and buttons that help make show attendance fun.

3]THE PRESENTATIONS
     While Commodore was represented at both shows, Commodore's President
Harry Copperman spoke at this one. As mentioned, the acoustics proved
horrible but the room was filled for his entire talk and the audience heard a
good one.
     Putting aside his prepared speech, Copperman described his vision for
Commodore and how his plan is progressing. Along the way he dropped a few
tidbits of news, such as the fact that Commodore intends to continue selling
and even enhancing the venerable C-64. The enhancements were not specified.
     He stated that more colors for the Amiga is the No. 1 Commodore product
development goal and that increased audio capabilities were in the works as
well.
     Specifically, the long awaited University of Lowell graphics board will
ship by end of year. The A500's new list price of $599 with "street" price of
$499 was pointed to as part of Commodore's commitment to an aggressive price/
performance ratio.
     New advertising campaigns and steps to further increase customer and
user group satisfaction and support were described, including the recent
appointment of a vice president of customer satisfaction.
     One disappointing note was the admission the innovative CDTV (Commodore
Dynamic Total Vision) will not be ready for the Christmas buying season. The
cause was given as failure to develop sufficient software titles in time.
     Unfortunately, Copperman's presentation was the only one that went
smoothly and professionally that day. The others were late with the one on
desktop publishing never coming off at all due to equipment problems. In
fact, throughout the show nearly every seminar we attended was a half hour
late, troubled by equipment problems and poor acoustics and featured a lot of
twiddling with hardware and software.
     Some, such as the Gold Disk Multi-Media presentation, were worthwhile if
you happened to be in a session that actually was presented as planned.
Fortunately there was no extra charge for these seminars. The one other than
Copperman's that went smoothest was a seminar on computer-aided design for
the Amiga. It was not announced in advance. The rather skimpy show guide
listed none of the seminars. They were posted on large bulletin boards each
day, but there was no way to schedule time for the following day. We were
unable to see any of the three presentations scheduled for Sunday. Perhaps
the problems were all resolved by then.

3]THE ATTENDEES 
     Crowds were very small the first day, a Friday. On Saturday it looked
more like a computer show with people were ranged several deep for
interesting demonstrations. We were unable to attend for the full day Sunday,
but the crowd looked to be fair sized by the time we took our leave. The
official head count was given as 8,400 paid attendees -- higher than our
estimation.

3]THE EXHIBITORS
     Touring the floor, we did find some interesting items, though there were
no announcements of new products.
     Abacus was displayed its line of Amiga publications and software,
including a show special or two. Presumably it was a late addition as it was
not listed in the show guide.
     Accolade promoted its games product line. We spotted The Cycles being
put through its paces by happy showgoers. Its Ishido game proved popular.
     The continual sounds of a small war marked the Actionware booth. Its
PhaserGun and target software such as the new Sideshow program kept target
shooters busy at all times. Like Abacus, it wasn't listed in the show
program, but its sound made it easy to locate.
     American Software Distributors had its red, white and blue disk emblem
showing on large banners over several booths. These booths were manned by
various companies ASD handles. Among them were Broderbund Software, whose
booth sported the popular Carmen SanDiego series. The new Prince of Persia
release with its excellent small scale animation brought many people over for
a close look.
     California Freeware made the trip from the West Coast with its usual
complement of public domain and shareware disks.
     In the place of honor near the entrance was an attractive new though
small Commodore booth. Manned by the Chicago office, it was a hub of activity
throughout the show with its demonstrations of multimedia, music and video
applications. As might be expected, AmigaVision had a prominent role to play
in the demonstrations. Also being shown were X-Cad and DynaCAD, as examples
of the Amiga's capabilities in engineering fields.
     At the end of the first aisle was a show highlight, the perhaps
misleadingly named Database Software from Cheshire, England. A very
personable chap named Joss Cocker was showing Mandarin Software's AMOS Basic
language package. Designed with game production in mind, AMOS has received
rave reviews in England. This show marked the first time we have seen it over
here. The booth contained several professionally marketed educational programs
written with AMOS.
     Data East showed its Draconian line of games including Chamber of the
Sci Mutant Priestess. Another star at its booth was Monday Night Football.
     The crew at Disks and Labels to Go had stacks of interesting labels
(seems reasonable) of various sorts and an amazing assortment of floppy disks
and disk holders. Interestingly they had quite a number of PD and shareware
programs for the Commodore 64 and others as well.
     Free Spirit Software's large booth was overflowing with little stuffed
Teddy Bears -- part of its promotion for the Barney Bear line of educational
software for early education.
     Gold Disk had one of the largest booths and was definitely a star of the
show. Featured was its new Showmaker multimedia presentation package. 
Showmaker was also shown to advantage in the multimedia seminars, not
coincidentally presented by the Canadian firm Media Innovations, a Gold Disk
beta test site. Prominently on display was the new 2.0 version of
Professional Page though the program was not yet available.
     Another show star was Great Valley Products. Its double-sized booth
bristled with its new product line, including a 600Meg read/write magnetic-
optical disk drive and a line of Amiga networking products.
     Over at Lake Forest Logic, the people who gave us The Disk Mechanic were
touting the new AmiExpress BBS program, with its support of multiple
telephone lines and "doors," -- a facility which allows callers to access
other programs on-line. AmiExpress BBS should help alleviate the lack of
higher level BBS systems for the Amiga.
     Merit Software's main attraction was a new wargame, Operation Com-Bat,
being promoted by a man wearing a three-piece suit and a camouflage ball cap.
Ah, computer shows! Also featured were the intriguing Classic Board Games
(chess, checkers and backgammon) and All Dogs Go To Heaven.
     MicroEd had one of the two largest booths at the show, though it was not
listed in the guide. In most of the booth they were selling software and
hardware to show attendees. Up front, they were demonstrating several
products, including the Mimetics Frame Buffer.
     The people of Microprose demonstrated their very successful Pirates game.
     A very popular booth was that of Migraph, where a hand scanner and
"touchup" software held great interest. A Migraph spokesman told us they sold
all the units they had with them. In fact, the last one was bought by us. We
hope to have a review for you at a later date.
     SuperBase 4, latest in the line, was the headliner at the Precision Inc.
booth. Like Professional Page 2.0, the program was shown but not yet
available. 
     Tied with MicroEd for largest booth was Geneva Illinois' Ring Software.
Strictly a vendor, it seemed to be doing a good trade throughout the weekend.
     Games were the order of the day at Sierra On-Line. Its 10th anniversary
catalog and Leisure Suite Larry 3, newly released for the Amiga, were much in
evidence. Also featured was the new Hero's Quest. One of World of Amiga's
best values was available at the Sierra booth when T shirt prices were
lowered to $5.
     TTR Development had one of the more unusual booths. A small viewing area
was set up for the training film from the BattleTech center recently opened
in Chicago. TTR developed some of the graphics for the game, created by ESP
Corporation. BattleTech is played by teams of gamers sitting in cockpits that
simulate the control centers of giant armored fighting robots. It is an
interactive multi-player game of absorbing realism. The secondary graphics
screen in the cockpit is Amiga controlled. At present Chicago is the only
city with a BattleTech center, but ESP is planning to spread them across the
country. TTR was also demonstrating a videodisc/Amiga shoot-em-up game where
players use an ActionWare Phaser gun to shoot real people in the movie. We
did a double take at this one, but the kids at the show loved it. The game
was a demonstration of video technology only and is not intended for market.
TTR's new Sapphire 68020/68881 accelerator board was on display as well.
     Perhaps the booth attracting the most interest was that of Walt Disney
Computer Software Inc's. On display was The Animation Studio software,
released first for the Amiga as the professional's computer of choice for
Disney style animation. This program also had a tie-in with the seminars as
it was featured in the sessions on computer animation and movies. Reichart
Von Wolfsheild, who headed the software development team that wrote the
program, presented the seminars. Between seminars he could be spotted
demonstrating the program in the booth to rapt groups of attendees. Noted
programmer/animator Leo Schwab was about the booth and seminars the first two
days of the show. Leo was the main author of The Animation Studio from way
back when it was called Onion after the onionskin paper used in hand-drawn
animation systems. Leo sported his familiar green velvet cape and cap.
Unfortunately, Von Wolfsheild and Schwab left World of Amiga to spend Sunday
at AmiExpo.
     Xetec's attractive custom booth displayed the line of FastTrak hard
drive controllers and other products, such as the new CD ROM player. The
player uses the same format as Commodore's CDTV product, so presumably some
of "Baby's" software will work in it. At present there is little software
available for the drive, aside from the Fred Fish PD and shareware
collection. Also in Xetec's booth was the "paint kiosk" being used by some
house paint dealers. A result of Commodore's drive to entice companies to
create products based on Amiga technology, this kiosk lets would-be house
painters select one of several digitized photos of houses and then try
different paint color combinations on it. The photos are crisp and the
control is provided by a simple trackball. It works very well and is
fascinating. 
     Not present on the floor but performing demonstrations of its new "Art
Department Professional" in a hospitality suite nearby was ASDG. We had the
chance to see the program put through its paces along with a potential
customer who was unfamiliar with the Amiga. The software clearly impressed
the other guest as it did us. Interestingly, ASDG used a monitor driven by
the elusive Lowell graphics board. The display was very professional and
crisp.
     Speaking of ASDG, its Saturday night party for press and vendors was the
highlight of World of Amiga's sparse social scene. It provided a chance to
unwind and compare notes on the show. The mood was upbeat and light-hearted,
despite the small size the show.
     The Amiga journalism community was well represented. Besides ourselves
several .Info staff were making the rounds, as was a representative of GEnie.
Three magazines had booths as well as reporters at the show. Amazing
Computing and the reconstituted Compute were both there. So was AmigaWorld.
It was no real surprise its booth sported show programs for the Anaheim
AmiExpo show, since it the magazine sponsor. Amazing raffled off two TTR
Development Sapphire boards each day.
     It can be interesting to see who is listed in the program but doesn't
attend. In that category were Hahn-Wallace Publishing, ICD, Innerprise
Software, Michtron and Microtech Solutions.

3]SUMMING UP
     This first Chicago World of Amiga was definitely disappointing, though
dappled by bright spots. It must be remembered AmiExpo in the perhaps more
tempting shadow of DisneyLand was occurring at the same time. This is the
second Chicago show in a row to suffer from such conflicts of scheduling.
Summer's AmiExpo ran afoul of the DeVeloper's Conference the same weekend in
Atlanta. While not all show organizers have given up on Chicago, showgoers
and exhibitors may. If that happens, Chicago or perhaps Midwestern shows in
general could have a short future. AmiExpo apparently does not plan a Chicago
show next year. Besides a change in name to AmigaWorld EXPO, it has opted
for a change of venue to Orlando, FL. World of Amiga does plan on returning
next October, though the show will only be two days long. This was arranged
prior to this show's poor attendance. If this happens to be a date with no
conflicts and if the Amiga owners of the area haven't been too thoroughly
disappointed, we may yet avoid a permanent loss for both show presenters and
Amigans. Show organizers owe the attendees and exhibitors better planning. We
mean both World of Amiga and AmiEXPO/AmigaWorld EXPO. Those who attended the
first two AmiEXPOS know the user community can turn out in large,
enthusiastic numbers. They won't long do so for small, unenthusiastic shows.
     The next World of Amiga is scheduled for April 5-7 in New York. AmiExpo
will be in New York shortly before, March 15-17.

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