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{subhead} World of Amiga99 report from CAUG{def}{p}
Article by CAUG
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A report from the WOA, courtesy the CAUG Web Site...
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   Welcome To The Offical CAUG Web Site{p}
WOA 1999 Report
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Hoping that we hadn't left anything behind, we left Cardiff about
5am, and trundled up the M4, until we had to get some coffee. We
stopped somewhere around Reading, and the substance we had definitely
wasn't coffee and it cost £2.70!
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After arriving in London, we couldn't find the place, so stopped and
asked for directions, and finally arrived. The shock of the day had
to be that the cost of parking was £27! aghghgh!!
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We lugged all of our stuff into the building and began setting up. Of
course the first thing was to place the Welsh flag, we then started
with the computers.
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On opening, we had decided to stand out and wear costumes, the loopy
leek was there, Mark was dressed in rugby gear, Dylan was the TKN
kernel and I was the reaper.
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We gave out CAUG flyers on the door and in the process met Petro.
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We managed to grab a representative of Amiga Design Workshop
International who recorded the presentation on video. We should get a
copy of this soon.
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The music and some pics & animations from the presentation are
available from the CAUG project section of the web site.
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We held two seperate competitions. The first was a caption
competition and the second was a raffle. The prizes were kindly
donated to CAUG by MSS (Europe) Ltd. The winners of the competition
are shown below.
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There were three floors to the exhibition, the basement consisted
mainly of the user groups, the Click Boom games area (showing off
T-Zero) and refreshments. The main floor held the Amiga stand and the
main exhibitors. The top floor consisted of the bar and some more
user groups.
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The Amiga stand was the focal point of the show, the a mock-up of the
NG was being displayed and numerous Amiga Warez were for sale.
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After the show closed at 5pm, the Amiga reception took place. It was
held in two ajoining rooms at the top of the building.
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There was free beer and food courtesy of Amiga, which was flowing
freely amongst all those attending.
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I'm not sure how many people were there, but the rooms were brimming
with people twitching to hear the seminar.
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We seemed to be in the reception area for an age, but it was a good
oportunity to chat to some of the community, and try and drum up a
few more members for the user group.
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The seminar took place in the council chambers and somehow everybody
managed to squeeze in.
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The presentation started with Petro saying 'back for the future'
rather a lot and introducing the video.
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The video started off with the boing ball bouncing around the screen
and the old Amiga logo. Then pictures from the Amiga's past were
scrolled across the screen.
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The boing ball appeared on the screen again in a green field with the
Commodore logo. The field then disentegrated and the boing ball was
left alone and grey in a barren landscape.
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The Escom logo appeared, together with a boo from the audience,
trying to put life back into the boing ball with no avail. Next the
Gateway logo appeared and tried to do the same with the same outcome.
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The Gateway logo moved back and with a massive input resserected the
boing ball and the new Amiga logo appeared in front of the ball.
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The next part of the video showed the new Amiga staff in meetings,
choosing a building for the company, and screen shots from OS3.5
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The Amiga partners were revealed next, first Sun, then Corel,
Transmeta together with massive applause (yes I did say Transmeta
then) :)) and finally Pentagram.
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The video ended with the words 'Amiga Back For The Future'.
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The entire video was accompanied by the Amiga soundtrack from Annex,
and was available for sale on Sunday.
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A snipit of Jim's speech....
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' The PC revolution is over, there is no longer any innovation.
Despite all the activity, the PC industry is stagnant and there
hasn't been any significant innovation for the platform for over 10
years'
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Jim then shows us the various platforms release in the 80's, compared
with the current situation where innovation has been killed and been
dominated by a few prominent standards.
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'There is no revolution. Faster CPU's and graphic cards are not
evolutionary. You can pretty much do the same thing today that you
could do with a PC five to seven years ago. This is why the Amiga
community has held on because there is nothing better out there,
nothing exciting. You're here because you believe in true
innovation.'
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'The PC architecture will not penetrate any more than it has already,
it is not going to change peoples lives any more significantly than
it already has. They have failed on the promise to truly and fully
enable the information revolution, the information era. There is a
computer revolution on the horizon, there's momentum for the next
generation of computing devices. These are devices that will
significantly change the world. They will change the way we act every
single day and that revolution is out there, about to happen'
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'We are here to lead this new revolution, that is what we are here to
do. The whole industry has lost its way, we need to help lead the
industry out of this dark period. I view Amiga as a shining light
leading the industry from constrained evolution back to truly
innovative revolution. That's what excites me, that's what we're here
to do. I'm talking about truly changing the world. I'm talking about
changing the life and the way people live, every person that you
know. I'm talking about being able to say to people in one to three
years from now, you know what?'
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The phone that was connected to the microphone now falls off.
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Jim humorously adds 'I'm talking about not having to tape phones to
microphones'
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'You'll look back and say to people-  "you know what, I was part of
this, I didn't give up, I was part of the team, the root, the
community that grew to change the world"
That's what I'm talking about. It's significant and if you don't
believe we can do this then you probably shouldn't be in this room,
because I believe that we can do this, we can change the world, we
can rise again as an amazing force in this industry. The question is
do you believe it ?'
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Shouts arise from the people watching.
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'Do you believe it or am I wasting my time?'
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Mass shouting of belief from the room.
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Jim replies with 'Will the believers calm down a little bit now'
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'But what is this next revolution going to be ? '
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'It's going to make the internet and computers a natural part of
everyday life as people have envisioned it for so long but have not
been able to execute on it. It's going to combine mind-boggling
power, performance with the simplicity and ease of use of computing
devices throughout the house and office, but its going to be driven
by a new architecture, a new environment, something completely
different, we will leave the values of the PC finally behind us'
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Rick and Alan presented a question and answer session of the most
asked topics sent via email, and explained quite a lot about why they
chose Linux over QNX.
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The Linux TCP/IP stack is about as ten times as fast as the Windoze
NT equivilent, Linus is making some changes for the kernel, and I
think we're gonna have an awesome machine on the horizon.
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Overall it was an excellent day topped off by a very good seminar.
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I went to WOA slightly anxious about the Linux decision, but left
with a glowing feeling about what Amiga has to offer for the future!
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AMIGA ..... It's still a religion