I spent some time in The BrainShare Lab after the first session … it
seemed a little “empty” compared to previous years.  Not a bad
thing … since there was a lot to look at and see.  I ran into a
lot of friends, and had a blast talking with people about their
projects.

One thing that I am glad to see is that I found almost no negative
people … even when they knew or were told that I worked for SCO …
and most realized that it will be great in the future when our
companies can collaborate in the future.  It’s great to be able to
have professional technical conversations with professional technical
people.  😉

I spent a bit of time over at the eDirectory booths … they are still
continuing to do amazing work with LDAP and directory technologies in
general.  They have a new “Embedded eDirectory” product, but is
not what I would ahve thought.  It’s more like a “Bindled
eDirectory” solution that allows an application vendor to bundle
eDirectory with their application.  The main purpose is to act
like an LDAP directory and proxy … with some added features.  It
can store local users, or if configured, if can proxy requests through
to an alternative directory.  This allows an application to extend
the “local” schema and add application specific attributes … and then
pass through all other information to the corporate (or upstream)
directory.  It’s a very powerful capability.

I also saw a company that is embedding LDAP clients into some wireless
gear … for directory-based management of wireless radios.  I got
me thinking about something that could be added to the Linksys APs that
are out there that have Open Source firmware.  This is something
that I was trying to do at Novell years ago … and now it’s looking
real.

There were a number of other booths on NetWare, SuSE GNU/Linux, and
their other products.  I’ll have to think about what hit me as
really cool or valuable … there were too many things to see in a
short amount of time … I’m off to the SuSE Linux Futures session …