[conspire] Keynote presentation at the 1999 LWCE in San Jose

[Rick Moen]

My former co-worker San Mehat just re-found this video recording of the
keynote presentation at LinuxWorld Conference & Expo at the San Jose
McEnery Convention Center -- and uploaded it for our nostalgia pleasure.

Terrible, embarrassing, mind-wrenching 1970s graphics, awful theatrics
by the Slashdot boys, pseudo-cool rock soundtrack, interminable
monologue by an Intel talking head, it's all there, 50:29 minutes of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XePaEH6gi44

Is that a stargate in the middle of the stage?  Cue Jaye Davidson.

Keynote (mostly skipped over by this observer) is by the aforementioned
Intel guy.  There's rather too much of him, but also guests well known
to us in early days.

This was the LWCE year with the _best_ agenda, because it included the
entire agenda from the planned LINC conference that we Bay Area Linux
people extensively planned but then agreed to sign over to IDG
(International Data Group) for the competing LWCE event, so that there
would be one good conference rather than two weak ones.  So, 1999 was
the year with the least percentage of corporate blandness, and yet there
was plenty of that here. 


This was the same IDG that had absolutely no idea why granting 
Free Software Foundation the first annual 'IDG/Linus Torvalds Community
Award' on-stage during LWCE was a recipe for severe trouble.  Captured
for posterity here:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDxMJQLXmBE

'Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is like
giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Fleet.'  Awkward!  Be sure to
catch Torvalds's reaction, standing off to the side -- and then walking
around behind Richard with his two young children and accidentally
upstaging him.