by Calvin Robinson on November 21, 2008.

Yesturday afternoon I was at Ubuntu Live: London. This was a co-hosted event between Canonical and IBM.

The Canonical presentations were aimed mostly at businesses, and sysadmins in particular, delving into the Ubuntu Server distribution. IBM on the other hand went deep into Ubuntu Desktop model – this speaker was really entertaining. Mark Shuttleworth was there too of course – smart guy.

There was an open bar, and some really fancy nibbles – I can’t remember what one of them were called. Quite a few fish selections, sushi-ish. Nice though.

The swag was cool too. There was an Ubuntu notepad and pen on each seat, for us to take notes. Then on our way out we were handed a goody bag. This had the usual stickers and Ubuntu CDs, Ubuntu Mousemat, but what I liked the most was an IBM Lotus stamped gadget – a USB charger for all popular mobile/cell phones! This thing has an adapter for Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung and mini-USB. So cool!

I must say, IBM really impressed me with their Lotus suite. Not just because of the swag, but their presentation was actually really good. I can really see a place for it in the Enterprise environment. True, it’s just based on Open Office, Eclipse and other Open Source software, but the way it’s put together as a nice full-package is great.