SCO Forum

The goal of SCO Forum was to spread the company's message and inform its users and partners as to the capabilities and technical characteristics of its products and express optimism about the future path of the company.[6] Representatives from SCO included executives, product managers, development engineers, and others. Attendees from outside SCO included value-added resellers (VARs), channel distributors, application developers, and computer manufacturers.[7][2]

Forum helped establish a community around SCO, where people reinforced each other in believing that using Unix as a basis for business solutions – by no means a given in those days – was the correct approach, and that SCO provided the right products from both a technical and business aspect to do so.[7] As such, SCO Forum was considered a popular and very successful event.[8][9] As Dr. Dobb's Journal later wrote, "SCO Forum was the place to be if you were a Unixhead."[10]

With SCO having built a successful business with its Unix-on-commodity-hardware offering, Forum was used by the company to argue why new competitors in the space, such as Univel and SunSoft, would not be successful.[11] In later years, when Unix itself came under threat, first from Microsoft's Windows NT and then from open source Linux, it was a role of Forum to stress that Unix was not going away and that business success could still be had with it.[12] As SCO CEO Doug Michels said at Forum 1999, "In spite of all the rumors and opinions that Unix would end, it didn't."[12]

New deals between SCO and other companies in the industry were often announced at Forum.[3][6] Alternatively, panel discussions were held to discuss the state of already existing partnerships, such as one for Project Monterey,[13] the strategic importance of which was given much attention at the time.[12] Company slogans were advanced, such as "the Internet Way of Computing".[14][15] On the other hand, failed initiatives announced at previous events, such as SCO's involvement in the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE), were explained away as quickly as possible.[16]

Badges, bags, and wine from over the years at SCO Forum

The first conference took place in 1987; it was referred to as the SCO XENIX 386 Developer Conference.[2] SCO was looking for a place to hold an event that would bring together developers to exchange ideas, and the university said that it could provide such a spot in late August, before students returned to campus for the fall quarter.[1]

By August 1988, the trade publication InfoWorld was mentioning "SCO Forum '88, a conference for Xenix developers."[17] However, unlike the previous years' Forum, this one was not restricted to developers, with resellers invited as well as part of SCO's effort to build a strong reseller base.[18] The conference featured an announcement from SCO partner AT&T about a merged Unix and Xenix OS product.[17]

SCO Forum '89 was also reported on in InfoWorld as well as in PC Week.[19] It was held during August 21–25, as was promoted ahead of time by Newsbytes News Network.[20] It featured third-party vendors announcing new releases of their products.[21] In particular, an agreement with Microsoft to support Word and related products on SCO systems was highlighted.[19] Speakers at Forum '89 included Paul Maritz of Microsoft and Ray Noorda of Novell as well as the company's two founders, Larry Michels and Doug Michels.[20]

Both the company and the conference underwent growth. SCO held other technical and marketing events and seminars during the year and around the world, but Forum was certainly the largest of them.[22] Advertisements for Forum stressed the value attending it would hold for a wide range of industry people – executives, managers, hardware developers, software developers, resellers, distributors, dealers, third-party vendors, and end users, as well as journalists and industry analysts, with session tracks available for each of these audiences.[23][24]

With the company showing some profitable quarters, anticipating going public, and holding a roughly 75 percent share in the small-to-medium-sized businesses market, SCO Forum92 saw 2500 people in attendance, a big jump of about twice the previous year's total.[16] From a third to a half of the attendees were from overseas, reflecting the company's worldwide success.[22][16] Among these were about thirty attendees from formerly communist Eastern Bloc states.[22]

Advertisements for Forum93 tried to give the conference an almost academic flavor, billing as it an "International Open Systems Symposium", making reference to the open systems movement then popular.[24] Courses were said to be available in certain "majors" and upon completion would result in the attendee earning a certificate of completion from SCO.[24] But the tenor of the week was set by SCO chief executive Lars Turndal's opening keynote address, where he attempted to soothe anxieties related to the company's past year of management shakeups and poor stock performance.[25]

Timeless music, timeless setting: Roger McGuinn performing an evening concert on the patio of Cowell College at SCO Forum98, with Monterey Bay in the background

By 1994, Forum was on UNIX Review's recommended list of shows and conferences for readers to attend,[26] and in a survey of events they characterized it as one of "the industry's leading-edge trade shows".[27]

An increase in technically-oriented, future-focused content was noted for Forum94.[28] Forum94 had one of the more celebrated demonstrations, that of SCO's back-end role in the creation of PizzaNet, which enabled computer users for the first time to order pizza delivery from their local Pizza Hut restaurant via the Internet.[6] That year's conference also witnessed what is said to have been the first-ever scheduled live music concert to be broadcast across the Internet, in an August 23 performance by local band Deth Specula on the Mbone.[29][30]

SCO had been an original co-sponsor of the UniForum association of Unix users and had long had a close relationship with it.[31] By 1996 attendees to Forum were given a trial membership in UniForum.[31] And by Forum98 there was an explicit UniForum track of breakout sessions available.[32] In some cases gatherings at Forum led to industry initiatives taking place, such as the 86open effort to form consensus on a common binary file format for x86-based Unix and Unix-like operating systems, which had its initial meeting at SCO's Santa Cruz offices on the final day of Forum97.[33]

Peak Forum attendance was in 1997 and 1998, when about 3000 people attended each event.[34][35] Some 60 different countries were represented.[34]

Forum often featured individuals and groups who came year after year, viewing it as something of an annual pilgrimage and reunion.[34] One such group was of developers and resellers in the United States who qualified for the SCO Advanced Product Center (APC) designation.[37] After first getting together at a "birds of a feather" session at Forum in 1989, they formed an association known as APC Open in 1990, that was renamed to APC International in 1998 and iXorg in 2000.[38] Another such attendee was Dupaco, the founder of which attended every Forum from the beginning and built a multi-million dollar business with SCO Xenix and later products while becoming the sole distributor of SCO products in the Netherlands.[39]

Many writers considered SCO Forum to be unique in the industry.[2] As a Dataquest columnist said, "It was a veritable treat. Set amidst the verdant redwood trees at the ... (UCSC) campus, it was a Unix feast that lasted for five Californian summer days."[40] An industry observer for eWeek recalled that both Forum and the company Santa Cruz Operation itself had "reflected the ethos of the community for which it was named" and that "based in the college/beach town of Santa Cruz, Calif., epitomized an industry culture [soon to be] gone."[41] And as one ZDNet writer stated, "SCO Forum ... is like no conference or industry confab you'll ever attend. Part pep rally, part study session, part sales pitch, and part schmoozefest, Forum has a far different atmosphere than any conventional trade show."[7]

The conference was sometimes arranged through the Jack Baskin School of Engineering of UC Santa Cruz and typically used classrooms, dining facilities, recreational areas, parking lots, and campus housing, most often at Cowell College and Stevenson College.[42] In one year a dean at UC Santa Cruz sent a memorandum to the campus community stating:

"I know that this conference occupies numerous UCSC facilities and may create confusion about where to park and eat. For some, the noise created by the presence of the conference participants will impact their work environment. However, this event provides many benefits for our campus community, and I hope that you are able to make accommodations in order to minimize the effects of the forum".[42]

Attending morning keynote addresses in the fog-shrouded quarry amphitheater was a common occurrence (here in 1997)

Keynote addresses were held each morning in the university quarry, an open-air amphitheater nestled within coastal redwoods.[1] Upwards of 1500 attendees would come to these sessions. Doug Michels saw the quarry as an advantage over the dark hotel ballrooms where most conferences presented their over-produced keynote addresses, saying, "It's impossible to give a slide show in the Quarry."[1] Due to the sharp diurnal temperature fluctuations characteristic of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the quarry was often fog-enshrouded and chilly in the morning, but attendees were advised to dress in layers that could be shed later as the fog burned off and the sun shone over Monterey Bay. The quarry had plain wood bleachers for which cushions were provided to sit on.[6] (For Forum 1999 only, which had a decline in attendance from the peak,[13] keynotes were moved to a location on the campus's East Field, where a stage and seating area were constructed.[43] It was cold and foggy there in the morning too, but as CNN reported, that "couldn't dampen the spirits of Unix enthusiasts" in attendance.[12])

Keynote addresses came not just from SCO executives but from major figures in the industry, including Andy Grove, CEO of Intel,[22] as well as from various executives of partner companies.[35] Technology observers would also debate such matters as, in SCO Forum 95, the nature of the much-ballyhooed "information superhighway", with writer Clifford Stoll and Electronic Frontier Foundation founder and Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow reaching divergent conclusions.[44] A third participant, one that was ironic in light of later developments, was Linus Torvalds, who offered his own view of things.[45] Predictions made during Forum keynotes were not always accurate; Torvalds himself said that Linux made a more reliable desktop than Microsoft and that "if Unix decides to ignore the desktop market and tries to be a server, even if it's a server that tries to serve desktops, Unix is eventually going to die. And I think the future is acknowledging that the desktop market is where it's at."[45]

Even business rivals were sometimes represented, with Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy – who was also in the Unix-on-Intel space – speaking at Forum in 1996.[46] McNealy pointed out some areas of common interest in the process of giving what ZDNet recalled several years later as "an extremely entertaining speech".[47]

In addition, guest speakers often included humorists of one kind or another, including such figures as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, who one reporter said "enthralled" the crowd.[44] Another such speaker was author Dave Barry.[35]

Between breakout sessions of Developer Fast Track during SCO Forum98

There were a hundred or more hardware and software exhibitors at the conference, who would set up labs and demonstrations in college halls.[3] These companies included major systems vendors such as IBM, Compaq Computer and NEC.[3][1] SCO set up pavilions to demonstrate various advances in networking and client-server computing.[35] The general public was invited to attend the keynote addresses and visit the exhibits and pavilions, after paying a relatively small entrance fee.[34]

Breakout sessions took place during the late morning and in the afternoon after lunch, and were devoted to the most detailed level explanations of SCO products, with tracks devoted towards both technical and marketing audiences.[44] Sample session names included "Tuning and Monitoring Your SCO Internet Server", "Rejuvenate Character Applications with SCO TermVision", and "Retail Business Opportunities II: Over the Counter Profits".[48] In addition, the years 1996 through 1999 saw Thursday and Friday added on for a supplemental "Developer Fast Track" program; these sessions covered hard-core topics such as "DDC 8 Tutorial and Driver Walk-Through", "JDK 1.2 – Benefits for Application Programmers", and "Porting Applications to IPv6".[32] In the evenings after dinner, "birds of a feather" sessions were held in a number of classrooms and other locations,[32] allowing attendees even more direct contact with SCO product managers and development engineers. The SCO Skunkware collection of open source built and packaged for SCO operating systems was an example of something that was spread through birds of a feather sessions at multiple Forums.

Forum made a large, positive economic impact on the town of Santa Cruz, the university, and surrounding Santa Cruz County.[49][34] In the mid-late 1990s this benefit was estimated at $3–4 million.[1][34] Indeed, the mayor of Santa Cruz would sometimes label the week as "SCO Forum Week" or open the conference on Monday morning,[1][34] and it was a largest tech industry gathering of any kind in the county.[35] Hotels and motels in the area would be booked for the week.[49] Some attendees were put up in campus rooms and apartments,[3] a tradition dating back to the early years of Forum when typical SCO developers could not afford anything more.[1]

Resellers who performed the best during the year were rewarded by getting their travel expenses to Forum paid for.[1] The age of attendees was older than usual for technology conferences, with many VARs having well-established businesses.[4] In addition, more women were present at Forum than were typically seen at technology conferences, which one writer partly attributed to the more mature nature of the SCO reseller base.[7]

An enthusiastic group of overseas attendees at the Tuesday night barbecue and party, as The Kingsmen play on stage in 1997

As one Linux Journal piece noted, "SCO Forum [is] famous for its fun, casual environment."[45] UNIX Review mentioned Forum as being associated with "the usual Santa Cruzian gaiety".[28] Indeed, the 'having a fun experience' aspect was something that the company's two founders, Larry Michels and Doug Michels, both emphasized.[3][1] The environment and the dress code were both casual[7] (although some vendor representatives did not always get the message at first).[3] One first-time attendee termed the week a "romp in the redwoods".[6] Even finding one's way around could be considered enjoyable, as one attendee later recalled: "Had you ever been to one of [the company's] shindigs at the University of Santa Cruz? It was called the SCO Forum and by the fourth day ... you've finally remembered, which giant redwood to go left at and which sandy cliff you should climb to make it back to your dorm."[50]

Side activities at Forum often included a golf tournament, a soccer tournament with international teams, a fun run, beach volleyball, wine tastings in the nearby mountains, and rides on the Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway or Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad to a barbecue and the spectacular Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.[34][48][31]

Parties were frequent at Forum and local catering companies did quite well.[3] A large contingent of Forum attendees from Latin America[34] made their presence felt in this respect. Parties were also sometimes held off-campus, such as at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.[34] The existence of official SCO Forum bottles of wine gave further credence to this aspect of the conference.[6]

Typically SCO hosted a Barbecue and Anniversary Celebration on the Tuesday night of Forum, with a band that played until 11 pm, after which some attendees carried on in what, as the conference guide said, was "a social event that has become legendary in the computer industry."[48] Many other relaxations took place as well.[3][44] Name musical acts featured at SCO Forum, for the Tuesday night party and in other time slots, included Tower of Power, The Kingsmen, The Surfaris, Jan and Dean, Jefferson Starship, and appearances over three consecutive years from folk-rock legend Roger McGuinn.[3][35] Local bands that performed for the Tuesday night party included Big Bang Beat and Dick Bright's SRO.[51][52]