I've registered here at the PalmSource 2005 Developer Conference, and my first impressions are good. They are still getting a lot of the conference space setup, but attendence is high, and the talk schedule looks good. Of course, the most important first impression for a conference is what kind of free stuff you get as an attendee. The 2004 PalmSource conference bag was pretty sparse, but this year the contents are looking a lot better.
First, there's the bag itself. It's a black backpack with the "Palm Powered" and "PalmSource" logos on it, but no mention of the event. I guess that lets PalmSource reuse any leftovers. It has a rubberized bottom, two deep side pockets suitable for holding water bottles or laptop power adapters, a primary holding area with a laptop pouch, space for papers in the main flap, and a front pocket with a snap-off organizer. All of the zippers have zip pulls, and the back straps look to be well constructed with lots of stitching.. I think it will be a useful addition to my collection of show bags, and I'll probably switch to it as my day-to-day laptop bag.
In the backpack was a variety of papers, gadgets, and software included:
- Don Norman - a trade paperback copy of his book "Emotional Design"
- Motricity - notepad
- Cingular - vinyl notepad and pen
- palmOne - a Treo-labeled pen
- Garmin - a CD with their latest iQue SDK
- BlackBerry - a small four-port USB 1.1 hub in translucent blue
- iambic - a DVD-case copy of their Agendus Professional application for both Palm OS and Windows
- PalmGear - a non-slip pad for your car that grips to your dashboard
- DataViz - a flyer for a free copy of their RoadSync over-the-air email sync program for talking with Microsoft Exchange 2003 servers
- Audible.com - a card for a free month of membership in their audiobook store
- Ultrasoft - flyer for free copy of Ultrasoft DataShield
Tonight is the Palm OS Users Group meeting, and tomorrow morning is the opening keynote. It looks like David Nagel will still be delivering the talk, even though he resigned as CEO of PalmSource over the weekend.