MacFevre

Mac Expo 2007 vendors...

Who are the Little Guys?

By Wayne LeFevre - January 2007

So, welcome to the New Year! Are you tired of the rumors about what will be coming out yet? I’m not really quite sure of what the prize is; you know, when you come out with a rumor that is close to the truth. It has got to be something really special, though, because there are plenty of websites and columnists that are trying for it. Personally, I like to live for the day. If I tried to figure out what Apple would do next, I wouldn’t get much real work done.

What we can do is make New Year’s resolutions we’ll never remember to do, much less live up to them, and wait until the second week of January. That, I believe, will determine a lot of what is to happen for the rest of the year. It’s MacWorld Expo 2007. What I would give to be able to attend! My personal schedule aside, macCompanion will have people on the floor. That will be exciting for us, because there will be a lot of vendors there. A whole lot! The mainstream magazines will cover most of it, and you might even see a few pages about it come the March issue or so. macCompanion will, however be able to tell you all about it in our February issue. That’s one of the advantages of having an online magazine.

Now, in the next couple of weeks you will hear a lot about the Expo. MacWorld will have coverage on their site, as will everybody else and their neighbor. But let me tell you another advantage of macCompanion; the little guy. The ones that won’t be in the mainstream press. They won’t get the blog headlines. You’ll hear plenty about Apple, of course. Microsoft even has two booths! They’ll be covered. O’Reilly will have a large booth with a lot to do and a lot of action going on. I could probably stay a couple days just at their booth alone. But how much press will they get? How many magazines cover printed material in their reviews? Here at macCompanion, we averaged 9 books a month in 2006.

Back to the little guy; there will be hundreds of the little guy booths all over the place. Many of these small companies will expend their entire capital and then some, just to let someone see their product, hoping to be the next Parallels. It’s these guys that do the MacZots, the MacHeists, and other similar campaigns to try and let people know who they are and what they offer.

Most of these companies spend so much at this one event that they can’t afford to advertise, so are forced to do the give–aways. That is whom we are trying to help here at macCompanion, and in return that helps us. Sure, we’ll be glad here at macCompanion to bring the larger companies into the advertising fold. In fact, it’s my job to try and get them to, hoping to land that big one that will take care of the hosting and bandwidth that we shovel into the maws of the corporations each month. You do realize that we all volunteer here, right? There’s no salaries to take care of, no printing costs to make up. Of course, that’s why we too can help with the little guys. We don’t charge tens–of–thousands of dollars for one ad for one month. We want the little guys to succeed, and want them to know that there is really an outlet to let their product be seen without costing thousands of dollars.

Take, for example, a little company called Pleasant Software for the people. It doesn’t look like they will be able to make it to the Expo, probably because they are out of Germany. They make a little known application that is in beta known as Übercaster. They are the ones that are the epitome of the little guy, who, in my opinion, will make it huge (at least I hope so). Übercaster is the greatest piece of podcasting software I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, they do not have the large budgets for big name advertising and booths at the Expo. As a matter–of–fact, they have been pre–selling their beta in hopes to stay alive. I hope they make it as big as Parallels, because the quality of their software deserves it, and I hope to review it when it gets out of beta. That’s the Little Guy.

So, if you make it to the Expo this next week, take your time and go to all the halls. Try and look at all the booths. Don’t just stop at the big guys, hoping to get goodies and free stuff. Look into those booths in the corner, with just the one or two developers standing behind a table with nothing on it but a computer doing a demo and a bunch of brochures. These are the guys who are going to bring the next big hardware, like the Quicky from QuickerTech, or the application that is on every Mac in the world. Here’s to the Little Guys!