IDG Gets Red Hat Back in Its Ring

When Red Hat pulled out of the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo/San Francisco a year and a half ago, IDG World Expo, the show's owner, said it would leave the door open for the company's return. After all, Red Hat is the leading provider in the open source solution community, the sector the show serves.

Well, Red Hat is back with IDG, but not necessarily with LinuxWorld.

Instead of the company coming back as an exhibitor, IDG World Expo will co-produce Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat's propriety event, the Red Hat Summit.

“We've been talking to IDG about ways to work together outside of LinuxWorld,” said Leigh Day, Red Hat's senior director of communications. “By working together (on Red Hat Summit) we're drawing on both of our strengths.”

The Red Hat Summit has a conference component and demonstrations of the company's new products. Fifteen to 20 Red Hat partners will also exhibit.

IDG World Expo is skilled at producing large-scale events, Day added, and Red Hat at promoting its brand and supporting the open source community.

Red Hat and IDG World Expo have an agreement to collaborate on the upcoming Red Hat Summit June 18-20 at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center in Boston. Depending on how that goes, Red Hat may expand its relationship with IDG World Expo in the future, Day said.

Melinda Kendall, LinuxWorld's show manager, will also work on the summit. Kendall said she was “sorry to see Red Hat go” when it left the show in 2006. At the time, “there was no direct impact of their leaving, and there were no other exhibitors that left because they left or decrease in attendees,” she added. “We have stayed in conversation with them. It was never a contentious relationship. They had their marketing strategy, and LinuxWorld did not fit into it.”

Red Hat produced the stand-alone Red Hat Summit for three years before asking IDG World Expo for a hand.

“When they looked at the feasibility of running their own event, they realized it wasn't their expertise, and they came back to us and said, 'Can you help us run this?,'” Kendall said. “We are dedicated to the Linux open source community, and Red Hat is a key player.”

Once the two got back together, she added, the first decision they made was where to hold this year's event. IDG World Expo recommended moving the event to New England, partly because it hadn't yet served that market, Kendall said.

That made sense, Day added, because Red Hat has a “very strong demographic in the Northeast, and it's a very tech-heavy area.”

The company also has one of its main offices nearby in Westford, Mass., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is active in the open source community.

The Red Hat Summit, which typically draws 1,000 attendees, was previously held in San Diego, Nashville, Tenn., and New Orleans. “We like to try new venues and keep it interesting to attendees,” Day said.

Kendall said IDG World Expo also felt New England would be a good place for the event, because her company had its own attendee base that needed to be served after the cancellation of LinuxWorld Conference & Expo/Boston in 2006. “Even though LinuxWorld pulled out of Boston,” she added, “we still have an attendee list (there).”

Kendall said IDG World Expo could help Red Hat market the event in other ways as well.

“Red Hat was primarily promoting to its own list,” she said, “and we have helped them reach out more to magazines and associations. From an attendee point of view, we are very bullish.”

Day said the summit had grown 15 to 20 percent in attendance since its inception.