Novell BrainShare

The goal of BrainShare was to spread the company's message and inform its users and partners as to the capabilities and technical characteristics of its products and of networking in general. As one publication said, "Novell holds its annual BrainShare conference to help refocus attention on the company, its goals and objectives for the upcoming year, and its networking technologies." Once Novell's fortunes began a downhill slide in the mid-1990s, especially under pressure from Microsoft Windows NT, BrainShare was used to showcase new approaches that were intended to turn things around. ==History==

The conference first took place in 1985. The 1986 event was held over three days in February and was billed as the second annual NetWare Affiliates conference. The venue was a Sheraton Hotel in Downtown Salt Lake City and there were some 150 attendees. The new few instances of the conference continued to be held over three days in Salt Lake City in February, and were used to introduce or preview new Novell technologies. while for 1988 the name was given as the Fourth Annual Novell Developers Conference. The first conference to be known by the name BrainShare appears to be that held in 1992. By 1991, the conference has grown in size considerably, with some 1,200 attendees expected. Accordingly, during much of the 1990s the conference was held on the campus of the University of Utah, in the hills overlooking the rest of Salt Lake City, around the third week of March of each year, during the school's spring break. On the campus, talks for large numbers of attendees were held in the Huntsman Center indoor arena, In these years the event was organized in a more conventional manner around a trade show floor. The date of the conference could vary more and in 2003 it was held in April rather than March. Attendance at BrainShare varied from year to year, but for the most part once the conference was fully established it was in the 5,000 to 7,000 range. Attendees came from many countries around the world, in one instance being stated as coming from 60 countries. ==Structure==

BrainShare typically lasted for much of a week, such as Sunday through Friday. Each day of BrainShare would start with one or more keynote addresses. One address during the week would be from Novell's CEO of the time. Technical breakout sessions would follow; typically there were more than 200 of these. Professionals networking among other attendees was always a main attraction of attending BrainShare. Often attendees were passionate about Novell products; one writer termed BrainShare an "annual weeklong lovefest". Novell's partners would be present at BrainShare. In some cases these included ones that were Novell competitors, such as Microsoft, following Novell founder Ray Noorda's dictum of "coopetition". Partners were often listed by level of support, such as Platinum Sponsor. Although Salt Lake was not as glamorous as some other convention city destinations, the Wasatch Range provided a scenic backdrop that many attendees found rewarding. and Collective Soul in 2008. The conference was beneficial to the local economy; for instance, BrainShare '95 was said to bring some $4.2 million in revenue to Salt Lake City. ==Final years==

In late 2008, after more than 20 years of the conference, Novell announced that BrainShare 2009 would be canceled. The company attributed the decision to customers and partners having reduced travel budgets in the wake of the global recession of 2008–2009. So it did, although attendance was down significantly from historical levels, to around 2,000 people. Novell announced in November 2010 that it had agreed to be acquired by software conglomerate The Attachmate Group. At this point, BrainShare went onto an 18-month cycle rather than being held yearly. In September 2014, mainframe software company Micro Focus announced it was buying Attachmate Group, including Novell. The length of the conference was also a couple of days shorter than it had been at its peak; as one writer said, "modern BrainShares suffer [by] comparison to the old mega-events." ==BrainShare UK==

In the 1990s Salford Computing Services at the University of Salford struck a long-term licensing deal to make Novell (predominantly NetWare) site licences available to universities and other higher educational institutions within the UK. This was very successful, and an annual technical conference was held at the university which Novell fully endorsed and supported. The conference was originally known as the Novell UK Academic Conference, but in later years was known as BrainShare UK. == References ==