San Francisco Ð The most closely held secret in the NeXT community is out. NeXTWORLD Expo '93 will be held May 25Ð27 at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center.
Like last year's premiere NeXTWORLD Expo, the show will combine a product exhibition, user conference, developer conference, and international user group meeting among its three days of events. The Expo is cosponsored by NeXT Computer, NeXTWORLD magazine, and Digital Consulting (DCI).
NeXT CEO Steve Jobs will be the keynote speaker. Details of the user and developer conference program will be announced at a later date. Pricing was not set at press time.
One theme of the show is sure to be NeXTSTEP '486, which was announced at last year's Expo and is expected to be nearing shipment to customers around the time of the show.
"NeXT has opened the door to a broader audience to get NeXTSTEP everywhere," said Julie Welch, NeXT's director of marketing programs. "That will be evident with multiple '486 hardware manufacturers exhibiting at the show and with our other strategic partnerships."
Welch added that NeXT would reinforce its advantages in object-oriented development by sponsoring a contest for the best commercial and custom NeXT-STEP objects.
After last January's Expo, which drew more than 5200 attendees and more than 100 exhibitors, there has been great uncertainty about the date and location for the second NeXT-WORLD Expo. Although the announcement of the show was delayed, more time remains to organize the event than last year's 88-day schedule.
"Last year's show was a wonderful kickoff. We expect to build on that success with more robust user and developer conferences," said Jeannine Barnard, publisher of NeXTWORLD.
NeXT and NeXTWORLD were partners in last year's event. The new partner, DCI, is a show-management company based in An-dover, Massachusetts. Among its other shows are Database World and Client/Server World. For more information, call 508/470-3870 or 800/767-2336.