It seems a little Quixotic to launch a show called AIX World at a time when IBM has indicated that AIX Unix is a short-life product that will be replaced by the Open Software Foundation’s OSF/1 – and applications developers and users have heard promises like the one that migrating applications from AIX to OSF/1 will be totally painless to take them with a large pinch of salt. AIX World is scheduled for September 17 to 20 at the Crown Plaza in Crystal City near Washington DC. Its sponsors are the International Technology Group consultancy from Los Altos, California, and show organisers Case Expo. IBM isn’t a sponsor but will be there is spades. Keynotes are being given by Gerald Ebker from IBM’s Federal Sector Division, Nick Donofrio of the Advanced Workstation Division and Terry Lautenbach, general manager of IBM US. International Technology Group managing director Brian Jeffery reckons that the seminars and exhibit will draw the federal government crowd, RT users, software houses interested in converting to AIX, system houses, S/3X migrators as well as that ubiquitous animal, the IBM end-user. The conferences seem more user-oriented than most with the topics including an introduction to AIX and to the 6000, software engineering, X-terminals, graphics, advanced image processing, networking and systems administration, distributed computing, interoperability, migration and end-user case studies. There will also be a session fetchingly entitled Ask IBM complete with IBM panel.