With the stand in place we waited for the exhibition to open…

This year, like 2006, we’re demonstrating pure::variants the leading toolset for variant management and software product line development.

This is the UK’s largest exhibition for embedded developers by far and with an increased number of exhibitors we expected more people through the door.

By 10:30 a number of people had made it to our stand near the back of the hall. We find that people tend to work their way through the stands nearer the front first.

We generally do a short demonstration when people arrive on our stand and try and find out how pure::variants maps to their specific problems. The embedded space is very diverse and this is reflected in the types of participant that visit the stand.

Sometimes people with little software knowledge come onto the stand to find out exactly what it is we do. This seems to be a recurring pattern as companies that once produced little software are finding themselves having to produce more and more of the stuff.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are very experienced software developers who already know about the problem of variant management, have read about us and are keen to explore in great depth precisely what pure::variants can do for them and how it integrates into their overall software life cycle. Until you have a chance to find out more about the person you don’t know where in this spectrum their knowledge lies.

The press were also in attendance and I was happy to speak to a small number of editors and journalists about pure::variants and next year’s Code Generation 2008 event. There is a growing interest in model-based software development in the embedded community and hopefully our event is contributing to this as well as benefitting from it.

More on ESS 2007 tomorrow.