Nearly 300 technology professionals gathered in Long Beach, CA from February 25-28, 2001 to help kickoff the inaugural USERblue. From the opening keynote through the closing panel discussion, the conference was a tremendous success, leaving attendees equipped with information and professional contacts to employ in becoming a more effective administrator of IBM technologies on UNIX systems.

USERblue participants were treated to a comprehensive conference experience – including classroom education, a functional AIX on RS/6000 hands on lab, a products and services exhibition, access to IBM's top developers, and professional certification testing. The robust agenda featured more than 80 sessions populating the following technical tracks: Architecture, e-Business, High Availability, Security, System Administration, and Trends & Directions.

Two high profile keynote presentations bookended the conference. Dr. Vinton Cerf, vice president of Internet Architecture and Technology for WorldCom, opened USERblue with the insightful keynote, "Internet: Twenty-first Century Tidal Wave". As co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and architecture of the Internet, Dr. Cerf earned the moniker "Father of the Internet". In presenting a state of the Internet at USERblue, Dr. Cerf spoke to the exponential growth in users and bandwidth, what we can expect in the future, and the formation of an inter-planetary Internet.

Helene Armitage, IBM vice president in charge of UNIX software development in IBM's enterprise systems group, delivered the closing keynote on February 28. In her presentation, Ms. Armitage outlined IBM's strategy to deliver solutions for UNIX and Linux systems, and the company's plans to capitalize on this growing market segment.