Trade Show Summary

Show: JavaOne and JavaGrande - ISCOPE Conferences: June 2-8; Exhibition: June 3-7 Moscone Convention Center Hosted by Sun Microsystems, JavaOne is the premier Java Developers conference, drawing over 20,000 attendees and hundreds of exhibitors annually. Goal: To educate Java developers about Frontier, Parabon's computing platform, and encourage them to build applications using the system. Third-party validation of Frontier, through developers, would help Parabon credential its technology and gain traction in the marketplace. Approach: Parabon was the first company in the industry to have a Software Developers Kit (SDK) widely available, a key advantage we emphasized by distributing the kit to every attendee at JavaGrande (through in-room giveaways at the conference). Competing for attendees’ interest at a busy trade show is a fast and furious business. We decided to go with a simple, clean, and compelling message to pique attendees' interest, drawing them into the booth to learn more. We came up with a pithy, humorous concept to explain what Parabon offers to developers, "Computational Whupp Ass." The concept encapsulated Parabon's offerings quickly, easily, and--most importantly--compellingly in a graphic style. Further, the approach was ambiguous enough that booth staff could tailor their pitch to resonate with attendees’ interests. Costs: We produced the display for under $500. We created actual cans of "Computational Whupp Ass" ourselves by printing labels and affixing them to different sized soup cans. Results: Booth traffic at the show was exceptional and we distributed over 1,000 SDKs. As the booth was being broken down, a time notoriously slow for trade show exhibitors because most attendees have left well in advance, there was a line of about 20 people at the booth waiting to claim their own can of “computational power.”

SC 2000 Conference Conference: Nov. 4 - Nov. 10; Exhibition: Nov. 6 - Nov. Dallas Convention Center Dallas, Texas Each year, more than 5,000 computer scientists, researchers, and engineers attend SC2000. Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery, the annual conference highlights the latest developments in supercomputing, high performance computing, and distributed scalable computing environments. Goal: To introduce Parabon to its primary market, scientists and researchers in need of supercomputing power. This was the company's "coming out" party, and as such, we devoted considerable time and resources to it, creating a 20"X20" foot booth display and holding major press releases, to announce during the conference and build critical mass. Approach: As we were still uncertain as to how the market would receive the product and who our champions would be we used "soft" messaging, encouraging scientists to "Release Their Imagination" and consider the possibilities in light of their own needs. By encouraging individuals to think of the product on their terms, we had a springboard for the introduction of our product (we could spin it appropriately) and a means for follow up discussion. We also had the choice of exhibiting in Venture Village or the main exhibition hall. Companies displaying in Venture Village are typically hot new businesses with

groundbreaking technology in search of funds. Even though Parabon, in fact, fit this profile, we opted to exhibit in the main hall. I concepted and scripted a short video for the booth. Working with a creative agency, we edited and produced a 2-minute piece that included compelling images of past "supercomputers," something the audience could instantly identify with, and then invited scientists to be on the forefront of the next generation of computing technology through Parabon. Dr. Steven Armentrout, CEO and founder of Parabon, gave a presentation on how Frontier's groundbreaking technology is launching a new era in Internet computing. Entitled The Art of Internet Computing, Armentrout highlighted the core technological infrastructure required to create a stable and secure Internet computing platform suitable for general use. Parabon CTO Jim Gannon took part in a panel discussion on the massive potential of Internet computing, Megacomputers, moderated by Larry Smarr, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD.

The open nature of the Parabon "island booth" encouraged attendees' to walk around and discover information on their own. Key words and phrases such as "discovery" and "release your imagination" invited researchers and scientists to consider approaches they never thought possible before. The display is modular, and can be broken down to create smaller, different sized displays (such as 10"X10" foot).

Results: Parabon created a buzz by announcing general availability of Frontier, the first Internet distributed computing platform. Parabon also released its Software

Development Kit at the conference, empowering developers to create their own applications for the platform. By exhibiting in the main hall instead of Venture Village, Parabon distinguished itself from competition as having a real product and organization in place to support that product (instead of just an idea and hopes of success in the future). DCI's Summit on Peer-To-Peer Computing Conference: March 13-16; Exhibition: March 14-16 Downtown Marriott San Francisco, CA This conference considered all perspectives (through input taken from consultants, vendors, case studies and analyst observations) to educate attendees on the key issues in Internet computing. Topics included: methods for enterprise computing, costs of deployment, TCO, infrastructure requirements, security challenges, and application reengineering. Goal: To generate qualified leads for sale of Parabon's Frontier Enterprise product. A secondary goal was to further credential Parabon in the field. Approach: Our primary audience was IT personnel and system administrators. We wanted to highlight the waste of internal computing resources (computers are idle upwards of 90% of the time) and illustrate how tapping that unused resource could improve a company's bottom line. Again, we were faced with the challenge of creating effective materials on a limited budget. This time, when we thought of "idle time," the notion of a diner struck us:

Parabon's CTO, Jim Gannon, gave a presentation, Internet Computing: How To Leverage Compute Resources on Your Internal Networks and the Internet. Costs: We produced the display for under $300. Results: Trial runs from qualified leads came out of the show. Parabon executives were able to exchange information with other leaders in the field and help shape the future of Internet distributed computing.