While others are scaling back events and road shows, Novell is bucking the trend to cut back and forging ahead with a planned 50-city road show designed to promote NetWare 6, the Provo, Utah, networking company's new flagship software product.

The company kicked off its NetWare 6 One Net Access Tour for end user customers and solution providers this week in Salt Lake City and will move the event around the country from there. At future events, the company will conduct seminars demonstrating the benefits and features of NetWare 6. The events will take place around the country in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco and elsewhere. There will also be an event in New York, slated for Oct. 17.

The company, which is still missing one of its Cambridge Technology Partners employees suspected lost in the World Trade Center tragedy, previously conducted intense boot camp training seminars in 26 cities this spring.

At the time of the tragedy, a number of the company's executives were in Atlanta at the NetWorld Interop trade show. That morning, they were beginning a press conference announcing the shipment of their new software when news of the tragedies surfaced. Obviously, the news of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and outside Pittsburgh wound up overshadowing Novell's press event and everything else for that matter.

Afterwards, the company debated whether to continue with the events or delay them for another time. Ultimately, the company decided to persevere and go ahead with normal business activity.

"We decided to take President Bush at his word and continue with our plans," says Troy Monney, vice president of field marketing and global sales programs at Novell.

Monney says in the aftermath of the tragedy in New York, Novell mobilized internally. Its managers and executives met to see what type of technical assistance they could offer to the relief efforts. Afterward, it decided to move forward with the events, which it notes will be local for all but a few Novell employees.

"One reason we're going forward is that these events will be local for attendees and remove any need for them to be away from their businesses at this time," adds Monney.

At each event, attendees will see product demonstrations of NetWare for Small Business and other features of NetWare 6. The company says the events won't be as technical as previous NetWare 6 boot camps but rather market, product and integration overviews.

As of this week, nearly 7,000 customers and 1,000 solution providers are registered for the tour, which runs through the end of October.