I just came back from FOSDEM. As always, it was a madhouse, but there
was some time for sane conversation.
For those that weren't there, you should know that OpenOffice had a
presence there (as they always have), staffed by volunteers, with some
swag provided by the ASF, and other swag provided by the OpenOffice
community, out of their own pockets. They did an *awesome* job of
representing both AOO and the ASF as a whole.
However, I think we can do better in 2016. I want to see Apache have a
table at FOSDEM 2016, representing more than just one project, with
proper respect to the historical position of AOO at the event - ie, not
just usurping their place there.
Here are some thoughts from talking with folks (mostly Jan Iversen and
Daniel Gruno) at FOSDEM.
* We would need to either have a separate table from AOO, or double the
size of the existing table, so that we don't eclipse their place there.
They've put *years* into developing a presence at FOSDEM, and we want to
respect that.
* Table Staff: I figure it takes at least 6 people to staff a FOSDEM
table if you don't want to go insane. Daniel and Jan have said that they
will staff the table. So we're 1/3 of the way there. I would probably be
available for some time, but, like many of the folks that might
otherwise be willing to do time, I have work duties as well. Two people
need to be there at all times, and people should be willing to commit to
specific time windows. It would also be cool to have times scheduled for
specific projects. Like, say, 11:00 to 12:00 is Cordova Hour, and will
have two representatives of the project present to answer questions and
give demos.
* We need printed materials, as well as stickers/pins/whatever. Printed
materials should cover the ASF as a whole, as well as highlighting a
variety of projects. Individual projects who wish to be represented
should be encouraged to provide materials that we can print, but we
don't want to have too many projects with printed materials - that would
be overwhelming. We need to provide a template (in AOO, of course) that
a project can fill in with their project-specific content to produce a
consistent one-page, or tri-fold, or whatever, that could be printed for
the event. We don't want twenty different-looking documents. We are
trying to present a brand. (Right, Shane?)
* A tshirt would be nice - the word-cloud of project names we discussed
a year or two ago would be cool. There's several thousand people in
attendance, and this is an opportunity to get the Foundation's name in
front of a really important, and hugely diverse, audience. So having a
cool, eye-catching tshirt is a cheap, easy way to do that.
So, if you are interested in being part of this effort, please speak up.
This won't happen if I'm in charge of it, but I wanted to throw it out
there and see if it catches anyone. I presume that Jan will take the
lead on this, but I'm the one that took notes. I'm also aware that we
tend to have a lot of passion about this kind of thing for a moment, and
then it fades as the event recedes into the past. But something like
this takes time, effort, money, and grunt work to make it happen.
--
Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen
http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon
